tlug: Giving an old pc a new purpose in life?

[John Seebach <jseebach@example.com>]

Hi,

I have an old laptop sitting around, and I'm trying to think of something
creative and interesting that I can do with it. At the moment, it's doing
nothing, but it's such a cool design (one of those little IBM butterfly
thinkpads with the folding keyboard) that I feel like it deserves a better
fate than gathering dust (well, actually, mold -- this is japan and I have
no AC) in my closet. I just haven't thought of anything good yet.

The stats:

*Intel 486/75
*24 MB ram
*360 MB HD
*NO Cdrom
*NO Floppy (there's an external drive, but I lost the connecting cable in
an airport somewhere)
*Ports: 1 parallel, 1 IRDA (there's a port replicator which adds 9-pin
RS232, video, and maybe mouse and keyboard, but it's in the USA), Internal
14.4 modem 
*Currently has Win95 installed on it. 

As I don't have a CDROM, floppy, or a network card for it, I can't figure
out how to get anything else on there. Getting linux onto this machine
would definitely be an interesting exercise. The missing floppy would
certainly add an unusual challenge.

So, what would YOU do with such a beast, besides use it as a bookend? I'm
looking for interesting ideas, and open to all suggestions, no matter how
bizarre.

john

jseebach@example.com
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