Was given this little wintel box by a friend fairly recently, but I haven't yet even powered it on. I don't have a power cable for it unfortunately but when I do, what do you think I should do with it? What would you do with it?
I think it could potentially be just a basic lightweight desktop for web browsing and such, maybe a little smart tv box or something like that to replace the Chromecast I'm ashamed to admit I use, maybe run some basic self hosted stuff like pihole or home assistant? Could probably be a little emulation machine for retro games but I doubt it would be capable of much more than that. But I'm not sure there's too many ideas! I need suggestions people
Sell it. Put your money earned to buy a general computer to tinker with instead.
If you have the skills you've already been tearing it down, soldering some pins, and compiling your modified uboot/EFI firmware and flashing it. The hack above has only like twenty people in the whole world who know how to do.
If it was a TV box and still functioning, there are people out there genuinely have a valid use case for it, to watch TV of course. Don't ruin it.