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.
Set it up with netBSD.
Connect some large drives to it and use it as a file server.
Host something on it such as matrix or if you have enough ram a game server.
Use it as a retro game console, a quick look at the specs online suggests it should be able to run PS1 games and older fine.
If you’re into home automation, you could use it as a command and control center.
Could be used as a jellyfin server but you’d potentially need to transcode everything in advance.