Was dumping some other stuff at the tip and saw this pretty looking thing sitting there in the TV recycling area. It's actually illegal to remove items from the tip here but I managed to grab it discreetly. No visible damage. In fact is in amazing external condition. It had just started raining but I think I got there in time. Plugged it in at home and got a standby light. Pressed power button and... nothing. Opened her up - no immediately obvious problems but then I noticed the inverter section in a cage and removed it. Sure enough there's possible evidence of a compromised cap and the back light definitely isn't operating so fingers crossed!

brassicGamer wrote:

Was dumping some other stuff at the tip and saw this pretty looking thing sitting there in the TV recycling area. It's actually illegal to remove items from the tip here but I managed to grab it discreetly. No visible damage. In fact is in amazing external condition. It had just started raining but I think I got there in time. Plugged it in at home and got a standby light. Pressed power button and... nothing. Opened her up - no immediately obvious problems but then I noticed the inverter section in a cage and removed it. Sure enough there's possible evidence of a compromised cap and the back light definitely isn't operating so fingers crossed!

20160402_185547-1200x2133.jpg

20160402_185531-1600x900.jpg

You should also check if the inverter board has it's own fuse, it could be blown but can be replaced pretty easily.

I wonder if the OP of this thread ever managed to get any use out of that warped motherboard. 😉

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I wonder if the OP of this thread ever managed to get any use out of that warped motherboard. 😉

That board is still dead. I see no real reason for it to be dead though as the board dosn't have any bad solder joints, shorts, deep scratches or crushed chips, at least not from what I could see when I took a closer look.

I think perhaps it's a BIOS flash gone wrong but as the BIOS chip is soldered it's not really worth messing with. The Q6700 CPU worked fine so that is at least not the reason the board got binned.

I was at the local recycle center to drop off some waste. Now you should know, they are strict! There is absolutely no taking stuff away from the center. This always frustrates me enormously, since I can see all kinds of nice beige computers sitting in the container. So I parked my car to unload my stuff, and I see someone put two computer cases on the counter. No side panels, but I spot Plextor optical drives and a once-expensive Lian Li aluminium case. They look bad, beaten up, but it was once expensive hardware.

So without thinking I pick them up and put them in the trunk of my car (the center is outside). Close the trunk and pretend nothing had happened. Nobody saw, so they are mine now! 😀

To add something sad to the story: in the container, out of reach, I spied a AT miditower, with two 5.25" floppy drives, 'MHz display'. It looked pristine. I asked, but they would not budge. I could not have it. "It will be recycled'' 🙁

They came from a smokers home. I will take out working and useful parts and then return them to the recycle center. Maybe I'll manage to rescue the other one. 😀

Cyrix200+ wrote:

I was at the local recycle center to drop off some waste. Now you should know, they are strict! There is absolutely no taking st […]
Show full quote

I was at the local recycle center to drop off some waste. Now you should know, they are strict! There is absolutely no taking stuff away from the center. This always frustrates me enormously, since I can see all kinds of nice beige computers sitting in the container. So I parked my car to unload my stuff, and I see someone put two computer cases on the counter. No side panels, but I spot Plextor optical drives and a once-expensive Lian Li aluminium case. They look bad, beaten up, but it was once expensive hardware.

So without thinking I pick them up and put them in the trunk of my car (the center is outside). Close the trunk and pretend nothing had happened. Nobody saw, so they are mine now! 😀

To add something sad to the story: in the container, out of reach, I spied a AT miditower, with two 5.25" floppy drives, 'MHz display'. It looked pristine. I asked, but they would not budge. I could not have it. "It will be recycled'' 🙁

They came from a smokers home. I will take out working and useful parts and then return them to the recycle center. Maybe I'll manage to rescue the other one. 😀

Nice pick!

I don't quite understand recycling centers policies, I have seen people bringing 'treasures' (at least, for us 🤣) there. Luckily, I have a close relative working on the local one and I managed to pick some nice parts up, but sadly this is not always possible (boss present! 😵)

mmx_91 wrote:

...

Nice pick!

I don't quite understand recycling centers policies, I have seen people bringing 'treasures' (at least, for us 🤣) there. Luckily, I have a close relative working on the local one and I managed to pick some nice parts up, but sadly this is not always possible (boss present! 😵)

I'm pretty sure it's a about money. E-Waste is worth something.

And I can also imagine that they would get tired of people going through the stuff and making a mess. Because that is what would happen, picking out the gold CPUs and tossing away the rest in bits and pieces.

Still a shame though...

Cyrix200+ wrote:

I was at the local recycle center to drop off some waste. Now you should know, they are strict! There is absolutely no taking st […]
Show full quote

I was at the local recycle center to drop off some waste. Now you should know, they are strict! There is absolutely no taking stuff away from the center. This always frustrates me enormously, since I can see all kinds of nice beige computers sitting in the container. So I parked my car to unload my stuff, and I see someone put two computer cases on the counter. No side panels, but I spot Plextor optical drives and a once-expensive Lian Li aluminium case. They look bad, beaten up, but it was once expensive hardware.

So without thinking I pick them up and put them in the trunk of my car (the center is outside). Close the trunk and pretend nothing had happened. Nobody saw, so they are mine now! 😀

To add something sad to the story: in the container, out of reach, I spied a AT miditower, with two 5.25" floppy drives, 'MHz display'. It looked pristine. I asked, but they would not budge. I could not have it. "It will be recycled'' 🙁

They came from a smokers home. I will take out working and useful parts and then return them to the recycle center. Maybe I'll manage to rescue the other one. 😀

Are my eyes just deceiving me, or is that a Lian-Li case in the bottom pic?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

...

Are my eyes just deceiving me, or is that a Lian-Li case in the bottom pic?

Yes it is. I don't have the side panels or door. I kind of want to keep it but what for? Unless I can find some spare panels etc.

Neat. 😁 I've heard great things about them.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

...

Are my eyes just deceiving me, or is that a Lian-Li case in the bottom pic?

Yes it is. I don't have the side panels or door. I kind of want to keep it but what for? Unless I can find some spare panels etc.

For people like me who always end up tinkering with one thing or the other in every system side panels are useless junk that gets in the way all the time as its a hard to find good places to store them. 😜

How do you know when something is less of a hobby and more of a state of mind? When you go on holiday to an idyllic, technology-free location and you manage to find an old computer while looking in a cupboard for towels and get really excited.

Although my stock of 386 systems is quite healthy at the moment, my stock of AT cases is not. Plus I have no 5 1/4 drives. So this system made me smile.

I was hoping for a 286 as I don't have one yet. But this will do nicely for my early nineties gaming system. Trident 8900C VGA card, Intel soldered 386 @ 16MHz, no co-pro, and a CHIPS chipset. Loving the case in particular. Lack of Sound Blaster made me sad.

The system belongs to my second cousin so all I need to do now is ask if I can take it home with me!

^Nice system! Well a 386-16 is really on the level of a 286, in fact it can be slower than fast 286-16 boards specially if the 386 is of SX variety. It still can be an awesome retro system.

I rescued the following from being thrown in the trash at my local vocational school:

AGP Riva 128
PCI Radeon 7000 32MB
ISA SoundBlaster 16 CT2940 (unfortunately this is one of the cards that have the hanging notes bug)
PCI S3 Trio64 V+ 2MB
Rubber dome Model M
Graymark Model 55001 POSTCARD
PCI RageXL 8MB
ISA 3C-509BTPC Etherlink III
2x PCI 3C-905TX
ISA Crystal CX3245 sound card
ISA Vibra16S
PCI Crystal 4280 sound card
PCI Ensoniq ES1370 AudioPCI
8bit ISA CI-5050 RTC card
2x Slot1 Pentium III 600EB
Slot1 Pentium III 500/512/100
ISA ESS AudioDrive
AGP Vanta-16 16MB
ISA Adaptec AVA-1502E SCSI host adaptor

Instead of opening a new topic, I'll just dump the pictures here 😀 Found this PC yesterday at the dump. Somebody opened it up and took the CPU but left the rest. There's a Diamond Multimedia S3 Trio64V+ with full 2MB of RAM and a Sound Blaster Vibra 16 also some RAM and a Seagate Medalist ST31277A hard drive. I imagine the case predatest the motherboard by at least a few years.

Half-Saint wrote:

Instead of opening a new topic, I'll just dump the pictures here :-) Found this PC yesterday at the dump. Somebody opened it up […]
Show full quote

Instead of opening a new topic, I'll just dump the pictures here 😀 Found this PC yesterday at the dump. Somebody opened it up and took the CPU but left the rest. There's a Diamond Multimedia S3 Trio64V+ with full 2MB of RAM and a Sound Blaster Vibra 16 also some RAM and a Seagate Medalist ST31277A hard drive. I imagine the case predatest the motherboard by at least a few years.

DSC_0637.JPG

DSC_0638.JPG

DSC_0639.JPG

Black insides, don't see that too often! Nice find!

That case is a beauty.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/wNBJEc9l.jpg […]
Show full quote

I have 2 different version of that case! They look cool but really cut up my hands when working inside them. Really nice motherboard tray though.

Half-Saint wrote:

Instead of opening a new topic, I'll just dump the pictures here 😀 Found this PC yesterday at the dump. Somebody opened it up and took the CPU but left the rest. There's a Diamond Multimedia S3 Trio64V+ with full 2MB of RAM and a Sound Blaster Vibra 16 also some RAM and a Seagate Medalist ST31277A hard drive. I imagine the case predatest the motherboard by at least a few years.

My love to these tiny and simple AT cases is growing day by day!

As for me, today I was given 2 IDE HDD's from a relative (he was about to destroy them due to personal data stored), so I took them and formatted for my own testing purposes with PCs at home. The Seagate one came originally from a pc I mounted for him about 11-12 years ago. Nothing special, but maybe useful someday.

Klankins wrote:

I have 2 different version of that case! They look cool but really cut up my hands when working inside them. Really nice motherboard tray though.

You're correct, I cut myself today while disassembling the system. The whole case was so dirty, scratched and also warped (I guess it fell down on a corner sometime) that I threw it out (without the contents of course!). Talking about the contents, everything was covered in dust and nicotine stickyness 🙁. One system had rust on the mainboard connectors). I cleaned all interesting parts with wipes. This is what I got:

Asus socket 939 mainboard with 2x 1GB PC3200 Geil Memory and AMD Athlon 64 3500+:

Asus A9550 128MB ATI Radeon 9550 SE

Enermax PSU (I think these are decent?)

Hercules Radeon 9600XT 256MB (what's up with the heatsinks? Poor thing probably runs hot!)

Asus A7V880/4x 512MB memory/Athlon 2600

Bonus picture