Back story: One of my BTEC-IT teachers used to do Unit 2 - Computer Systems and as such had a backlog of old outdated computers that were used by the students for the teardown process and for taking pictures of components. He no longer does this and needed the cupboard space and since he knew I have an interest in computers and have an understanding of repair offered them to me so long as I could get them home. I ended up taking them home one by one on the bus and getting them home and this is the final haul. Loose: 1x10gb Hard drive 1x40gb Hard drive 1x DVD drive 1x CD drive 1x Floppy drive 4x IDE Cables 5x floppy drive cables 3x Dial up card 1x256 sdram stick. Patriot PC AMD K6-2 Processor 100W PSU Looks like a 64mb stick of SDRAM A PAG-2130 motherboard. Unlabeled Beige Tower A Celeron processor 255W PSU CD RW Drive Looks to be a LEX bn693x motherboard Looks like a 32mb stick of SDRAM A Dial Up card, there is no on-board Ethernet or Dial Up. A “video card†nothing special, literally seems to just give you a VGA output as no on-board video. Big ricer case – No side panels 300W PSU MSI K8N Neo2 – Some dick has ripped one of the chipset coolers off so unsure of functionality. Unsure of the CPU, Can’t seem to get cooler off (64C Silencer Ultra). Looking at the mobo socket type it’s probably a single core Athlon 64 or s/t. Bent cased Horizontal tower Had a random AGP card in a PCI port, was half hanging out 40gb hard drive CD Drive Floppy Drive A motherboard with tonnes of bloated caps, will need recapping a 250w psu Unsure what CPU, probably a duron or s/t 256mb stick of SDram better condition Horizontal tower 256mb stick of sdram Motherboard with no bloated caps. 40gb hard drive Unsure of CPU probably a duron or s/t CD Drive Floppy drive So now I have a nice stack of computers to find something to do with. My bets are on the better condition horizontal tower and the Patriot system being the ones that are the eventual survivors as they have the nicest cases and chances are I'll get 2/5.
I think you mean now you have a big pile of shite to find something to do with ;-) I can't believe you took the time to list all that! lol Some of it might be handy for old dev gear, sure... but there's nothing amazing. And don't bother repairing the blown motherboard - it's not worth it.
Hmm sounds like you landed a type 1 or maybe type 2 haul. I have fond memories of the K6-2 though - I saved hard to build my first PC and ended up getting a laptop with a cracked screen to use around 2001. You could possibly sell the SDRAM for a small fortune (people pay out the ass for upgrading old stuff) but other than that I'd probably junk it.
I'll probably bin the blown motherboard then, the rest of the stuff gives me something to do though, either that or ill strip it down into a big box and sell it as untested parts.
Considering you were given them, I would say the decent thing to do would be to at least try to boot them before resorting to listing as "untested". That's the sign of a seller who's either lazy or dishonest.
I typically take old machines, strip the usable parts out of them and toss the rest. OEM cases are garbage and so are their PSUs not to mention the lack of an AGP slot on most boards. Though most OEM machines the local businesses and colleges have been tossing out either have dead mobos or are clearly sabotaged. Still can't have enough spare RAM, CPUs, cables/ribbons, DVD-ROMs and such. Pretty sure I scored a 1.4ghz P3 the other day.
Yeah I'll exhaust them to my fullest extent and then sell them to somebody who has more experience than me. I always tell the buyers that I've done what I can with them although typically they have a much better chance at getting them going.
Cyantist, are you a member of vogons ? cause they L-O-V-E old computers the only thing they are iffy about is the subject "abandonware" so please leave that subject out of any discussions there
I'm not but I'll give it a google search. I know old OEM computers typically aren't the best but they have a charm to them. I've never really dabbled in abandonware and it doesn't really bother me to be honest. I've used it but i'm not passionate enough to debate about it.
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/ One of the (acronyms ?) for vogons is "Very Old Games On New Systems", but it is much more than just that. But as I said, it is okay to mention old games (as long you have a real or GOG version you bought). But mentioning a GOG release of the game, can in my mind still be iffy in vogons auspice .
Pretty nice gift, these computers still run everything. On the other hand if one can't drive a computer, too bad... it means they will have to make up with their new shiny Windows 7 laptop :lol: Still, I would never toss working old hardware, I think people doing that are ignorant about this and don't know any better. It is does not take a lot of space to put old motherboards in storage, and it's not pointless to try repair them. Also would you rather mess with old hardware or new shiny hardware which costs a lot? If your house is too small, boo hoo, your pity. It means you can't even put a decent television in it, even less computers. Also it's trivial to run even a P4 off an old ATX power supply and it works well, very well. Just get the +12V and ground and put on an AUX connector and you're done. The ATX to AT conversion is pretty easy as well. Just put the right voltages and "power good" where they should be on the connector, and connect the green wire to a ground wire on the power supply. I did that for an old 386 without multimeter, even. Also, if I trashed a Pentium class computer system, and given "that computer" more powerful than "1990s console" guess what'd finish in the bin first? The latter. :dance:
