My Adventures @ electronics scrapyard.

Well, I live in a small town (~1500 people), and we have an electronic scrapyard. I usually go there like 5 times in the week to see if I find anything of value (not expecting an FX57 in there lol). But I've found some fun stuff-

*pII200 Mhz
*pII350 Mhz
*pII400 Mhz (currently in backup rig @ 450 Mhz)
*192 MB SDRAM (128 + 32 + 32, currently in PII rig)
*Bunch of s7 mobo RAM
*Asus P2B Mobo (PII rig)
*Gygabite GA-686LX
*pI 100 Mhz (actually 2 of them, one I smashed to see the inner workings)
*Cyrix S7 150 Mhz
*2 socket 7 mobo's (tried to put a pI rig once, but the mobos don't like my CPU's)
*IBM 30GB Deathstar (Very nice find, when I was needing some space in my main rig. Currently installing simple games in there)
*Surplus of floppy drives (4+, 1 in main rig)
*1 Hitachi DVD drive (make 1998, must have been expensive back then, brothers rig)
*Suplus of CD drives (5+, 1 in PII rig)
*Fireball 1.25 GB HD (in pII rig)
*Fireball Bigfoot 5.25¨ 2 GB (main in pII rig)
*1 Seagate 125 MB 3.5¨HD (wonder what's in there. Can't get it to work though)
*Philips 107S 17¨monitor (currently using, main rig. No money for monitors)
*Surplus of expansion cards (15+. Mostly PCI graphics cards, some AGP (1 Ati RAGE 3d Pro in PII rig), ISA sound cards....relics...)
*Bunch of heatsinks and PSU's as well, IDE cables, mounting hardware, mouses, keyboards..

Well today I got lucky and found the following-

*Seasonic SS-300FS Active PFC PSU. 300Watts, should be nicer than my generic. Can't wait to hook it up.
*1999 Matrox GA-MA16G AGP graphics card.

That's probably it. The pII I assembled is running nicely with WinXP. Could use more RAM though. Still looking for an appropriate HD for that rig (only 3.25 GB total HD space, lol)

Want to get a pI rig running, but the mobo is giving me all kinds of failures on boot. Will have to wait till I find a better one.

Will probably swap the ati AGP card in the pII rig for the Matrox one. Seems much nicer overall.

One thing though. I can't understand why people smash up their hardware before throwing it away.

One time I found a complete PII rig (that's where I got the pII 400mhz CPU from).

Opened it up to find that the owner had cut all the PSU cables, smashed up the RAM, and the HD as well (5GB, would have been perfect ). He seemed to be in a hurry though. He only bothered to scrath the sticker on the pII cpu that looks like the internals, lol. The CPU was undamaged.

Today I also found some smashed up SDRAM. Greedy people don't want others to use their old hardware...

dan

always nice to find working stuff that can be reused like that.

Watchout for that deskstar. I've had some of those badboys die with no warning at all.

thefly said:

always nice to find working stuff that can be reused like that.

Watchout for that deskstar. I've had some of those badboys die with no warning at all.

Click to expand...

I know. Floppy, PSU (Seasonic one kicks a$$), keyboard, monitor, in my sig rig were all freebies from the scrapyard. Saved some major money.

Otherwise I like collecting the really old stuff.

Concerning the deathstar, I only install games in it, and any other files I backup in DVD's. If it died, well I'd have to install again.

dan

I have 2 recyclers that I go to.

Get things for pennies on the dollar.

Free stuff is the best!!!
Good finds and good luck in the future too!

Other peoples junk, our treasures....

Dan0512 said:

Well, I live in a small town (~1500 people), and we have an electronic scrapyard. I usually go there like 5 times in the week to see if I find anything of value (not expecting an FX57 in there lol). But I've found some fun stuff-

*pII200 Mhz
*pII350 Mhz
*pII400 Mhz (currently in backup rig @ 450 Mhz)
*192 MB SDRAM (128 + 32 + 32, currently in PII rig)
*Bunch of s7 mobo RAM
*Asus P2B Mobo (PII rig)
*Gygabite GA-686LX
*pI 100 Mhz (actually 2 of them, one I smashed to see the inner workings)
*Cyrix S7 150 Mhz
*2 socket 7 mobo's (tried to put a pI rig once, but the mobos don't like my CPU's)
*IBM 30GB Deathstar (Very nice find, when I was needing some space in my main rig. Currently installing simple games in there)
*Surplus of floppy drives (4+, 1 in main rig)
*1 Hitachi DVD drive (make 1998, must have been expensive back then, brothers rig)
*Suplus of CD drives (5+, 1 in PII rig)
*Fireball 1.25 GB HD (in pII rig)
*Fireball Bigfoot 5.25¨ 2 GB (main in pII rig)
*1 Seagate 125 MB 3.5¨HD (wonder what's in there. Can't get it to work though)
*Philips 107S 17¨monitor (currently using, main rig. No money for monitors)
*Surplus of expansion cards (15+. Mostly PCI graphics cards, some AGP (1 Ati RAGE 3d Pro in PII rig), ISA sound cards....relics...)
*Bunch of heatsinks and PSU's as well, IDE cables, mounting hardware, mouses, keyboards..

Well today I got lucky and found the following-

*Seasonic SS-300FS Active PFC PSU. 300Watts, should be nicer than my generic. Can't wait to hook it up.
*1999 Matrox GA-MA16G AGP graphics card.

That's probably it. The pII I assembled is running nicely with WinXP. Could use more RAM though. Still looking for an appropriate HD for that rig (only 3.25 GB total HD space, lol)

Click to expand...

This reminds me of a place that recycles computers not that far from where I live.
They have 40 GB HDDs and when I was there today, I saw a Sparkle 300W power supply!

Unfortunately, saw no more than 300W for power supplies.

Saw a couple of socket A motherboards too, one Via (probably KT400 or later) and nForce2,
but was told that the motherboards were dead!!

Motherboards can be fixed! I'd be in alot of trouble if I found a scrap yard like that. I don't have enough storage. The reason that the previous owner of your computer OP smashed it was probably to keep people from booting it up to see his data. He may have not known how to clean it out himself and decided that instead of missing something accidentally, he's just smash it all. Sad, but it happens. Nice finds .

- Jim

the list of items you found sounds exactly like the kind of junk i would find at re-pc up here in the northwest. it's all fun to play with for a little while, but not worth spending any money on. i found an ibm pc 5150 (the original!) five years ago at the thrift store for $3, and the matching hercules monitor was $5...it was fun to tinker with for about ten minutes, and then i left it in my friend's garage.

that destroyed computer you saw was probably smashed up in a fit of rage, possibly overclocking-related rage? or maybe it was the same idiot who got mad at his computer and put five rounds into his monitor lol.

benbaked said:

that destroyed computer you saw was probably smashed up in a fit of rage, possibly overclocking-related rage? or maybe it was the same idiot who got mad at his computer and put five rounds into his monitor lol.

Click to expand...

Not smashed up. PSU lines carefully cut with scissors, ram carefully smashed with hammer, and all caps blown off the mobo. Only the case was in prime condition.

dan

Wish there was someplace like that in my area. Would be perfect for linux folding rigs, lol.