Reviving the Purba: Turning an Old Laptop into a Home Server
How I brought an ancient machine back to life and made it useful as my personal home server.
Reviving the Purba: Turning an Old Laptop into a Home Server
Every developer has that one forgotten laptop.
Dusty. Slow. Left to rot in a corner.
Mine was a Celeron powered relic with 2GB RAM onboard, basically a fossil.
Most people would throw it away.
I decided to revive it.
Welcome to the story of si purba: my resurrected home server.
Why Even Bother?
Because I like to squeeze value out of “worthless” things.
And also because a home server gives me:
- A private playground to deploy APIs
- A sandbox for automation experiments
- A space to break things without fear
- An excuse to tinker with Linux again
Buying new hardware is easy.
Reanimating old hardware is art.
The Resurrection
- Installed a lightweight Linux distro (Debian minimal).
- Gave it a new SSD transplant (RIP the ancient HDD).
- Set up SSH access, firewall, and static IP.
- Connected it to Cloudflare Tunnel so I can expose services without exposing my real IP.
Suddenly, the slow junker became a breathing server.
What It Runs Now
- APIs for experiments (Node.js, Express, anything I want)
- n8n automation flows (coming soon)
- Personal blog backend playground
- Background daemons that survive reboots
Basically, si purba now pulls its weight again.
Lessons Learned
- Old machines can still teach you new tricks
- Constraints force you to be creative
- Self-hosting makes you feel closer to the machine
⚡ Brutalist Note
Most people see trash.
I see infrastructure.
Si purba is slow, noisy, and fragile. But it’s mine.
And in a world obsessed with shiny new tech, reviving old hardware feels like rebellion.