My parents have an old Compaq Presario SR1950NX that works perfectly fine, but hasn’t been used in at least 15 years. Obviously I can’t connect it to the internet with Windows XP, but before I recycle it I thought I’d see if anyone had any cool ideas for how I could use it. I’m sure I could find Linux distro that would work, but I don’t really need another desktop PC in the house.
Depending on the thrift store, they may not want it unless it has an OS. The ones in my area won’t take computers that won’t boot up into something. (They’re not at all tech literate and will just toss them.)
I snagged a perfectly good laptop out of their dumpster for that reason… just had to toss an OS on it and it ran for years.