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What to do with old (example: 7+ years) PCs?

I recently decided to use my test box as a server (its an atom mini ITX) and once i've moved over any content of value, i want to use my current server, a PIII 450 with 640 mb of ram, for something useful. A few ideas i had were to either keep it as a backup server (which, i can do alongside some of my other ideas), a web access box (it can manage a GUI quite well - i ran KDE 3.5 on it at one point, and it ran magnificently) or a router - I have quite a few ethernet cards to spare- and i'm sure i can fit in 3-4 into that box.Its near silent, so i don't really have to worry all that much about noise

Whatever i do, it needs to play well with my current IPV4 network (though, if i can run a IPv6 tunnel from hurricane electric alongside it, it would be cool). If it can do more than one of those things (say if i can get a router with a web interface running underneath a web access box), its a bonus. I'm currently using ubuntu, so it might make for a smaller learning curve if its ubuntu based,

So... what would you do? (and yes, i'd like to keep it running. small matter of geriatric pride.. someone claimed it wouldn't run for more than a week on passive cooling ;p)

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cheers for the pIII's. my home server's a 9-yr-old dual pIII 550. still runs like a champ. (that said, we've been closing "what would you do with X" questions recently -- too discussion-oriented. don't be surprised if this doesn't last.) – quack quixote Mar 7 '10 at 16:13
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Possible duplicate: superuser.com/questions/987/… – Tadeusz A. Kadłubowski Mar 7 '10 at 17:59
If it gets closed, it gets closed. I'm not going to be too hung up over it. I'm just hoping for something i wouldn't have thought up myself ;p – Journeyman Geek Mar 8 '10 at 0:11
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closed as exact duplicate by kez, Diago Mar 8 '10 at 8:04

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I would use it as a firewall. There are many linux liveCD distribs. of firewalls that are just linux installs with routing/firewall/IDS software packages

It's a great way to learn about it if you are interested

You can also install a honeypot on it, put it in your DMZ and take a look at whats trying to get in to your ip / ip range :)

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honeypots sounds fun :) – karikari May 27 '11 at 1:14
Until 2005, I ran Debian Potato on a SPARCstation IPX and used it as a dedicated honeypot. Some other SPARC lunchbox (IPC? Classic? Can't remember) served as DNS server. They took several minutes to generate their initial SSH keys (The IPX ran at 25 MHz), but were very decent machines if you didn't do much number crunching. There are lots of uses for old hardware, though the ratio of versatility over power consumption can be unacceptably low — this is why my SPARCs were eventually decommissioned. – Alexios Mar 4 at 2:17
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