What to do with that silly old computer

Today I junked out my old computer which was a Pentium MMX (for newbie’s it’s a Pentium machine older than the Pentium 1).I thought of putting Linux on it for practicing Linux but unfortunately some time before I had thrown out the processor while doing some examining. But I did manage to recover all the screws from it (yeah it was a Dell machine) and nothing more. Many of us have such PC’s lying around in our houses sitting and doing nothing. If you have more than one working computer in your house then you could probably install Linux on such an old PC and then put in 2 NIC’s (Network Interface Card) and use it as a firewall or router.Dont underestimate the protection that a firewall or router gives to your home network. and best of all most of the time you don’t even have to have a hard drive. The beauty of Linux is that you can run it right from the floppy and have it up and running as a router. Its at least better that throwing your PC away in the trash. Also what you could do is that use the old PC and get it exchanged, a lot of us must be aware of those exchange programs that run frequently wherein you bring in your own PC and then after paying some adjustment you get the new PC. Although be aware that these are generally not value for money and you could be pretty easily fooled into thinking that you are getting the best deal.