Nice computer haul over weekend...

Picture is worth 1,000 words:



What I got are: Powerbook G3 500MHz (1 good battery, 128MB RAM, no DVD, Airport installed but Mac says not installed), Presario 1200 (bad keyboard, ok battery, 128MB RAM), and Armada 1580DMT (48MB RAM, HD won't start up, possibly need to reformat), 2 desktops both Presario 5000 (both untested), PSX, and PS2 systems with all cables and controllers.

The grill box behind the pile is not included, it's where my brother piled the stuff on.

I am so going to have some fun in the next few days as I poke and prod through this lot.

Any games with the PS1/PS2? If not, it looks like overall you just saved him a trip to the dump

He left most of the PS1 games with me (older games like FF 7 and 8 (both green band) Kings Field and Nitro Oxide, nothing specular at ebay price. He's keeping the PS2 games to go with his "slim" PS2 with LCD display.

yeah looks like a bunch of garbage, sorry.

PM me if you wnt to sell that Powerbook!

How can you call that garbage? I would be awfully happy to get a payload like that!

If you can't say something nice...

Sarcasm on internet can become a quicksand if it goes whoosh... I've seen sarcasm turn into a nasty flame war on USENET.

The 2 Presario desktops are probably not going to be worth anything to me. 2 AMD Duron 1000MHz (I think, those old and well browned waxy thermal tape are almost impossible to clean off!!!), 128MB sticks in each, PC, AGP video card (probably 1x or 2x), and 60 GB hard drive. On top of those, CD burners and DVD-ROMs and PSU that has more dust than component inside PSU gotta get my brother to give up smoking someday.

I'll probably do a quick test, wipe the hard drive, and toss whatever works in classified. The case may end up going to scrap yard unless someone locally wants em. They are heavy and rather ugly imo.

The Armada is a dud. It won't read CDs, won't boot on HD, bios take forever to detect the HD. I took it out and plugged into a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and used it in my PC. My PC hung up at POST while trying to access the hard drive.

Eh, 2.1GB isn't much at all so I'll probably scrap it. I've taken the CD-ROM out as well, I'll see if I can get the cover off and dust inside thoroughly and retest to rule out buildup. Then put it in Classified as well. There's also floppy drive but I banned floppy disks from my room long ago when I got CD burner and CD-R blanks were cheaper than 3.5" disks. I think the laptop uses 150MHz Pentium MMX CPU, maybe ok for playing original Doom or other 1980 and early 90's classics.

I may need a new logic board for the Powerbook. I took the AirPort card out and plugged it into other PC card slot, MacOS still says no AirPort detected. Sounds like PC Card is bad. Also the second battery I got with this is dead: won't charge, no LED indicator on battery pack.

I'd like to keep this one though because I've wanted a Mac laptop since I retired my Duo 280c. I'd need to find Mac OS X though, Firefox and OpenOffice don't support 9, and older version isn't easy to find.

The other laptop, Presario 1210US seems to be doing well aside from missing keyboard. The battery was left to charge all afternoon and so far I'm getting a rapid blinking of the charge light, and laptop won't power up on battery. When I pressed on battery indicator button on the battery, no LED light up. Battery is probably dead. Has 128MB RAM and 850MHz Duron CPU, DVD-ROM, and floppy drive. Originally came with Windows ME but no disk so I'd have to wipe hard drive if I sell this. I do plan to get a replacement keyboard first so it'd at least be ready to use.

The case may end up going to scrap yard unless someone locally wants em. They are heavy and rather ugly imo.

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Yeah, they're kinda ugly as they are, but I find them to be quite well designed internally. I've always thought they'd make a nice mATX modding project. Just a thought...

Also, as far as the old Compaq thermal goo, the only thing I've found that works on it is paint thinner. It does a good job though, just wash it off with isopropyl afterward.

i have 1 or 2 compaqs of the same design dont know if their the same model of yours but dont you just love it to get free computer stuff

EDIT: ok i checked and i have 1 compaq and its a 5000 series, its a decent computer if you upgrade it you could sell it as a web and email machine or word processor machine

I was taking apart the 1210US to replace the internal battery. The CMOS setting gets reset if I unplug it for more than a few seconds.

What I found: a standard desktop CPU!!! I searched the internet on this but Google keeps pointing me to older 150MHz Pentium version even though I put "1210US" in the search...

I did find a similar version for European model of 1200 series, someone replaced the 800MHz Celeron with a 1GHz P3 and it worked, albeit very hot.

So I could replace the Duron with something a tad faster for a tad better performance, or get slower CPU for lower power usage. I need to look up and find out what works in s462 as I hadn't messed with sub-1GHz CPU upgrades since I had AMD K6-2

What I found: a standard desktop CPU!!!

Click to expand...

That's probably not a desktop CPU. The mobile versions of the Durons looked exactly like the desktop versions, just had a slightly lower core voltage. And they weren't that power-hungry either... the mobile versions all appear to have a 25W TDP, and even the desktop versions (at least the earlier <1ghz ones) were in the 35W range. I doubt you're going to do much better for a low-power CPU, so the only reason to change it out would be to use something faster.

As far as getting a faster CPU to work... it miiight be doable, but not knowing the limitations of what the board will accept, I personally wouldn't bother. Other limitations in the system are going to assure that it won't be a speed demon regardless of what you do, and an 800-900mhz Duron is capable enough for a light-duty laptop anyhow.

I'd have to clean the crud off the CPU and get part number then look it up to see if it is mobile or not.

if i remember correctly, you can turn a socket 462 cpu into a mobile by pin modding it. i still have some 462's kicking around here somwhere.

DHM0850ALS1B

Ok it is mobile. Not a plain desktop CPU. So looks like I won't be switching to Athlon CPU as it's pretty crammed inside the laptop and I can't exactly replace the stock heat sink unless I want to give up the keyboard and never close the laptop.

Switching to Athlon for extra cache isn't worth the cost either. But I could still go for Duron 900 or even 1000MHz if it doesn't get too hot.

Ok so far from the 2 desktops I got:
250 watts ATX power supply (didn't check if its propriety pin out or not)
250 watts ATX 2.0 power supply (didn't check for pin outs either)
Athlon 1GHz
Pentium 4 1.6GHz

128MB PC100
2x 256MB PC133

2 AGP video cards:
NVidia G4000pro 16mb with TV out
NVidia Riva TNT2 16mb, no TV out
I'm guessing they are AGP 4x? There are mention of 1.5v only on motherboards, and these are too old to be AGP 8x plus I know 1x and 2x are 3.3v

Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 model SB0100
10/100 NIC card
2x cheap HPS modem PCI card- only good for decorating landfill


The Pentium board had an odd connector I have never seen before, see picture below. It seems to have the same number of pins as the standard PCI slot. The motherboard also had unusual CPU heat sink mounting, 2 through board holes and 2 plastic anchor clips that mounts onto the board via through hole screws, then heat sink/fan is clipped onto the 2 plastic clips.

Defiantly not standard, if I wanted to use the CPU in a different case I would need a different motherboard with *proper* standard heat sink mounting. Board says designed Compaq engineers in Houston, TX. Bet that 250 watts ATX 2.0 power supply also used non standard pin outs.

They both should be standard power supplies and 4x cards

I love free stuff as much as the next guy, but with all that stuff, I would try to make one good computer and donate it to a church or something. Most of us wouldn't be on this forum if we were using something like that.