Peoples hearing differs not only on hearing ability but also in the ability do filter out background noise. If you lower it by, say, 3dB it will probably be fine. I don’t have a problem with the volume at all and I really love the music, what is it?
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Curious as to why the music is desirable at all. Do you play music wherever you go? When you are talking on the phone? Aweful, repellent choice.
I am not computer illiterate, BUT I am computer aged. Would like to do 'something' with these computer parts and stuff (lots of stuff) that I have. I used to build computers and write simple programs. Got burned out with it all about 15 yrs ago. Got a couple of ideas from this video. Thank you. It's much appreciated.
I have a Dell 780 from 2009. With latest Linux Mint installed it works more than fine for common tasks - writing, web browsing, light gaming, online support... I don't even need to replace the mechanical drive with an ssd...
I had a Dell OptiPlex 780 once and despite taking 20 minutes to boot with Windows 10, it ran so fine that I could make videos on it. Unfortunately, its power supply is pretty much dead now.
I know your channel is new but this is the first video I came across. I have a bit of a fetish for finding ways to still use old hardware and have been re-building old PCs for a while and giving them to people who need them, even to the point of something so old that only FreeDOS would run on it but it could run an old spreadsheet well enough for a motorcycle mechanic to use to figure out that his dealership was short-changing him! Ditto the lower background music comment but your voice, speech pacing, and camera angles are really good, as well as your screen-capture inserts into your editing. Glad I stumbled across your channel and best of luck!
Subbed because you enjoy old tech as I do! Your video style also feels a little like maybe a community TV channel, which I like. And what good dad doesn't embarrass the kids once in a while?😛 1) Cheap to get. I've had people give me laptops and other electronics just to clear out the clutter. The used market is so huge that you can literally pay whatever you want to pay. 2) Easier to upgrade than newer stuff. I love my old Thinkpads! 3) So gratifying because of the huge performance differences from stock to modified. 4) Huge value proposition. I've paid a great bit for some laptops that perform no better than the upgraded older stuff. 5) Keeps useful items out of the landfill. 6) Indescribable thrill of sticking it to the Man.
@@k.b.tidwell Thanks for the sub! 👍 Yeah the depreciation on these older machines is crazy, so I agree with the value, and sticking it to the man! 😂😂✌️
Found a 2016 Dell Inspiron at a thrift store for $13 not too long ago. After noticing that the donor carelessly left the OS and tons of personal information on the hard drive, I reformatted with a fresh Linux install and began using it as a semi-portable PC to do graphics work with. It's just powerful enough to handle it up to a certain point and I figure once I need to do more, I can start using it for something else. I also have another I use exclusively for Recalbox gaming and Kodi. Works like a charm for the most part!
Very informative, the back ground music actually worked with what you was presenting and took me back with a bit of nostalgia. Great job keep up the work and also you have given me a lot of ideas now that I am working on building my off net network.
As someone who manages in his day to day both TrueNAS & Home Assistant, RetroPi & Emby (Jellyfin but closed source...) this video is a perfect way to introduce my colleagues into the self-hosting world, thank you for this!
Listening on my phone, the music had some high points that made it challenging to hear, but i managed just fine. To be honest, it made me listen more intently. With that being said, i loved the content! Especially the alternative software to true nas and plex/jellyfin. Ive watched several videos on the subject, and this is the first time hearing about an alternative. True nas definitely seemed a bit intimidating for a new casual user.
I bought a Plexpass subscription years ago because I wanted to make sure I could stream my ripped CD collection anywhere. I use it constantly, and it has been a worthwhile investment. It also allows me to share my small movie collection with family.
i recently purchased a lenovo m710q Tiny for $120 CAD. Using as a starter home server. Learning how to use CasaOS with Jellyfin and Photo Prism. So far I can Samba & SSH into the Debian 12 server itself. I'm still learning how to get Jellyfin and PHoto Prism configured. It's a fun learning project..but had it's fair share of challenges..especially locking down the security to SSH into the Debian 12 server (CasaOS sits on top of the Debian 12). I have an external usb3.0 DAS in Raid-1 attached to the M710q for total of 1TB storage. I"m just starting with the 2x 1TB in Raid-1 plan to change up to 2x 4TB Raid-1 in a few months.
Nice project ideas. I used to have a little Lenovo mini PC that a friend gave me. I had never seen anything like it, up to that point. Once I realized I could just plug it into the big screen in the living room with an HDMI cord, it became the little media center in our apartment, and then again when we moved somewhere else. I loved it. Before everybody had streaming services, and before I heard of Miracast, that was the bomb!
@@ocassionaljunkieforyou Thank you so much, really appreciate it! Let me know if you try any the ideas I suggested! Some other cool ones here in the comments as well - I like the audio juke box that a viewer suggested! ✌️
I just stumbled across your channel... I'm a similar old school techie and im looking forward to more information on what i can do with a lot of my old tech 🤷
Yeah I am sure there are some good Linux word processors available; a thin client could be great for this; I really like the fanless HP T530 that I use for my NAS.
I have a pair of those HP t530 thin clients running everything. Caddy, Nextcloud, FreshRSS, VPN, etc. They're champions and do it without a sweat. Cost US$20 each. Those XBMC screenshots were great to see again. I had a box in a datacentre back then and I seeded a third of all XBox AID torrents ever!
@@JamieBainbridge Yeah I'm running OpenMediaVault on my T530 with an external USB drive chassis. Not as safe or fast as your Synology, but it seems to be working well. It's an experiment at this point to see if I can trust it or not... I have trust issues with software! 🤣✌️
Generally I like using these types of smaller older PCs for a few things - Retro gaming (MAME) machines, DVD rippers, jukeboxes. I've also got plans to turn one in an AXE-FX type guitar FX unit. I've seen Batocera and need to give it go to update some of my old retro gaming machines when I find time. I've been meaning to make a HTPC also as the amount of apps available for TVs can leave a lot to be desired. Kodi's fine as a media centre if your collection isn't too big. I find it doesn't scrape correctly a lot of the time (even if you use the conventional naming required). That being said, I've also always had issues with Plex. That's why I currently just run Emby on a NAS to do all the background work and use Kodi on the TV to stream from Emby. You can use Jellyfin but I find that there's better options in Emby (even though it's proprietary).
@@peterschmidt9942 Oooh guitar FX? Wow, that is a cool idea!! Hadn't considered that before! Yeah scraping with Kodi can be hit or miss... I appreciate the comment! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Yeah just going to install a mini PC, sound interface and probably a small 7 or 9" screen in a 2U or 3U rack case. I just need to see what FX software is available in Linux
Sweet! Yeah TrueNas seems to be a really robust package, I went with OMV, but will give TrueNas a try on a spare machine soon! Thanks for the comment! ✌️
Used Jellyfin for a while now. The main thing I recommend for Jellyfin Or Plex and Emby as well) is if you are not going to use a dedicated GPU for transcoding, then to use something with an 7th gen or newer Intel CPU. THe quicksync feature is far better compared to earlier versions. Running a repurposed HP laptop with an 8th gen Intel i5 CPU and thanks to quicksync, it barely breaks a sweat when 2 people in the house are watching transcoded videos.
Yeah that might be above my paygrade! I am more of an amateur tinkerer and learning as I go. Some folks really know the ins and outs of these platforms much better than I ever will! But I am happily using OMV on my T530! Appreciate the comment and suggestion! ✌️
Hmm, I've checked out Chrome OS Flex a little bit on an old laptop with a live environment, but I wasn't particularly impressed, but then it might be a hardware bottleneck as basically /nothing/ runs impressively on an HP Stream with a N3060 cpu. There is basically no OS that you can install on it that'll make it seem in any way A completely smooth or snappy experience because it's not and you can't squeeze blood out of a stone, the cpu is the main bottleneck and the rest of the hardware isn't exactly helping too much. Also I am far too accustomed to being nearly unlimited in what I can install and run on my computer, even if for a long time now I primarily use a browser due to being burnt out and not having the energy or drive for much else. It would still grate on me /knowing/ that I was pretty much limited to a browser barring some cludgy workarounds and literally nearly /any/ distro of linux would allow you to install more, though I will give google props for the design, it looks very good and modern, runs smooth, is generally efficient. There are definite advantages to having a specialization that they can pour their effort into and not really having too many background processes/resource usage is one of them and other parts of the system don't need to be as fully flushed out as a full general OS would be. It's far easier and in some ways better to have something designed to do basically one thing very well than having something that can do many things passably to poorly. Though I guess that depends on the hardware too, but for very low end hardware having something specialized will generally run better at that thing than something generalized. For example: If you need to insert/remove screws all day it's far better to have a dedicated screwdriver than one of those multi-tools or a swiss army knife. The later will do the job, but much slower and more clumsily.
@@MindCaged Having just turned 71, I'm well-acquainted with slow and clumsy!😆I'm also running Raspberry PI Desktop OS (Linux) on an old HP 210 Netbook. Its sole purpose is to run the BOINC/World Community Grid software, and seems to do a laudable job. With its massive 2GB of RAM and its Atom processor, I wouldn't ask anything else of it. I wish I could get the BOINC screensaver to run as it does on Windows, but it seems a bit much for my little engine that could.🚂
@@ToddTinkersWithTech fydeos>chromeos. fydeos has android and google play store suppport. ChromeOs thats downloaded from the internet does not. Only chromebooks do.
Hey Todd, great video, I have a few, one sff that is running a minecraft server, and have played with Batocera, now converted to LaunchBox. I have done plex as well, but I find streaming an casting much easier now! A fun project was I got a touch screen AIO pc. Which now is in the kitchen, watch shows, play music, or turn on the PI in the back and play some emulation games!
Started with Kodi, but having to configure each device was a pain. Switched to Jellyfin on a Pi5 and it's been so great. No issues with 1080p videos with a decent bit rate. Don't really do 4k. Paired with Radarr and Sonarr, it's been so perfect.
Very cool! You are right - configuring a new Kodi machine is time consuming!! Yeah I have been checking out Radarr & Sonar recently, powerful stuff!! I really appreciate the comment! ✌️
Good idea for a future video! I'll try and make that video soon! I appreciate you watching! ✌️ Hit me up on X/Twitter or Reddit if you need any help in the meantime
I use some small form factor machines, including a few earlier model Intel compute sticks, to run some old snapshot webcams available on my website. I started my first web cam back in 1998, now I have 5 going 24/7. These are just snapshots updated every 30 seconds or so. No real reason for streaming on these as verry little change occurs in most of the images except over time.
Really nice and thorough video! I have a Lenovo Tiny and I was tinkering what to do with it and this video came in clutch! Also, yeah, music is loud BUT I'm not gonna just stay here and say "music loud" and leave. If you allow me a bit of advice: compress your bag music. That way you get rid of the spikes of volume so we can focus in what really is important: your voice!
I use a second hand thin client for a multi-use server. I upgraded it with more ram and a bigger flash drive and it's become the brain of my home automation, media server etc. Highly recommended!
I just stumbled on your channel. For years when I'd upgrade my and my wife's PC to the next latest and greatest version of Windows I'd recycle one of the old desktops as a poor man's server. This last go around (Win 10) decided to use a laptop as home server to minimize power consumption. The server is a T420 Thinkpad, I replaced the HDD with an SSD and stuck a large HDD into the DVD drive bay. The laptop is the destination for scheduled backups, NetTime NTP time server for LAN devices and runs an Abyss web for internal family web stuff. With the desktop servers I used an KVM to share peripherals. Being a laptop it has its own display so found a spiffy HID sharing program called Input director that let you share kybd and mouse by simply moving the mouse to a predesignated side of the main computer screen. I was not aware of Home Assistant, thanks for the info. I'm not a fan of putting home stuff stuff into the cloud. I've built a number of home automation devices, they have a built in web interface but it is not easily customizable or integrate multiple devices into a unified whole. This sounds like something to add to my someday TO-DO list.
Nice, laptops make great basic servers! Great tip on Input Director, I'll check that out! Give Home Assistant a try, seems quite powerful, but lots of tinkering required. Good way to kill a rainy weekend...! I appreciate the comment! ✌
Our household (free tier) plex server runs on a 2006 Mac Mini that I got for free and upgraded to a faster processor ($8) and 2007 firmware ($0), it runs plex on linux great. Just don't ask it to do the transcoding and everything'll be fine.
With the retro gaming section - I have a gaming laptop that dates back to 2015 (and can't run most modern games). I am curious if Batocera and/or Retropie can run on Windows. Being a young'un (22 | 2002), my mom introduced me to the SNES and played a lot with my siblings - such as the games: Tetris Attack (Panel de Pon for JP region), Super Punch-Out, and Super Metroid, etc.
@@Myszkia Cool! Old games can still be a blast to play! ✌️ Batocera requires it's own full install, although you could run it on a 2nd drive and choose to boot from it or windows. You can run CoinOps on Windows - do a search for that! ✌️
Most of my life is online. I do a lot of surfing, "How To" videos like this and other educational videos. Most of my productivity can be done through Google Docs. I don't run a lot of other programs. I plan on buying a couple of used PCs, one of them a tower to use as a NAS with as many drives as I can get into it for RAD 5 and the other as a LINUX desktop for most of my web surfing needs. My current desktop will be reserved for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
@@dienekes4364 Thanks for the comment! Yeah Google docs etc are great, and run great on 4th Gen Intel processor machines that are dirt cheap these days. ✌️
I use to run Kodi and Plex side by side on my arcade cabinet (when plex was open source) , now I just run emby for the household network, and use Jellyfin on my personal network
I would love to see your in-depth vid on how to DIY my own arcade game. I'm only mildly nerdy, so I need a fully dumbed down version (minimum specs? Programs? Settings?), but I can build stuff! And I know I have at least a couple of old computers sitting around.. please tag me here if and when you post it!
I'm using a 2011 Dell Optiplex 790 Ultra Small Form Factor as my media/download/network hub, a 2011 HP Probook 4430s as my test subject for hardware/software experiments, and a 2017 Lenovo Thinkstation p320 as my media server. I've been tempted to pick up some other older model SFF desktop units, but presently have no use for them, though I have considered doing something similar to the "smart home" concept, but with a car. Camera controls, lights, music, (maybe even movies for passengers), etc.
I have a few dell 3050 mini's around that i i got during the pi shortage. One runs my foundry VTT server, my pi hole (snicker), and the other is kind of a test box for whatever I'm into at the moment. I would love to know more about home assistants and how to make one. I was planning on using a pi cm3 lite I have sitting around for that, but I'm still up in the air on that. Good to see someone that fiddles with things like I do. Subbed
Thanks, yeah Pi's are great if you need something tiny, but if not, cheap SFF's are where it is at. Haven't done a PiHole yet; another thing on my tinker to-do list!
I’m 62 and leagally blind so slow with keyboard I think I’ll try Lennox since my out of date soon Dell 7050 Will lose windows 10 soon which system do you recommend?
Great content, script, visuals, and presentation! To me, the background music isn’t as bad as others have made it seem… it did shock me at first, but seemed to be more digestible as the video went on. (I’d still tone it down a bit, but overall not terrible) I have access to a seemingly endless supply of free e-waste that I do my best to repurpose and get out to others who either can’t afford new devices or would prefer reusing a less capable device rather than buying something new. As such, videos like these really relate to me and I’d love to see more content like this in the future. All in, I really enjoyed your video and hope to see many more to come!
Depends on the package - for Kodi, Plex, Jellyfin and RetroPi, yes - install a Linux distro, such as "Mint" and install on top. For Batocera and OpenMediaVault, it's best to start fresh from a "distro" ISO that you burn to a USB drive using BalenaEtcher - and it will install the OS and software, and might be easiest for non-tech types! Appreciate the comment! ✌️
I can turn one into a mid level gaming PC you won't be able to run higher end games but the older games you can run. Though there's some backend stuff to allow the machine to have enough memory to run things quickly. I have a free Plex account and it's a good source for old movies and TV shows, I haven't tried the pro subscription yet but so far it's not necessary
@@RavenStorm332 Yeah a lot of those mid-level older games are still a ton of fun, not everything needs a 4070! I appreciate you watching and commenting! ✌️
Anyone know a good vpn to use while using the boctocera version of kodi? Preferably one that runs off a router to make a new network that’s linked or forwarded to the vpn address? Or if there’s a free one? Bc I’m not sure how to install apps on boctocera for vpns thank you
There is a Kodi add-on for adding VPN - service.vpn.manager - you can find it in the Zomboided repository. But hasn't been updated in a while. Not sure if there is another option within Kodi/Batocera...
I bought a N5105 NUC for ~$100.00 and I use it as a USB NAS. Projected cost to run it for a year: $1.05; it is on the Network shelf so the Network UPS will run it, if there is a blackout, and the network (modem, router, smart-switch, NUC and EasyShare) for over 90 minutes and since it is Windows, it runs and manages PowerChute. If I add the WD EasyShare into the equation, it is about another $5.00 a year. I do not need a keyboard, mouse or a monitor because I can use Window's Remote Desktop Connection, from anywhere on the LAN, and just do updates and upkeep as needed using that.
Even if one can put up with the slow speed of ancient tech, the power utilization makes it unpractical. There's recycling tech, and a time old tech has to be literally recycled.
I used Plex with a Synology drive for a while, and it would work well with ripped DVDs but stutter on Blu-Rays. From time to time, Plex would self-nuke, and I would have to set it up again. It is extremely picky on how you name and organise your files, to the point where I couldn't get everything working since Plex hides its errors fairly well. I just got fed up with it and stopped using it. When they went commercial, I just gave up on the whole thing. I will try Kodi and see how that goes. I have a 14TB harddrive with about 1000 ripped DVDs and Blu-Rays (99% of which are my own), and I would love to get something working. I have an old Mac Mini I could use for this, as well as an XBox 360 Slim, which maybe can be converted.
@@MorningNapalm Thanks for the comment! Yeah I like Kodi for it's relative simplicity but it does lack some cool features that Plex & Jellyfin offer. Try Kodi, which would be more of a client that would see the media on your Synology, and if that doesn't do it for you, maybe try Jellyfin or Emby. ✌️
Haha, just a little tune I threw together; honestly never heard Bloodrock before - listening now, and I love it!! Wow - thanks for that! Great prog riffs! Almost sounds like something the Beastie Boys would have sampled...!
I build a custom gaming console from an old small 11 inch laptop. I build it into an old wifi modem we used to get with our internet provider, which was completely build out of plastic, which was so easy to work with. It has 320gb hdd, 4gb of ram, uses a celeron 3xxx cpu (i forgot which one it was) and it uses intel hd 600 graphics, which is powerful enough to run up to psp, which is quite nice. For nintendo 64 and ps2 it is not powerful enough, but it allows me to play all those 8 and 16 bit consoles perfectly. I use Lakka on it, which is very easy to use. It's a nifty device and people think it kinda looks like a small PS5 :p
Sweet! Sounds perfect! I have tried out Lakka as well, but I have found Batocera to be a bit easier for me. I am going to make a video soon on building a mini arcade machine, inexpensively. Really appreciate the comment!!
I have an old mini pc with Home Media Vault on it, which took over from a Pi3 B+ which I started with, and Pi's behind all the TVs using OSMC to play the stored TV and Films.
@@ToddTinkersWithTech OSMC is based on Kodi, so you get as lot of the same functionality in a nicer (to me) interface. We have a telly in each room, and it runs nicely on most Raspberry Pi's although my 3B+ in the living room won't CEC, even though it used to, but I will sort it out eventually!!
Very cool. I am shocked how much I related to this video. From my OG Xbox modding days and xbmc and kodi and fire stick mod to retro games and emulation to my haswell optiplex I just got tired of Billy the kid and windows and switched back to Linux, I upgraded the haswell to 16GB of RAM. I got the haswell from thrift store for $30 and the Ram upgrade was $15. I am literally sitting on 12 OG Xbox because every time I see one at the thrift I have to rescue it. I know it's insane, now you got my wheels turning on retro pie for that haswell. I have archive the Xbox iso site that Nintendo took down. I got a media vault NAS that because of smb protocol Microsoft was giving me a hell of a time about security. Cab I run open media vault on my haswell? Or does it replace hp media vault firmware? Can I run it with Ubuntu? Many questions.
Haswell seems to be the sweet spot between price and performance. You can run OMV on pretty much anything I believe. Yeah I still have my OG mod-chipped Xbox! ✌️
Personally, I repurposed an old Intel i3 PC a couple of years ago by installing several HDDs and use Truenas Scale (think its linux based) cause it allows me to use a RAID configuration for redundancy. Also, the system can run apps (containers) that you can configure very easily like for example Jellyfin (which I recommend you try) and I am very happy with everything so far. I mainly use it for streaming my movies and tv shows and as backup storage, it runs SMB natively so you can enable it with just a click. Honestly is farely easy to setup.
going to setup a AceMagic AMD 5700U mini PC that I bought with a whole archived Flash games library called Flashpoint Archive it's about 1.68TB of flash games it has a 512GB SSD that it came with and I added a 2TB and swapped the 16GB of Ram out for 64GB which is total overkill for flash games
If you're looking for a good storage solution, Synology are great. I have a couple of 4-bay systems. They're Linux underneath so you can never lose access to your data, they come with an easy web interface. You can also run the Synology software in a Docker container called "virtual-dsm". If I built a NAS from scratch I would look into that and OMV.
@@JamieBainbridge Yeah I've heard good things about Synology NAS systems! Nice to have that safety when it comes to your data! 👍 I appreciate the comment! ✌️
I have a great 17 inch laptop acer from 2012. I installed Linux Mint Debian edition. It’s great! I can run 1080p RUclips and use it for libre office. Really nice video watching dvds! I also setup tons of old pcs with Antix and families love the simple games and tools.
got my mate a new battery for his beast from Duracell, not mad expensive and was a better battery than the original one - he was happy :) (just in case that interests you)
@@OokamiPuzzle Yeah a NAS is a fun and useful project! Funny, most people complain about the music! It's just something I threw together in Logic. I appreciate you watching and commenting! ✌️
@ToddTinkersWithTech Oh you made the music? Very good! Thats some dedication right there I only use my own music in my videos too its challenging! I love how your song sounds you should release it somewhere. Most people complaining probably aren't using headphones like me haha
This was great! I had no idea about the Chrome script. I also re-deploy old systems to new purposes. I'm now very annoyed that I binned some that I thought were useless (Chromes) but I could have saved.
Hey Todd! New Sub; Dryden, Mich. My 2 Younger Ladies & I Love playing with "eWaste" we find. Typically we tear them down, Paint the Chassis something cool with our ACE Hardware Spray collection LOL. They Each have Outdated but Nice Linux Boxes we Play Games with each other. ARMAGEDTRON is a Favorite, And we were Dual Booting Batocera, but I ended up just installing Emulation Station on the DE
I have a 20+ year old white box pc from A former employer.the has a 266MHz cpu running Windows XP that I use to record audio streams from OTA or the imternet. Rock solid.
@@squidskunk Thanks for watching; yeah might have to do that. I'm not too much of a power user; I keep it pretty simple. Lots of people use it with Real Debrid, which I'm not familiar with at all. But I can certainly show how I use it! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech ... id like to see your way of using kodi ... im at the starting point of using batocera and it includes kodi... your knowlege of kodi vastly exceeds mine.
I have really been loving Nova Media Player on my $20 android box kodi is a little sluggish and even vlc same but nova has been grerat for my NAS Usb stick
My vote is for Emby over Plex and Jellyfin. I had playback issues with both Plex and Jellyfin. Emby has been buttery smooth with anything I have thrown at it. I did buy Lifetime membership after the trial. Also, Jellyfin cant passthrough DTS-HD, as of right now. You can also use Kodi's front end with Emby since you have Kodi on everything.
@@LivingWithTechchannel Eh, Optiplexes are more powerful typically than Chromeboxes, I think you made a good choice with the Dell! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Yeah I bought the optiplex to start my homelab project, but I like your idea about making a little media box with the chromebox. I might give that a try once I get optiplex up and running. Good content!
Plex and Jellyfin are more like server-side storage solutions that would serve data to Kodi So they're not really competition of each other But they work well together --- Jellyfin is more customizable than Plex but the free Plex works fine unless you want to use their pre-served shows (which I do not use personally) But I do have Plex servers holding my backups of video. Def worthwhile but you're def correct on needing more power on the Plex side.
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Yw -- Jellyfin is a great choice imo b/c of the artwork feature (and some other customizations I prefer). But Plex is a bit more polished. I think you'll be happy w/ Jellyfin tho (or you could technically run both -- they're mainly just services in Windows). It runs great w/ Kodi And keep up the great work 👍 I know ppl are looking for ideas on what to do w/ e-waste to repurpose.
You can add Plex as an Add on to Kodi to have the best of both worlds. This vid has me thinking about ideas for the old HP T610 plus i have sitting on a shelf...
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Awesome, wasn't aware of that. I'm used to using Plex on Kodi and directly using Plex itself on my fire stick. Here are a couple more options in terms of standalone OS. OpenElec and LibreElec. Both are essentially Kodi itself as a standalone OS. OpenElec was discontinued a few years ago but you may still be able to download the ISO to use on one of these or an older Raspberry Pi.
PLEX lifetime is the best deal, around black Friday, was $90 for me. Pay once n use for life. Create as many servers as u like I think. I use a super low power unit for only music, and a large tower with 18TB for video. I can have them start up and shut down on Demand by remote.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
you need to reduce background volume as its more pronounced than your voice :( very difficult to follow...
Appreciate the feedback, thought the mix was ok in my headphones, but will test it on phones and laptop speakers in the future!
@pradeepherle: That's some good constructive criticism. Constructive feedback/criticism is way undervalued & underrated.
just do away with bg music altogether ....
Peoples hearing differs not only on hearing ability but also in the ability do filter out background noise. If you lower it by, say, 3dB it will probably be fine. I don’t have a problem with the volume at all and I really love the music, what is it?
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Curious as to why the music is desirable at all. Do you play music wherever you go? When you are talking on the phone? Aweful, repellent choice.
I am not computer illiterate, BUT I am computer aged. Would like to do 'something' with these computer parts and stuff (lots of stuff) that I have. I used to build computers and write simple programs. Got burned out with it all about 15 yrs ago. Got a couple of ideas from this video. Thank you. It's much appreciated.
Thanks for the comment! Reach out if you would like any additional info or suggestions! ✌
I have a Dell 780 from 2009. With latest Linux Mint installed it works more than fine for common tasks - writing, web browsing, light gaming, online support... I don't even need to replace the mechanical drive with an ssd...
Yeah Mint works great on these type of machines! Appreciate the comment!✌
I had a Dell OptiPlex 780 once and despite taking 20 minutes to boot with Windows 10, it ran so fine that I could make videos on it. Unfortunately, its power supply is pretty much dead now.
Definitely a jellyfin fan, works flawlessly on every device I’ve tried it on
Cool! Good to know, will be giving it a try soon!
Another Jellyfin fan here. Running in docker on a SSFF HP box.
I loved Jelly fin for a long time, ended up upgrading to Emby for the easier away from home viewing.
I know your channel is new but this is the first video I came across. I have a bit of a fetish for finding ways to still use old hardware and have been re-building old PCs for a while and giving them to people who need them, even to the point of something so old that only FreeDOS would run on it but it could run an old spreadsheet well enough for a motorcycle mechanic to use to figure out that his dealership was short-changing him!
Ditto the lower background music comment but your voice, speech pacing, and camera angles are really good, as well as your screen-capture inserts into your editing. Glad I stumbled across your channel and best of luck!
Awesome that you are helping people out like that! Thanks for the comment, much appreciated! ✌️
Subbed because you enjoy old tech as I do! Your video style also feels a little like maybe a community TV channel, which I like. And what good dad doesn't embarrass the kids once in a while?😛
1) Cheap to get. I've had people give me laptops and other electronics just to clear out the clutter. The used market is so huge that you can literally pay whatever you want to pay.
2) Easier to upgrade than newer stuff. I love my old Thinkpads!
3) So gratifying because of the huge performance differences from stock to modified.
4) Huge value proposition. I've paid a great bit for some laptops that perform no better than the upgraded older stuff.
5) Keeps useful items out of the landfill.
6) Indescribable thrill of sticking it to the Man.
@@k.b.tidwell Thanks for the sub! 👍 Yeah the depreciation on these older machines is crazy, so I agree with the value, and sticking it to the man! 😂😂✌️
Found a 2016 Dell Inspiron at a thrift store for $13 not too long ago. After noticing that the donor carelessly left the OS and tons of personal information on the hard drive, I reformatted with a fresh Linux install and began using it as a semi-portable PC to do graphics work with. It's just powerful enough to handle it up to a certain point and I figure once I need to do more, I can start using it for something else. I also have another I use exclusively for Recalbox gaming and Kodi. Works like a charm for the most part!
Sweet! Yeah 2016 is probably the sweet spot for cheap but decent performance! Very cool, appreciate the comment! ✌️
I love bringing old gadgets to life again :)
Thanks for watching! ✌️
Very informative, the back ground music actually worked with what you was presenting and took me back with a bit of nostalgia. Great job keep up the work and also you have given me a lot of ideas now that I am working on building my off net network.
Thanks, very much appreciated! ✌️
that Home Assistant thing is something i've been looking for, for a very long time. Gonna give it a shot.
Yeah it looks crazy powerful; I am going to dig into it one of these days... Let me know how it goes!
As someone who manages in his day to day both TrueNAS & Home Assistant, RetroPi & Emby (Jellyfin but closed source...) this video is a perfect way to introduce my colleagues into the self-hosting world, thank you for this!
Ah very cool, glad you appreciate the video! I'm not an expert (it sounds like you are!) but I do enjoy my tinkering! Thanks for the comment! ✌️
Listening on my phone, the music had some high points that made it challenging to hear, but i managed just fine. To be honest, it made me listen more intently. With that being said, i loved the content! Especially the alternative software to true nas and plex/jellyfin. Ive watched several videos on the subject, and this is the first time hearing about an alternative. True nas definitely seemed a bit intimidating for a new casual user.
@@stevenboswell4524 Thanks, much appreciated! Yeah I'm running OpenMediaVault on a $25 HP T530, and it seems to be pretty solid! ✌️
I bought a Plexpass subscription years ago because I wanted to make sure I could stream my ripped CD collection anywhere. I use it constantly, and it has been a worthwhile investment. It also allows me to share my small movie collection with family.
@@joshdieckmann595 Yeah the ability to share is really cool with Plex & Jellyfin! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
Sharing with family was a big plus for me. My sister is across the country and watches stuff on my Plex all the time.
@@banditismyhandle Definitely one of the big advantages of Plex & Jellyfin - sharing media. Thanks for your comment!
i recently purchased a lenovo m710q Tiny for $120 CAD. Using as a starter home server. Learning how to use CasaOS with Jellyfin and Photo Prism. So far I can Samba & SSH into the Debian 12 server itself. I'm still learning how to get Jellyfin and PHoto Prism configured. It's a fun learning project..but had it's fair share of challenges..especially locking down the security to SSH into the Debian 12 server (CasaOS sits on top of the Debian 12). I have an external usb3.0 DAS in Raid-1 attached to the M710q for total of 1TB storage. I"m just starting with the 2x 1TB in Raid-1 plan to change up to 2x 4TB Raid-1 in a few months.
@@marcc5768 Ah cool, I've been meaning to try CasaOS! Sounds like a nice setup! I have an M93p Tiny that I "hackintoshed" - nice little machine!
Nice project ideas. I used to have a little Lenovo mini PC that a friend gave me. I had never seen anything like it, up to that point.
Once I realized I could just plug it into the big screen in the living room with an HDMI cord, it became the little media center in our apartment, and then again when we moved somewhere else. I loved it. Before everybody had streaming services, and before I heard of Miracast, that was the bomb!
Thanks for the comment! Another old school media center user, right on! ✌️
Loved this video, the fact that you showed more of the average Joe type of stuff really made the video more valuable to me.
@@ocassionaljunkieforyou Thank you so much, really appreciate it! Let me know if you try any the ideas I suggested! Some other cool ones here in the comments as well - I like the audio juke box that a viewer suggested! ✌️
I just stumbled across your channel... I'm a similar old school techie and im looking forward to more information on what i can do with a lot of my old tech 🤷
Much appreciated Robert, thanks for the comments! Some new videos are in the works!
Ditch the background music - it doesn't help me to understand you.
Yeah it was a poor mix, learned my lesson! Thanks for the feedback.
Came here to say this :D
Great content though, nice work
Subbed
@@duckcurious3801 Me too. unfortunately I can't handle it. Out at 4:21
Or maybe half the volume of the bgm
I didn’t notice the music. Control your adhd ppl.
For writing, I have wanted to build my own portable but dedicated writing machine and I think some of these kinds of devices would be a fantastic base
Yeah I am sure there are some good Linux word processors available; a thin client could be great for this; I really like the fanless HP T530 that I use for my NAS.
I was sad when the video ended 😢 I wanted more ideas I'll check out ur channel now ❤
Much appreciated! Yeah there are some other good suggestions here in the comments that I missed! ✌️
I have a pair of those HP t530 thin clients running everything. Caddy, Nextcloud, FreshRSS, VPN, etc. They're champions and do it without a sweat. Cost US$20 each. Those XBMC screenshots were great to see again. I had a box in a datacentre back then and I seeded a third of all XBox AID torrents ever!
@@JamieBainbridge Yeah I'm running OpenMediaVault on my T530 with an external USB drive chassis. Not as safe or fast as your Synology, but it seems to be working well. It's an experiment at this point to see if I can trust it or not... I have trust issues with software! 🤣✌️
Generally I like using these types of smaller older PCs for a few things - Retro gaming (MAME) machines, DVD rippers, jukeboxes. I've also got plans to turn one in an AXE-FX type guitar FX unit. I've seen Batocera and need to give it go to update some of my old retro gaming machines when I find time.
I've been meaning to make a HTPC also as the amount of apps available for TVs can leave a lot to be desired. Kodi's fine as a media centre if your collection isn't too big. I find it doesn't scrape correctly a lot of the time (even if you use the conventional naming required). That being said, I've also always had issues with Plex. That's why I currently just run Emby on a NAS to do all the background work and use Kodi on the TV to stream from Emby. You can use Jellyfin but I find that there's better options in Emby (even though it's proprietary).
@@peterschmidt9942 Oooh guitar FX? Wow, that is a cool idea!! Hadn't considered that before! Yeah scraping with Kodi can be hit or miss... I appreciate the comment! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Yeah just going to install a mini PC, sound interface and probably a small 7 or 9" screen in a 2U or 3U rack case. I just need to see what FX software is available in Linux
I've been using truenas for maybe 7 years now and it's great...running Plex as my movie media server and storage.
Sweet! Yeah TrueNas seems to be a really robust package, I went with OMV, but will give TrueNas a try on a spare machine soon! Thanks for the comment! ✌️
Great use for old PC is either a digital jukebox or internet radio. Both need minimal horsepower and provide endless hours of listening pleasure.
@@cfldriven Excellent suggestion that I missed! See my video on the Roku Soundbridge! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
This is so cool
Thank you for all the info
I used to use the XBox Media Center ,we tinkered around with it all the time, very cool
@@Thunder-xo1cx Hey, thanks for watching! Yeah, xbmc has come a long way! Much appreciated! ✌️
Jellyfin has my vote!! FOSS FOREVER
@@tylerrose9758 About to install Jellyfin on my NAS machine! Appreciate the comment! ✌️
Used Jellyfin for a while now. The main thing I recommend for Jellyfin Or Plex and Emby as well) is if you are not going to use a dedicated GPU for transcoding, then to use something with an 7th gen or newer Intel CPU. THe quicksync feature is far better compared to earlier versions.
Running a repurposed HP laptop with an 8th gen Intel i5 CPU and thanks to quicksync, it barely breaks a sweat when 2 people in the house are watching transcoded videos.
Excellent information, thanks! Love that you are using a repurposed laptop for Jellyfin! Thanks! ✌
Can't wait for your video on "Open media Vault vs True NAS" yeah, want to see that one.🤓
Yeah that might be above my paygrade! I am more of an amateur tinkerer and learning as I go. Some folks really know the ins and outs of these platforms much better than I ever will! But I am happily using OMV on my T530! Appreciate the comment and suggestion! ✌️
I just started my journey with old machine like that. I started with proxmox and on this I install other software like TrueNas or linux, windows etc
Good to hear! I have yet to try Proxmox; on my list of things to try out! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
Man this is awesome!! Very informative! I've been wondering what to do with old PC's and these are some solid ideas. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, some additional good ideas are here in the comments! I appreciate it! ✌️
Installed Google Chrome OS Flex on a lower-end mini PC. Works well connected to the TV.
@@BillDubie Yeah, good option! I should have mentioned Chrome OS Flex in this video... 👍
Hmm, I've checked out Chrome OS Flex a little bit on an old laptop with a live environment, but I wasn't particularly impressed, but then it might be a hardware bottleneck as basically /nothing/ runs impressively on an HP Stream with a N3060 cpu. There is basically no OS that you can install on it that'll make it seem in any way A completely smooth or snappy experience because it's not and you can't squeeze blood out of a stone, the cpu is the main bottleneck and the rest of the hardware isn't exactly helping too much.
Also I am far too accustomed to being nearly unlimited in what I can install and run on my computer, even if for a long time now I primarily use a browser due to being burnt out and not having the energy or drive for much else. It would still grate on me /knowing/ that I was pretty much limited to a browser barring some cludgy workarounds and literally nearly /any/ distro of linux would allow you to install more, though I will give google props for the design, it looks very good and modern, runs smooth, is generally efficient. There are definite advantages to having a specialization that they can pour their effort into and not really having too many background processes/resource usage is one of them and other parts of the system don't need to be as fully flushed out as a full general OS would be. It's far easier and in some ways better to have something designed to do basically one thing very well than having something that can do many things passably to poorly. Though I guess that depends on the hardware too, but for very low end hardware having something specialized will generally run better at that thing than something generalized.
For example: If you need to insert/remove screws all day it's far better to have a dedicated screwdriver than one of those multi-tools or a swiss army knife. The later will do the job, but much slower and more clumsily.
@@MindCaged Yeah Linux seems much more flexible, but I can see using ChromeOS for some uses.
@@MindCaged Having just turned 71, I'm well-acquainted with slow and clumsy!😆I'm also running Raspberry PI Desktop OS (Linux) on an old HP 210 Netbook. Its sole purpose is to run the BOINC/World Community Grid software, and seems to do a laudable job. With its massive 2GB of RAM and its Atom processor, I wouldn't ask anything else of it. I wish I could get the BOINC screensaver to run as it does on Windows, but it seems a bit much for my little engine that could.🚂
@@ToddTinkersWithTech fydeos>chromeos. fydeos has android and google play store suppport. ChromeOs thats downloaded from the internet does not. Only chromebooks do.
Hey Todd, great video, I have a few, one sff that is running a minecraft server, and have played with Batocera, now converted to LaunchBox. I have done plex as well, but I find streaming an casting much easier now! A fun project was I got a touch screen AIO pc. Which now is in the kitchen, watch shows, play music, or turn on the PI in the back and play some emulation games!
Very cool! I like the touch screen AIO for the kitchen idea; I may have to try that! Appreciate the comment! Subbed to your channel!✌️
Started with Kodi, but having to configure each device was a pain. Switched to Jellyfin on a Pi5 and it's been so great. No issues with 1080p videos with a decent bit rate. Don't really do 4k. Paired with Radarr and Sonarr, it's been so perfect.
Very cool! You are right - configuring a new Kodi machine is time consuming!! Yeah I have been checking out Radarr & Sonar recently, powerful stuff!! I really appreciate the comment! ✌️
would be able to show a setup of how you attach your nas to kodi, and how it works through a router, and switch to connect to devices in your house?
Good idea for a future video! I'll try and make that video soon! I appreciate you watching! ✌️ Hit me up on X/Twitter or Reddit if you need any help in the meantime
I use some small form factor machines, including a few earlier model Intel compute sticks, to run some old snapshot webcams available on my website.
I started my first web cam back in 1998, now I have 5 going 24/7. These are just snapshots updated every 30 seconds or so. No real reason for streaming on these as verry little change occurs in most of the images except over time.
Ah very cool! Yeah always wanted to try one of those sticks! Sounds like a perfect use for those! 👍
Really nice and thorough video! I have a Lenovo Tiny and I was tinkering what to do with it and this video came in clutch!
Also, yeah, music is loud BUT I'm not gonna just stay here and say "music loud" and leave. If you allow me a bit of advice: compress your bag music. That way you get rid of the spikes of volume so we can focus in what really is important: your voice!
Thanks for watching and commenting - yeah I learned my lesson on the poor mix... Apologies! Let me know what you decide to do with the Lenovo! ✌
I use a second hand thin client for a multi-use server. I upgraded it with more ram and a bigger flash drive and it's become the brain of my home automation, media server etc.
Highly recommended!
@@magnusgreel275 Nice! Yeah I'm doing the same with a fanless HP T530; which thin client are you using? Thanks for the comment! ✌️
Great information and presentation.
There really is some good uses left for these old devices.
Appreciate all your comments!
For help with the mix of different devices make sure it sounds good on your phone And it should sound good in more else
@@NoSleepDaChimney great tip, thanks! ✌️
I just stumbled on your channel. For years when I'd upgrade my and my wife's PC to the next latest and greatest version of Windows I'd recycle one of the old desktops as a poor man's server. This last go around (Win 10) decided to use a laptop as home server to minimize power consumption. The server is a T420 Thinkpad, I replaced the HDD with an SSD and stuck a large HDD into the DVD drive bay. The laptop is the destination for scheduled backups, NetTime NTP time server for LAN devices and runs an Abyss web for internal family web stuff.
With the desktop servers I used an KVM to share peripherals. Being a laptop it has its own display so found a spiffy HID sharing program called Input director that let you share kybd and mouse by simply moving the mouse to a predesignated side of the main computer screen.
I was not aware of Home Assistant, thanks for the info. I'm not a fan of putting home stuff stuff into the cloud. I've built a number of home automation devices, they have a built in web interface but it is not easily customizable or integrate multiple devices into a unified whole. This sounds like something to add to my someday TO-DO list.
Nice, laptops make great basic servers! Great tip on Input Director, I'll check that out! Give Home Assistant a try, seems quite powerful, but lots of tinkering required. Good way to kill a rainy weekend...! I appreciate the comment! ✌
Liked and subscribed Good stuff
Thank-you for your time and effort
Much appreciated, thanks!! ✌️
Our household (free tier) plex server runs on a 2006 Mac Mini that I got for free and upgraded to a faster processor ($8) and 2007 firmware ($0), it runs plex on linux great. Just don't ask it to do the transcoding and everything'll be fine.
Cool, glad you are putting that classic Mini to good use! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
With the retro gaming section - I have a gaming laptop that dates back to 2015 (and can't run most modern games).
I am curious if Batocera and/or Retropie can run on Windows. Being a young'un (22 | 2002), my mom introduced me to the SNES and played a lot with my siblings - such as the games: Tetris Attack (Panel de Pon for JP region), Super Punch-Out, and Super Metroid, etc.
@@Myszkia Cool! Old games can still be a blast to play! ✌️ Batocera requires it's own full install, although you could run it on a 2nd drive and choose to boot from it or windows. You can run CoinOps on Windows - do a search for that! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Thanks, I don't use slang very often though retro games are the goat, my dude!
Most of my life is online. I do a lot of surfing, "How To" videos like this and other educational videos. Most of my productivity can be done through Google Docs. I don't run a lot of other programs. I plan on buying a couple of used PCs, one of them a tower to use as a NAS with as many drives as I can get into it for RAD 5 and the other as a LINUX desktop for most of my web surfing needs. My current desktop will be reserved for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
@@dienekes4364 Thanks for the comment! Yeah Google docs etc are great, and run great on 4th Gen Intel processor machines that are dirt cheap these days. ✌️
I use to run Kodi and Plex side by side on my arcade cabinet (when plex was open source) , now I just run emby for the household network, and use Jellyfin on my personal network
Nice! Yeah have a mini bartop arcade cab that I'll run Kodi on for fun sometimes! Appreciate the comment! ✌️
On an old PC I created a MAME Arcade cabinet with a Plex server running in the background
@@xtoadphrogx awesome! I'll be doing videos on the arcade setups I've made soon! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
I would love to see your in-depth vid on how to DIY my own arcade game. I'm only mildly nerdy, so I need a fully dumbed down version (minimum specs? Programs? Settings?), but I can build stuff! And I know I have at least a couple of old computers sitting around.. please tag me here if and when you post it!
@@UglyYinzer Yes! Definitely will be making that video!! It's easier than you think! Thanks, I appreciate the comment!! ✌️
Great video. Very well explained. Best wishes from Panama 🇵🇦
Thank you! My son visited Panama recently and loved it! Saludos! ✌️
I'm using a 2011 Dell Optiplex 790 Ultra Small Form Factor as my media/download/network hub, a 2011 HP Probook 4430s as my test subject for hardware/software experiments, and a 2017 Lenovo Thinkstation p320 as my media server. I've been tempted to pick up some other older model SFF desktop units, but presently have no use for them, though I have considered doing something similar to the "smart home" concept, but with a car. Camera controls, lights, music, (maybe even movies for passengers), etc.
Oooh, DIY smart car system! I like it!! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
what is the model number of the HP thin client behind you?
T530 - great little fanless machine, AMD based. I use it for a NAS running Open MediaVault. ✌️
I have a few dell 3050 mini's around that i i got during the pi shortage. One runs my foundry VTT server, my pi hole (snicker), and the other is kind of a test box for whatever I'm into at the moment. I would love to know more about home assistants and how to make one. I was planning on using a pi cm3 lite I have sitting around for that, but I'm still up in the air on that. Good to see someone that fiddles with things like I do. Subbed
Thanks, yeah Pi's are great if you need something tiny, but if not, cheap SFF's are where it is at. Haven't done a PiHole yet; another thing on my tinker to-do list!
WHY IS THE BACKGROUND MUSIC SO DAMN LOUD?
Background music is way 2 loud.
Thanks, yeah sounded ok in my headphones but didn't test the mix elsewhere. Appreciate the feedback!
Agreed - had to stop watching after a minute or two. Totally distracting.
@@dvdvnr Thanks, yeah triple checking my mixes on videos now.
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Better yet, NO music at all.
The bass on it helped to verify my subwoofer is working.
I’m 62 and leagally blind so slow with keyboard I think I’ll try Lennox since my out of date soon Dell 7050
Will lose windows 10 soon which system do you recommend?
@@pauljenkins3258 I'd recommend Linux Mint. linuxmint.com/
Great content, script, visuals, and presentation!
To me, the background music isn’t as bad as others have made it seem… it did shock me at first, but seemed to be more digestible as the video went on. (I’d still tone it down a bit, but overall not terrible)
I have access to a seemingly endless supply of free e-waste that I do my best to repurpose and get out to others who either can’t afford new devices or would prefer reusing a less capable device rather than buying something new. As such, videos like these really relate to me and I’d love to see more content like this in the future.
All in, I really enjoyed your video and hope to see many more to come!
Thanks for the comment Zakk! I really appreciate the kind words! Great to hear you are repurposing old tech and helping folks out in the process!
The music is way too loud! I can't understand without subtitles.
Great video man! Going to try out Kodi for sure!
Yeah Kodi does what it is designed to do, really well, using minimal resources. Give it a try! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
for non techy types is it ok to install Ubuntu as the OS to run all of these products you mention?
Depends on the package - for Kodi, Plex, Jellyfin and RetroPi, yes - install a Linux distro, such as "Mint" and install on top. For Batocera and OpenMediaVault, it's best to start fresh from a "distro" ISO that you burn to a USB drive using BalenaEtcher - and it will install the OS and software, and might be easiest for non-tech types! Appreciate the comment! ✌️
I can turn one into a mid level gaming PC you won't be able to run higher end games but the older games you can run. Though there's some backend stuff to allow the machine to have enough memory to run things quickly.
I have a free Plex account and it's a good source for old movies and TV shows, I haven't tried the pro subscription yet but so far it's not necessary
@@RavenStorm332 Yeah a lot of those mid-level older games are still a ton of fun, not everything needs a 4070! I appreciate you watching and commenting! ✌️
Love the video. Great content buddy.
Appreciate it! ✌
Anyone know a good vpn to use while using the boctocera version of kodi? Preferably one that runs off a router to make a new network that’s linked or forwarded to the vpn address? Or if there’s a free one? Bc I’m not sure how to install apps on boctocera for vpns thank you
There is a Kodi add-on for adding VPN - service.vpn.manager - you can find it in the Zomboided repository. But hasn't been updated in a while. Not sure if there is another option within Kodi/Batocera...
Looks like there is a way to add openVPN support within Batocera - wiki.batocera.org/vpn_client
Also I use AirVPN.org Reliable, decently fast.
home assistant is great i use an old laptop for it... i don't think it is a tough task for it unless maybe you use it for ( too many?) video cameras
@@unionse7enYeah I need to dig into it. Seems like a good way to kill a few weekends! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
What a nice video. I love the music. However there is a voice in the background. Anybody else notice it?
Touché! 🤣🤣
I use jellyfin and samba on ubuntu server on a 15 year old hp laptop. Never had problems with streaming to tvs from it.
Sweet! Good to know! I guess as long as you aren't doing any heavy transcoding on the fly, you are all good! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
Great ideas! Really enjoyed the video
@@RussellSchaare Thanks, glad you liked it! ✌️
Usually I custom build a Tower computer as my main PC. Got a couple of older smaller so this gives some good ideas on how to repurpose them.
Cool, let me know what you try out with your older machines! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
I bought a N5105 NUC for ~$100.00 and I use it as a USB NAS.
Projected cost to run it for a year: $1.05; it is on the Network shelf so the Network UPS will run it, if there is a blackout, and the network (modem, router, smart-switch, NUC and EasyShare) for over 90 minutes and since it is Windows, it runs and manages PowerChute.
If I add the WD EasyShare into the equation, it is about another $5.00 a year.
I do not need a keyboard, mouse or a monitor because I can use Window's Remote Desktop Connection, from anywhere on the LAN, and just do updates and upkeep as needed using that.
Yeah there is definitely something to be said about the power savings of the more modern chipsets. Very cool! Appreciate the comment!
Even if one can put up with the slow speed of ancient tech, the power utilization makes it unpractical.
There's recycling tech, and a time old tech has to be literally recycled.
I used Plex with a Synology drive for a while, and it would work well with ripped DVDs but stutter on Blu-Rays. From time to time, Plex would self-nuke, and I would have to set it up again. It is extremely picky on how you name and organise your files, to the point where I couldn't get everything working since Plex hides its errors fairly well. I just got fed up with it and stopped using it. When they went commercial, I just gave up on the whole thing. I will try Kodi and see how that goes. I have a 14TB harddrive with about 1000 ripped DVDs and Blu-Rays (99% of which are my own), and I would love to get something working. I have an old Mac Mini I could use for this, as well as an XBox 360 Slim, which maybe can be converted.
@@MorningNapalm Thanks for the comment! Yeah I like Kodi for it's relative simplicity but it does lack some cool features that Plex & Jellyfin offer. Try Kodi, which would be more of a client that would see the media on your Synology, and if that doesn't do it for you, maybe try Jellyfin or Emby. ✌️
The music sounds reminiscent of the old bloodrock 3 song from 1971, Breach of Lease. Good video.
Haha, just a little tune I threw together; honestly never heard Bloodrock before - listening now, and I love it!! Wow - thanks for that! Great prog riffs! Almost sounds like something the Beastie Boys would have sampled...!
I build a custom gaming console from an old small 11 inch laptop. I build it into an old wifi modem we used to get with our internet provider, which was completely build out of plastic, which was so easy to work with. It has 320gb hdd, 4gb of ram, uses a celeron 3xxx cpu (i forgot which one it was) and it uses intel hd 600 graphics, which is powerful enough to run up to psp, which is quite nice. For nintendo 64 and ps2 it is not powerful enough, but it allows me to play all those 8 and 16 bit consoles perfectly. I use Lakka on it, which is very easy to use. It's a nifty device and people think it kinda looks like a small PS5 :p
Sweet! Sounds perfect! I have tried out Lakka as well, but I have found Batocera to be a bit easier for me. I am going to make a video soon on building a mini arcade machine, inexpensively. Really appreciate the comment!!
I have an old mini pc with Home Media Vault on it, which took over from a Pi3 B+ which I started with, and Pi's behind all the TVs using OSMC to play the stored TV and Films.
Nice! How does OSMC compare to Kodi? I appreciate the comment! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech OSMC is based on Kodi, so you get as lot of the same functionality in a nicer (to me) interface. We have a telly in each room, and it runs nicely on most Raspberry Pi's although my 3B+ in the living room won't CEC, even though it used to, but I will sort it out eventually!!
Ah cool, I hadn't heard of this distro before! Seems like a good successor to OpenElec/LibreElec ✌️
Batocera is the best. I also am a huge Plex fan running fifty TB on my Synology NAS. I like finding people that are into the same things.
Haha yep! 50 TB?! Cheers, fellow data hoarder! 🤣 ✌️
Very cool. I am shocked how much I related to this video. From my OG Xbox modding days and xbmc and kodi and fire stick mod to retro games and emulation to my haswell optiplex I just got tired of Billy the kid and windows and switched back to Linux, I upgraded the haswell to 16GB of RAM. I got the haswell from thrift store for $30 and the Ram upgrade was $15. I am literally sitting on 12 OG Xbox because every time I see one at the thrift I have to rescue it. I know it's insane, now you got my wheels turning on retro pie for that haswell. I have archive the Xbox iso site that Nintendo took down. I got a media vault NAS that because of smb protocol Microsoft was giving me a hell of a time about security. Cab I run open media vault on my haswell? Or does it replace hp media vault firmware? Can I run it with Ubuntu? Many questions.
Haswell seems to be the sweet spot between price and performance. You can run OMV on pretty much anything I believe. Yeah I still have my OG mod-chipped Xbox! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Fuck yeah your video was music to my ears. Satoshi smiling down right now!
TruNas scale is the way either bar metal or on proxmox.
Cool, I appreciate the input, good to know! I'll have to give it a try soon & check it out. ✌️
You really picked a winner setup. K400 w/ a setup like this
Yeah, love the K400, they are fantastic!
Personally, I repurposed an old Intel i3 PC a couple of years ago by installing several HDDs and use Truenas Scale (think its linux based) cause it allows me to use a RAID configuration for redundancy. Also, the system can run apps (containers) that you can configure very easily like for example Jellyfin (which I recommend you try) and I am very happy with everything so far. I mainly use it for streaming my movies and tv shows and as backup storage, it runs SMB natively so you can enable it with just a click. Honestly is farely easy to setup.
Nice, older i3's are great for a setup like that! Yeah definitely going to give Jellyfin a go, soon! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
going to setup a AceMagic AMD 5700U mini PC that I bought with a whole archived Flash games library called Flashpoint Archive it's about 1.68TB of flash games it has a 512GB SSD that it came with and I added a 2TB and swapped the 16GB of Ram out for 64GB which is total overkill for flash games
Ah cool, that sounds like fun! Some of those flash games were really cool! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
I'm running jelly fin on a pentium and I don't have any stutter or lag
Sweet - good to know! Yeah some of the new-ish Pentium chips are underrated I think... I appreciate the comment! ✌️
If you're looking for a good storage solution, Synology are great. I have a couple of 4-bay systems. They're Linux underneath so you can never lose access to your data, they come with an easy web interface. You can also run the Synology software in a Docker container called "virtual-dsm". If I built a NAS from scratch I would look into that and OMV.
@@JamieBainbridge Yeah I've heard good things about Synology NAS systems! Nice to have that safety when it comes to your data! 👍 I appreciate the comment! ✌️
I have a great 17 inch laptop acer from 2012. I installed Linux Mint Debian edition. It’s great! I can run 1080p RUclips and use it for libre office. Really nice video watching dvds! I also setup tons of old pcs with Antix and families love the simple games and tools.
Nice, yeah those old 17" laptops can definitely be brought back to life with a Linux distro! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
got my mate a new battery for his beast from Duracell, not mad expensive and was a better battery than the original one - he was happy :)
(just in case that interests you)
Oh I loved the video! I might actually do the NAS thing. Also could you tell me whay the background music you used is? Its very catchy haha
@@OokamiPuzzle Yeah a NAS is a fun and useful project! Funny, most people complain about the music! It's just something I threw together in Logic. I appreciate you watching and commenting! ✌️
@ToddTinkersWithTech Oh you made the music? Very good! Thats some dedication right there I only use my own music in my videos too its challenging! I love how your song sounds you should release it somewhere. Most people complaining probably aren't using headphones like me haha
Great suggestions, thanks!
Glad you like those suggestions and I appreciate the comment! ✌️
Cool video! Thanks for the ideas
Glad you enjoyed it! ✌️
This was great! I had no idea about the Chrome script. I also re-deploy old systems to new purposes. I'm now very annoyed that I binned some that I thought were useless (Chromes) but I could have saved.
@@damightyshabba439 Thanks, I appreciate the comment! Throw Linux on one of the chromes and enjoy! 👍✌️
Hey Todd! New Sub; Dryden, Mich.
My 2 Younger Ladies & I Love playing with "eWaste" we find. Typically we tear them down, Paint the Chassis something cool with our ACE Hardware Spray collection LOL.
They Each have Outdated but Nice Linux Boxes we Play Games with each other. ARMAGEDTRON is a Favorite, And we were Dual Booting Batocera, but I ended up just installing Emulation Station on the DE
Very cool! Yeah aesthetically modding is super fun as well! Some bright Krylon and some RGB strips can do wonders! Appreciate the comment and sub!!👍👍
Another great use is to make a touchscreen or button controlled Jukebox.
Excellent suggestion! ✌️
I have a 20+ year old white box pc from A former employer.the has a 266MHz cpu running Windows XP that I use to record audio streams from OTA or the imternet. Rock solid.
Haha wow yeah that might be pushing into the "retro" territory, but hey, if it works, it works; why not! Appreciate the comment! ✌️
im interested in you covering more kodi functionality.
@@squidskunk Thanks for watching; yeah might have to do that. I'm not too much of a power user; I keep it pretty simple. Lots of people use it with Real Debrid, which I'm not familiar with at all. But I can certainly show how I use it! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech ... id like to see your way of using kodi ... im at the starting point of using batocera and it includes kodi... your knowlege of kodi vastly exceeds mine.
I have really been loving Nova Media Player on my $20 android box kodi is a little sluggish and even vlc same but nova has been grerat for my NAS Usb stick
Cool; yeah those little android TV boxes can be fun! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech awesome vid tho I’ve done the raspberry pi os on my old laptops which gives it some overhead to play with
My vote is for Emby over Plex and Jellyfin.
I had playback issues with both Plex and Jellyfin. Emby has been buttery smooth with anything I have thrown at it. I did buy Lifetime membership after the trial.
Also, Jellyfin cant passthrough DTS-HD, as of right now.
You can also use Kodi's front end with Emby since you have Kodi on everything.
Thanks for the suggestion - I'll give Emby a try! Much appreciated! ✌️
Dang I just bought an Optiplex 3040 and now you got me thinking about chrome boxes 😂
@@LivingWithTechchannel Eh, Optiplexes are more powerful typically than Chromeboxes, I think you made a good choice with the Dell! I appreciate the comment! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Yeah I bought the optiplex to start my homelab project, but I like your idea about making a little media box with the chromebox. I might give that a try once I get optiplex up and running. Good content!
Plex and Jellyfin are more like server-side storage solutions that would serve data to Kodi
So they're not really competition of each other
But they work well together --- Jellyfin is more customizable than Plex but the free Plex works fine unless you want to use their pre-served shows (which I do not use personally)
But I do have Plex servers holding my backups of video. Def worthwhile but you're def correct on needing more power on the Plex side.
Good explanation! Yeah I will be giving Jellyfin a test run soon. Thanks! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Yw -- Jellyfin is a great choice imo b/c of the artwork feature (and some other customizations I prefer). But Plex is a bit more polished. I think you'll be happy w/ Jellyfin tho (or you could technically run both -- they're mainly just services in Windows). It runs great w/ Kodi
And keep up the great work 👍 I know ppl are looking for ideas on what to do w/ e-waste to repurpose.
I'm running Plex on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM. I have no issues with it.
Yeah Pi's are great, just can be a bit pricey! That's cool it doesn't need more than 4gb to run; good to know! Appreciate the comment! ✌️
I5 650 and 4 gigs of ddr3 with a gt710 storm’s internet browsing must have a ssd tho
Cool, I have a similar i5 650 in a little ITX motherboard running Kodi; if it works, it works! ✌️
Very good information just learning how downloaded jellyfin other app so much learning
Yeah some of this stuff seems easier than it is; always takes some digging through forums etc to get things right... Thanks for the comment! ✌
Very cool, thank you
@@steverefsell Thanks, really appreciate you watching & commenting! Let me know if you find a good use for an old PC that I didn't cover!✌️
the 1 major advantage witha a rpi 345 is there is no intel management engine that is why i bought my rpi4b.
Yeah I do like what Pi's and competing SBC's have to offer. I plan on doing a video with an OrangePi in the near future. Thanks for the comment! ✌️
Is this a promo for sound effects? If so, I kept hearing some guy trying to talk over the background sounds.
Lol, touché! Thanks for the feedback. Subscribed to your channel. ✌️
You can add Plex as an Add on to Kodi to have the best of both worlds.
This vid has me thinking about ideas for the old HP T610 plus i have sitting on a shelf...
@@OutlawH2 yep and you can add Plex or Jellyfin servers to OpenMediaVault via docker 👍 Appreciate the comment! ✌️
@@ToddTinkersWithTech Awesome, wasn't aware of that. I'm used to using Plex on Kodi and directly using Plex itself on my fire stick.
Here are a couple more options in terms of standalone OS. OpenElec and LibreElec. Both are essentially Kodi itself as a standalone OS. OpenElec was discontinued a few years ago but you may still be able to download the ISO to use on one of these or an older Raspberry Pi.
PLEX lifetime is the best deal, around black Friday, was $90 for me. Pay once n use for life. Create as many servers as u like I think. I use a super low power unit for only music, and a large tower with 18TB for video.
I can have them start up and shut down on Demand by remote.
Yeah I have friends who absolutely love Plex; that is a killer deal. I appreciate the comment! ✌️