Disposable Tech

[Slamman]

I had some funny convo after divulging that I located my Toshiba A25 in the local trash bin here, and other computers, like a Compaq with Xp COA, as well, just found another binned Compaq Presario with XP Home COA, I had to boot it with WinME though, and this thread is for any cool used PC finds you might have gotten. If only for backup, this for example, is a highly capable machine, with AMD Athlon 2000+ CPU and DV ports front and back.

 

Model for my find is Presario S3000Z, with AM37 motherboard, one I think is in high demand for similar eMachines where there is a unusual failure rate. I had one donated to me where the board was fried so it was replaced with my Abit AMD, VA-10.

That's a better board, but this one has some grow room and HP provides Vista and Windows 7 drivers online, the drive for it was removed, as was memory, but I fired it up with my own stash of parts.

 

Though I pawned my Toshiba A25, I renewed the extention so I still own that laptop.

 

My prior save eMachine AMD was the 2400+, a bit better performance end. You may know that AMD is keeping the Athlon name alive on new processors as well.

[Campo.]

Seriously, no one cares. GTFO.

[leik oh em jeez!]

Seriously, no one cares. GTFO.

Shut the f*ck up with your pointless off-topic spam.

 

Now, back on topic.

I've gotten two black CD-ROM Drives, a 20Gb Hard drive, two 120mm fans, two PCI IDE Controller cards, two audio cards, six or seven PCI/AGP Graphics Cards, a USB Floppy Drive, a micro-ATX case, four Slot 1 Pentium III CPUs, five or six NICs, and an old Sony Vaio Laptop. All for free.

 

There's probably a few other things I'm not thinking of right now, but I believe I listed everything of remote importance.

[poopskin]

Although i don't have any garbage machines, i'm a big fan of Retrocomputing, my collection currently being limited to two IBM PS/2s, both 80386-based machines with 4MB, although my trainer's husband (who worked at IBM for 20 years) said he'd get me his old windows 98 IBM aptiva if he could find it.

[Slamman]

Listing "old" Nearly free computers on Craig's List, I got a guy looking for machine bases only to setup Linux on and donate to people who need them, it's certainly better then discarding, and these boards, the AM37 are the ones in question, I recall now, there was issue with many Non POSTING, so there's value in that alone!

 

I am setting this up, perhaps, with a 7200rpm 20GB drive, normally it's 40GB. The Firewire card has several ports, and it's a standard feature as this 03 review points out. One of the cheapest PCs at the time, still a nice step up from my 2000 era Emachine etower 700!

 

There's no Celeron, with the VIA driven KM200 chipset mobo, it is certainly AMD Athlon and Duron chips for this version;

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1042-996012.html?tag=nl

 

Oh, and Campo, just because YOU have money or mom's credit card, doesn't mean I do

Edited November 2, 2009 by Slamman

[Campo.]

Oh, and Campo, just because YOU have money or mom's credit card, doesn't mean I do

I don't have money nor my mum's credit card and my PC is doing just fine. If you have no money, get a f*cking job.

[Cursed]

I can't say I've ever picked a computer out of somebody elses rubbish. I got a 3.6GB Hard drive, a 20GB hard drive and 128MB of SDRAM from some computers at school ready for the bin. I was recently given two Dell Inspiron 7500s with Pentium IIIs that my friend wanted to get rid of. The best thing I got for free was probably a computer with an Athlon 64 X2 4800+, an MSI AM2 motherboard and 2GB of RAM. It needed a hard drive, so I bought a new case for it, added an 8600GT and stuck Vista on. It wasn't a bad PC at the time, sold the parts on to get the funding for my current PC.

[Democrab]

Oh, and Campo, just because YOU have money or mom's credit card, doesn't mean I do

I don't have money nor my mum's credit card and my PC is doing just fine. If you have no money, get a f*cking job.

Telling Slamman to get a job is like telling someone in the GTA IV forum to not suck, it just doesn't happen.

 

See, the problem is that most computers found in the trash these days are absolute sh*t, I used to have a old Linux running Pentium MMX 200Mhz as a hardware firewall, but I brought a Atom 330 and with the right PCI card I could have it as a Hardware Firewall AND Fileserver (Motherboard has RAID, 2x RAID1 2Tb HDDs when they're cheaper is my plan) in the one low power (iirc, under 40w max load) computer.

 

I'd save so much money on power it'd pay for itself in a few years.

[Slamman]

"get a job", "Get a life", yeah, that's all well and good, but can you guys follow the rules as I was told I must??? Respond to the topic in question without coming off as a jerk weed.

 

I went back to the same dumpster and yet another computer was thrown out, two identical Gateway Workstations with early Pentium 4, 4 slots RAMBUS, and actual 256MB Rambus sticks in there! I salvaged it but it refuses to post, did beep at me when I moved the memory config around, and you may ask why looking in the trash, I lost my bike recently, due to thieves around these parts, and I'm just desperate to find that thing somewhere!

 

Besides, once you find some cool stuff people throw out, you tend to keep looking, that's how it is, y'all

 

Oh, and Joe, that's not always the case, as I point out with this, XP, Pentium 4, Rambus?? All worthy of saving or selling, rather then discarding

Edited November 3, 2009 by Slamman

[Campo.]

"get a job", "Get a life", yeah, that's all well and good, but can you guys follow the rules as I was told I must??? Respond to the topic in question without coming off as a jerk weed.

So, when are you applying for some jobs?

[Slamman]

Back to topic, Campo, if I get warned for it, so shall you. I have a job, I assemble professional lawncare product at the moment, if you must know. I apply online, as I said earlier.

 

The Rambus memory is heat spreader shielded like todays memory, and from my reading on the tech, it is very fast compared to SDRAM, the problem is the earlier Pentium 4 is hampered in performance and you're stuck with Pentium 3 on the high end, but it is Tualatin core I am using. Not sure the GX200 Dell works with them, that's my other project, it needed the Rambus

[Campo.]

Right, you have a job - So why the sh*tty PC's and always speaking of old tech?

[Mainland Marauder]

GTFO.

Likewise. If you don't care, don't post. In fact, you won't be posting anything for the next 24 hours.

 

Anyone else who wants to join the Slamman bash train in here can get the same. On-topic or bust.

[Tornado Rex]

Right, you have a job - So why the sh*tty PC's and always speaking of old tech?

You do realize some people actually like old tech right? Latest and greatest isn't always the most fun.

[cold fusion 33]

I found an old Dell D500 (I think was it's name) in a trash can a couple of years ago. It had a 500Mhz P3 CPU, 128MB RAM, a 12GB HDD and an 8MB graphics card. It was great for just web browsing and stuff, I got XP on it as well after buying 128MB more RAM, but it got moved on in the end, I wish I'd never sold it now!

[leik oh em jeez!]

Right, you have a job - So why the sh*tty PC's and always speaking of old tech?

You do realize some people actually like old tech right? Latest and greatest isn't always the most fun.

Slot 1 Pentium III > All

[BT&T Hell Labs]

Right, you have a job - So why the sh*tty PC's and always speaking of old tech?

You do realize some people actually like old tech right? Latest and greatest isn't always the most fun.

Slot 1 Pentium III > All

Word.

 

 

1999 iMac DV. was 400mhz with 64mb and 10gb, now it's 400/512/80/os 9.2 and used as my stereo, when I get an old iPod i'll use it for that too. Waiting on a faster (600 or higher, G4 upgrade or one of those 900 G3 upgrades) motherboard to show up on ebay and some sticks of ram, and i'll take it to 1gb. This is probably the best computer i've ever used, runs great, does everything apart from modern games, Has NEVER CRASHED, and theres a new web browser out so I don't miss any internets.

 

If you can name the games on top then kudos.

 

 

On the left is the Taiwan version of the megadrive/genesis II. Same as the japan one, but it uses PAL so it works in the UK. I imported it brand new (still sealed, never opened!) last month. Feels good man.

 

On the right is the super nintendo. was £10. Feels great man.

 

 

DREAMCAST!

 

Not shown: two playstations, SCPH-7502 that is chipped, SCPH-9002 my first console. 9002 has a new power supply board coming in the post so I can finally live the dream of link cable games (Whoo!). Also a PS2 slim and my gaming PC.

[Democrab]

I've got a Athlon XP 1.9Ghz, no DDR RAM for it though.

 

I also have a Pentium MMX 200, two nVidia TNT2 16Mb and a matching PSU for it.

 

I also ordered the original, SCPH-1002 model PSX recently and I'm awaiting it and a few games in the mail, no idea if it's chipped or not.

[BT&T Hell Labs]

I've got a Athlon XP 1.9Ghz, no DDR RAM for it though.

 

I also have a Pentium MMX 200, two nVidia TNT2 16Mb and a matching PSU for it.

 

I also ordered the original, SCPH-1002 model PSX recently and I'm awaiting it and a few games in the mail, no idea if it's chipped or not.

Nice. Some tips:

 

If the PSX doesn't read you should put it upside down, this is only a temporary fix though and you should really loo for another laser.

 

If it doesn't turn on but makes a horrible high pitched whining noise when the button is pressed, the PSU is junk. That's okay though, as you can get them easily enough online, both new and reproduction. it looks like its a common fault nowadays, but I never heard anything about it when they were new. Enjoy the extra goodies on the back.

[Star-Lord]

 

Right, you have a job - So why the sh*tty PC's and always speaking of old tech?

You do realize some people actually like old tech right? Latest and greatest isn't always the most fun.

Slot 1 Pentium III > All

Word.

 

 

1999 iMac DV. was 400mhz with 64mb and 10gb, now it's 400/512/80/os 9.2 and used as my stereo, when I get an old iPod i'll use it for that too. Waiting on a faster (600 or higher, G4 upgrade or one of those 900 G3 upgrades) motherboard to show up on ebay and some sticks of ram, and i'll take it to 1gb. This is probably the best computer i've ever used, runs great, does everything apart from modern games, Has NEVER CRASHED, and theres a new web browser out so I don't miss any internets.

 

If you can name the games on top then kudos.

 

 

On the left is the Taiwan version of the megadrive/genesis II. Same as the japan one, but it uses PAL so it works in the UK. I imported it brand new (still sealed, never opened!) last month. Feels good man.

 

On the right is the super nintendo. was £10. Feels great man.

 

 

DREAMCAST!

 

Not shown: two playstations, SCPH-7502 that is chipped, SCPH-9002 my first console. 9002 has a new power supply board coming in the post so I can finally live the dream of link cable games (Whoo!). Also a PS2 slim and my gaming PC.

You just made my respect list bro. I have two of those Dreamcasts in mint condition one of them is imported and it came with the original box- Grade A condition. I've only used them a couple times, I'm afraid of getting them scratch or ruining them by spilling beer on them lol

 

OT: I really don't have any spare old computers left around because I usually give them away. But when I did have them, I would used them as servers. You will be surprise how affordable it can be using old towers as servers.

 

@Campo- Ha! Ha!

[GTA3Freak-2001]

I find getting and obtaining older tech mostly computer related a joy, getting them working is quite fun. I've got about three PC's custom oldies no name brands lying around in not quite working order. One of them has those locks on the actual case so can't get into but I reckon it worked last time I ventured into my shed. Can't remember specs but something round the Pentium 3 era, I honestly can't remember the other system in the shed. I do know the third machine well as it was my PC before my current machine. It's a custom job made up of a few old HP parts like CD Drive, HDD etc. but its a Socket A ECS motherboard with a once quite capable Athlon XP 2000+, 1gb of ram and a 6600GT. I am not game yet to fire it up yet as the tower was housed near my pet rats cage and with the cage being wire mesh the wood shaving bedding often ended up on the floor. Well it also ended up inside the case I guess it entered via the empty PCI slot cover. Anyway there was also some inside the PSU so I am opening it up to make sure. I would prefer no fires or explosions although I doubt that would happen. See everyone has a bit of Slamman in them!

[Slamman]

I hear ya, man. I got a box filled with PC odds and ends, and sadly, I can't match them to something, and I wound up with a few dead PSUs along the way. Updating, the Rambus maybe an issue that I found, the motherboard I bought off eBay is a GX200 Dell, Optiplex, uses Tualatin 370 chips but even though I know the CPU is good, the thing won't fire up, the pwr switch does nothing, the Reset key flashes Ethernet and onboard LEDs from the motherboard then shuts off, is that the mark of bad memory or main board??

 

I really don't know what is up, I was buying a working Dell motherboard here, I thought, if I got burned on that, I'm PO'd

 

Looking up the needed drivers for FIC's AM35/37 mobo is not as easy as it should be, the audio I used with XP's database is VIA WDM, Windows Device/driver Management or something. BTW, FIC is First International Components, computer, or corportation, a name as ego heavy as IBM! haha

 

Still, there were some issues, I see PSU even at 250watt is causing upgrade path problems evidenced here, also noting, even with USB 2.0 support, the AGP is stuck at 1.5volt 4 time speed, that was an upgrade I made with Abit's VA series A socket boards. I did get my copy of XP installed using the case's COA, as I mentioned, a method that gets you back in business!

 

Nvidia power issue on this site link;

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-s...00-crashes.html

 

 

The HDD I bought for $12, it's a Maxtor 20GB and SMART tech in the BIOS reports it's failing and in dire shape, I had WinME up on it to start with, and the BIOS stops with the warning each bootup attempt and required F2 to pass on to the OS, however, it is still working, for 30 days anyway <G>

 

The Rambus is real hard to get a hold of, and I am praying it's still usable, and there's something else wrong in the testing phase.

 

Rambus was tied to early Intel P4 boards, the Dell I have is a late Pentium 3, obviously, using a Celeron Tualatin I have on that.

It also has expandible VRAM, or Graphics Ram card upgrade, didn't match the one on my N180 Compaq laptop, which also upgrades with a DIMM slot.

 

I have the same 2000+ AMD chip ^ (1.7Ghz clock) in this S3000Z desktop, it's not documented heavily, but the FIC board is "Salsa" according to HP's spec page, they just have diddly squat for their driver archives!! Shame.

Edited November 7, 2009 by Slamman

[Slamman]

Bumping this because I just found a working Mac G3 tossed out!!! It is in working shape, using my old Apple keyboard and Dell USB keypad and mouse, it works, more details to follow....

[asimov]

I caught my dad trying to throw out the PC we used around 2001-2003. Apparently it was never cleaned. There was so much dust and grime caked on the heatsink, mobo and fan they had all fused together. The power supply was so thick with dust I could barely see the cables. No wonder it kept shutting itself off. I managed to salvage a few optical drives. It was kind of annoying since the PC itself was pretty decent back in the day and carelessness on my part let it die early.

[Slamman]

I really would like to hear from anyone experienced in this Apple, the G3.

I have only used the 80s machines in depth, and the keyboard carries over, it uses Office Suite 2001:Mac, has Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well, Entourage is installed, an Apple exclusive?

 

I added software I already have for PC, where it shares Apple support, like the Dazzle DPM, which actually froze the OS/machine when requesting a reboot, that was odd.

It has early Iomega and DVD support, yet a real old CD ROM only, there is also modem drivers stored on it and no modem card, it has Ethernet. I'd like to determine the ATI graphics specs, but not sure how that's done. The memory readout is a bit more confusing, but allows you to allocate the resources used better then Windows... it seems.

 

The thing about Windows and Apple's earlier Window incarnation is that Windows is actually more intuitive I find, and certainly the scrolling feature of the mouse wheel, that's absent on the Apple. Just trial and error I got the "open Apple" key in combo with Delete, for example, to erase the earlier personal files, then emply the trash where that resides I believe. The images under Photoshop can be about 155MB, and take up quite a bit of space, where is JPEG on the Apples? I don't see too much shared between them, but they have to co-exist in the Online "world" of course. My Zip drive uses a Parellel printer port, there is none on the Apple. Can this oldie run OS x, and is OS x one of the best Operating Systems Apple has? It's XP, or Win7?

[BT&T Hell Labs]

 

I really would like to hear from anyone experienced in this Apple, the G3.

 

Yo. Which one? lots of macs with G3 processors.

 

 

I have only used the 80s machines in depth, and the keyboard carries over, it uses Office Suite 2001:Mac, has Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well, Entourage is installed, an Apple exclusive?

 

I'm assuming OS 9, yeah? don't worry. it's pretty much the 80's macs turned put to 11.

 

 

 

I added software I already have for PC, where it shares Apple support, like the Dazzle DPM, which actually froze the OS/machine when requesting a reboot, that was odd.

 

Never heard of that software, but yeah, sometimes the later versions of the old OS crash on reboot. It's normal.

 

 

 

It has early Iomega and DVD support, yet a real old CD ROM only, there is also modem drivers stored on it and no modem card, it has Ethernet. I'd like to determine the ATI graphics specs, but not sure how that's done. The memory readout is a bit more confusing, but allows you to allocate the resources used better then Windows... it seems.

 

Beige G3? What os? DVD support has to be 8.6 or higher. I'd tell you what graphics chip it's got, but I dunno which computer it is.

 

 

The thing about Windows and Apple's earlier Window incarnation is that Windows is actually more intuitive I find, and certainly the scrolling feature of the mouse wheel, that's absent on the Apple.

 

It sounds like the time this mac was made, there was no scroll wheel on PCs either.

 

 

Just trial and error I got the "open Apple" key in combo with Delete, for example, to erase the earlier personal files, then emply the trash where that resides I believe.

 

Open apple is called command, the apple on the key is a ][ holdover. And yeah, recycle bin = trash.

 

 

The images under Photoshop can be about 155MB, and take up quite a bit of space, where is JPEG on the Apples?

 

What do you mean? JPEG is a file type. Do you mean file name extensions (it only rarely uses them)?

 

 

I don't see too much shared between them, but they have to co-exist in the Online "world" of course. My Zip drive uses a Parellel printer port, there is none on the Apple. Can this oldie run OS x, and is OS x one of the best Operating Systems Apple has? It's XP, or Win7?

 

You don't want to run OSX on a G3 anything without a CPU addon. it's very slow, but you can still do some things. It's best to stick to 9.2 and below, it's much faster.

 

Don't worry, the old mac os is very useful! There is the modern web browser under development, Classilla.org , There is flash support good enough to go on youtube, up to photoshop 7 can be used, there's msn messenger, IRC, etc. the only thing it really misses is BitTorrent, the client is uber old and doesn't work any more.

 

 

EDIT: lol my post is broken, too many tags?

Edited November 9, 2009 by BT&T Hell Labs

[Slamman]

This one has a lot of info, on Wiki too, nice! I found two sites addressing the upgrade issue and faults with the G3 and G4, it's the blue/white, obviously it has USB and Firewire ports mentioned, but they added an Adaptec SCSI and the one CDROM is using the slower ATA connection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macinto...Blue_%26_White)

 

One link says they sell for $80 presently, but note the original price tag, and the model range, half a year! I can use OS 10 Leopard with some tweeks it says, using a G4 CPU, it's 400Mhz G3 at present. Not sure board revision as of this moment, I suspect it's not 2.0 however.

 

I'm speaking of the mobo revision, however, one upgrade selling/servicing site says a card can allow 2.0 USB and Firewire 800 versus 1.1 USB and Firewire 400 on the G3 machines, however OS revision is critical as it is for DVD RW drives, and booting from an optical drive requires Apple Rom on the firmware, which one DVD drive I bought is, an Apple intended drive, I use it in an IDE based home Philips DVD player setting, since that drive actually choked and died.

Edited November 9, 2009 by Slamman

[BT&T Hell Labs]

Remember if you do put in a G4 cpu (and at least 512mb ram!), you don't want more than 10.4 tiger. It's the best match of compatibility, speed, and features. Leopard is not kind to PPC.

 

 

A cool feature of tiger that you loose with lepoard, is that you can click on a non- os x Application and it will run Mac os 9 as a program. It's like unity mode in VMWare, but a lot faster!

 

 

Don't put hard disks in bigger than 120gb each. bad happens.

 

I just at sonnet's website, they seem to be all out of CPU cards for Blue and Whites. To be honest i'd suggest looking for one on ebay, but if one doesn't turn up then just stick with OS 9. 400Mhz is okay for it. I got to use a dual 1.8 G4 system with OS 9 once. it was terrifyingly fast and it was only using one of the cpus.

Edited November 9, 2009 by BT&T Hell Labs

[Slamman]

The Dazzle DPM, or Digital Photo Maker is a USB capture device, I got ribbed on it before, but I still use it, on lower end machines as it requires only 5400RPM HDD and it works with slower drives in fact, but the big plus is only 233Mhz CPU clock is required for actual video, and sure, it's small form VGA/Mpeg 1, but I cap my YT vids to Mpeg 1 anyway so I can get them small as need be, and plenty of them as well. It is near good VHS tape quality, SP I'm sure.

 

The issue I face, on this machine, I have 400Mhz CPU, with 1MB L2 cache, and 256MB downsized Ram from 512MB in their before, which I am moving to a PC desktop needing PC133 to run, the G3 works with PC100, not being fussy like some PC/laptops.

 

Anyway, I am stuck with a self clearing desktop that freezes with "taskbar" and mouse pointer only, as it's prompting to install an app/driver in this case, and reboot itself, however a manual re-boot over-ride still produces no effect after the fact. I had this problem with some other apps on a disc, like upgraded Internet Explorer, which appears to run but acted strange, like it was off the CD ROM and wouldn't allow a disc eject at one point. The DPM app shows the EULA and agree to install screen graphics, but when rebooting, or installing, every thing halts

 

The same error is found when I try and put the Windows Media Player 7 for Macs on to this system. As well, the FLASH and Shockwave add-ons for the IE browser are producing errors, saying the Add on folder is missing, but I have one! It's puzzled me over a number of hours now and I am giving up on getting some progress until I am enlightened. Can I get the Mac version download via the Net on a PC laptop, like this, per se??

I would love getting WMP on the Mac as well as Video LAN that should also work for flash and DVD files

[Campo.]

Why would you want WMP on a Mac? Just use VLC, plays more codecs and is better anyway.