hand-me down computing
I am an avid MUDder (Realms of Despair, for anyone interested) and have been for years. Back around 2003, though, this was a problem as we had 3 adults living in the house who all liked to play, but only 2 computers that worked...

Until my ex-wife gave me her old laptop.

This laptop's history was quite long, so give you the slim version. It was a Unisys 386sx, and rather clunky. The owner before my ex-wife was quite the tech geek. As the laptop ran rather hot, he decided to take an old CPU fan from a desktop, cut a hole in the laptop's case, and mount it there - result being that the laptop ran cooler, but you couldn't close it. When she decided to leave the UK and return to the States, he gave her the laptop so they could keep in touch. This of course required hacking in a new power supply to accommodate the difference in the plug, particularly because the battery would no longer hold a charge.

The ex used it for several months, but being the klutz that she was, knocked it around to the point where the screen no longer worked, and the hard drive died from physical damage. At that point, it passed into my hands.

Long story short, I took everything apart, and laid it out on the table. The battery, hard drive, CD-ROM drive, and PCMCIA slot all connected to the motherboard via rows of metal pins, rather than wires. So I pieced everything back together sans hard drive, plugged in an old 15" CRT monitor, got a PCMCIA ethernet card, and ran Knoppix in text-only mode. I was able to MUD again, at least until the table got bumped severing the connection between the battery and motherboard (which, having 2 small children running around, happened quite often).
(WillF http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverfischdotnet/, Fri 21 Aug 2009, 9:05, Reply)