Alright, so I finally got around to doing the thing. You know, the project I kept saying I’d do “someday”. It’s been bugging me for ages, seeing that old PC just gathering dust in the corner of the spare room. Thought it was about time I actually put it to some use.
Getting Started
First thing, I dragged that heavy old beige box out. Man, the dust bunnies under there were legendary. Had to take it outside and give it a good blow-out with some compressed air I had lying around. Looked inside, surprisingly clean considering. Remembered I had a spare hard drive, a decent sized one, sitting in a drawer. Popped the case open – always feels like surgery doing that – and slotted the drive in. Found some spare cables, hooked it all up. Simple enough, really.
Then came the moment of truth. Plugged in a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and hit the power button. Whirring noises, lights blinked… success! It actually posted. Didn’t have an OS on it, of course. Had an old USB stick somewhere, so I grabbed that. Decided on a simple Linux setup, nothing fancy. Didn’t want to mess around with licenses or anything complicated. Just needed something basic to run the show.
The Actual Process
Getting the OS onto the USB stick took a bit, my main laptop was being slow. Then plugging it into the old machine, figuring out the key to press to get the boot menu… always a guessing game with old hardware. Anyway, got it booting from the USB. The installation itself… well, it wasn’t fast. That old processor really showed its age. Just clicked through the default options mostly. Didn’t need anything special.
Once the OS was finally installed and running, it was time for the main event: the media server software. Heard folks talk about different ones, Plex, Emby, Jellyfin… names like that. Honestly, I just picked one that looked straightforward from a quick search. Downloaded it, ran the installer. Again, mostly default settings. Pointed it at the big hard drive I’d installed earlier.
Then came the tedious part – copying all the media files over. Photos, music, those old home videos, stuff for the kids. Did it over the network. Took absolutely ages. My network’s not the quickest, and that old PC probably wasn’t helping either. Left it running overnight for the big folders.
- Checked connections
- Installed the OS
- Installed the media software
- Started copying files
Wrapping Up
Woke up the next morning, checked it, and most stuff had copied. There were a few errors, network hiccups probably. Just restarted the failed ones. Then I installed the app for the media thingy on my TV, my phone, the tablet. Logged in… and there it was. All the files, organized kinda nicely with pictures and stuff. Pretty neat.
Tried playing a movie. It worked! Stuttered a tiny bit at the start, maybe the old machine warming up, but then it played fine. Kids immediately found their cartoons, so that was a huge win. No more hunting for USB sticks or plugging laptops into the TV.
So yeah, job done. It’s not perfect, the machine is old and a bit slow sometimes. But it works. It does the job I wanted it to do. Used hardware I already had, cost me nothing but a bit of time and effort. Feels good to have finally tackled that one. Tick that off the list.
