The things people throw away.....

megamaced

megamaced

Geek Geek Geek!
.... I looked outside my window this morning, at the big skip that is usually at the roadside, and I noticed someone had thrown out an old PC, so I decided to retreive it to find out whats wrong.
It turned out to be an old Compaq Presario 2240. The lid was loose so I knew someone had been inside it. I took it home and opened it up, and to my suprise, everything was there, in some shape or form! It was very dirty and dusty, so I gave it a quick clean up and plugged it in. I turned the power on and literally jumped to the other side of the room in case it blew up - i'm paranoid like that! To my suprise, It turned on and showed the Compaq logo on the screen. It didn't go any further then that though.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I eventually got it working by installing a new CMOS battery and IDE cable (both of which I had lying around spare).

Obviously, the computer must have broken down one day (because of the IDE cable) and then scrapped. It looks like the owner had a go at trying to fix it but failed to get it to work.

All of his personal stuff was still on the hard drive ;) It had Windows 95 preinstalled (yuk!) and was very badly configured! I've now installed Windows NT 4 and it works great..... well, as best it can do. These are the specs:

Socket 7 AMD K6 200MHz
16MB RAM (onboard)
Seagate 2GB 4,200 UDMA33 Hard Drive
Sanyo CD-ROM
Intel Modem ISA card
S3 Trio64 V2 2MB onboard graphics
ESS ES1888 Onboard Sound

As you can see, the amount of RAM is very bad (although can be upgraded via one bank), and the PC is very slow as a result. There is no Level 2 cache and no DMA modes! I can't grumble though, i've just got myself a new PC!
 
Lol, a new PC?? haha, congratulations! :D

Btw, as part of his "personal stuff" that was still on there, did u find any porn? And if so, was it any good? ;) ... lol
 
That's how I got most of my PCs too, including my firewall (AMD K6-2 ~300MHz, IPCop 1.4.10), my web server & VPN proxy (AMD K6-2 ~500MHz, CentOS 4.2) and my file & game server (Dual AMD Athlon ~2000MHz, CentOS 4.2). It really is amazing what people will throw out. To most people, Windows = PCs, so when Windows inevitably dies the PC is dead to them.
 
Nic said:
Dammit nobody throws pcs in skips round here.
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Well, if you lived within a few hundred miles of me I'd gladly mail you a 2GHz Celeron with motherboard I have collecting dust here. But since you're in the UK, it'd be cheaper for you to buy a rig like that than for me to ship it to you. :)
 
That's awesome. I love when people dont know how to get a computer working, and just give up. There is a guy at work that is going to bring me two of his old PC's. Heck, I've told people that I can just fix it for 'em and they say they dont even want to try. HAH! More for me! Good job Megamaced!
 
All ive ever found was a IBM 66 MHz, but i was like 8 or something and just took it to bits and played with them :P
 
Nic said:
Dammit nobody throws pcs in skips round here.
Click to expand...

Move to London :D

I've since upgraded the RAM with a spare NEC 128MB PC100 SDRAM stick I had lying around. Unfortunately, I've since discovered the PC can only address a maximum of 48MB at 66MHz (including the 16MB of 'onboard' RAM). Still, it's given the PC such a performance boost from 16MB to 48MB. I've now installed Windows 98SE and it works a treat!! :cool:
 
Might as well put a small linux distro on it and have it as a server. I found a Athlon 900MHz CPU at Nic's. So i took out my duron, replaced it with the athlon and it worked! I gave my duron to her, so she could do the CPU keyring mod. Also found a stick of RAM (i didnt get it) and a switch that I had been needed.

Great when you find hardware people don't need and make use of them.
 
Addis said:
Might as well put a small linux distro on it and have it as a server.
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I guess it could be a decent firewall or perhaps a light web or mail server. But nothing for too heavy usage on 48mb RAM. :)
 
What annoys me is that everytime I go to the recycling centre I can see cases and half built rigs lying in a skip about to be shipped out to IT heaven.

So I plucked up the courage and asked if I can have one ugly looking midi case which seem to be near enough a complete system.

The guy looked like he was going to trash me as well and managed a grumpy no. Such a shame.

I am positive, there are loads of people out there who would love to have a simple small rig just to go on the net or get e-mails. Maybe get their young toddlers a learning game of some sort and maybe write a letter here and there..... Instead the waste is lying in a landfeild somewhere contaminating the soil..... :(
 
megamaced said:
Now wheres that old 486DX I had lying around....
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486DX? That could be a firewall man! Just kidding, I'm getting to the point where I'm about to literally throw away a 2GHz Celeron because I have too many systems already. Then again, if you don't already have a good firewall, take a look at IPCop.
 
sabashuali said:
I am positive, there are loads of people out there who would love to have a simple small rig just to go on the net or get e-mails. Maybe get their young toddlers a learning game of some sort and maybe write a letter here and there..... Instead the waste is lying in a landfeild somewhere contaminating the soil..... :(
Click to expand...
I do that with old, cast-off boxes all the time. 1pt outdated rig + 1pt Linux = 1 modern Internet station that will never get a :swear: virus. It's a pity so many techs out there are xenophobic of anything outside of their :swear: :swear: Microsoft world, or there'd be a lot more of that.
 
Yeah people shouldn't throw such stuff away.
www.freecycle.org
To recycle old stuff to stop it going in landfills, so far I've got:
[2x 500MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, 12GB HDD PC's. (both with NIC's),] CD-RW (External) 14" Monitor, Cables, Keyboards Mice etc.
I'm soon to pick up 5x 17" CRT screens for free. Need one for this computer and might use a couple with the other systems I have and give one to a friend as he needs it.
I've had it with small CRT screens, if I'm going to have one, 17" is minimum,I can then use it with my 15" TFT as well (dual monitors, I can't stand only having one monitor anymore)
Anyway check that site out, it's not just PC stuff but there's some good stuff to be had, you need a yahoo e-mail address to join a group from a certain area but this freecycle thing is global!
*EDIT* No longer getting the computer monitors, I left if too late and they've all gone now :( *EdIT*
 
Do you think Linux in any form would actually run on a K6 200MHz 48MB RAM setup? :confused:

[ot]I am no Linux expert, but i've dabbled with Suse Linux 9.3. I was pleasently suprised with what I saw. It looks great and has a great feature set. It is by far more innovative then Windows.
Theres just one thing I can't stand about Linux, and that's the lack of proper installer packages! Dependencies drive me up the wall and the .RPM packages don't help much.[/ot]
 
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