Yes! This was actually my first shot at home servers as well - same rationale and all. Old Pentium laptops seemed to get thrown out every few weeks, easily ran Windows Server 2003 (I hadn't seen the light yet), were reasonably easy to repair, used very little power, and were practically silent in operation.
Someday I'd like to chronicle how my homelab evolved, but at the end of the "laptops" generation and immediately prior to the "VMware on a desktop" generation, I had an old DEC (Intel), an AST, and a Gateway laptop, all running under my parents' couch.
Someday I'd like to chronicle how my homelab evolved, but at the end of the "laptops" generation and immediately prior to the "VMware on a desktop" generation, I had an old DEC (Intel), an AST, and a Gateway laptop, all running under my parents' couch.