If you find one with a PCX2, hang onto that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations, the best graphics card I've ever found in an abandoned computer was a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP.

I found a v3 2000 agp too, in a p3 700 that some friend did not want anymore, naturally i adopted it. Its now living a new life in w98 rig.

MaxWar wrote:

I found a v3 2000 agp too, in a p3 700 that some friend did not want anymore, naturally i adopted it. Its now living a new life in w98 rig.

My best finds were a V3-3000 AGP and a weird tiny 150W PSU. It still has an ATX+12V though so is great for using on low powered machines!

Slightly off topic but you can get cool little AT power supplies from old Compaq Presario's. They appear to be proprietary but you simply have to remove the grey wire and switch one of the grounding pins over and voilà! You have an AT PSU with a soft power button! And the PSU itself is probably only around 300 or 400g so its very light indeed!

A PC left in the hallway of my building contained an intel 815 board with a P3/933 in it AND a hercules 3d Prophet 4500 kyro II. Scoop!

Dumpster diving can net you more hardware then you could imagine. Just look at my attic!!
Almost all AT cases I found on the streets 8 years ago.
And best is, it's all free, but you won't know what you find and if someone before you already took the good parts out. Sometimes you find zilch and sometimes you find a virgin dumped PC (I found even 3 or 4 at one time, I had to make a choice what case to bring and which ones to strip...and what to strip and I left the carcasses neatly screwed shut again.).

One word of advice:If you go dumpsterdiving, better not leave a mess or people will start disliking dumpsterdivers. Leave your carcasses, if any, in a tidy(-like) fashion 😁

And be friendly, I was gifted stuff for free when they saw me work (calmly, if you are greedy they might call the police 🤣) and gave me some more extra stuff 😁

Heh, it's like the getting the woot mystery item - you're either gonna be really happy or really disappointed. For abandoned PCs that I've found so far it's just been a GF2 MX 200 and Radeon 7000.

The best card i've scored from an abandoned PC is......

A GEFORCE FX 5200!

🙁

Tetrium wrote:

Dumpster diving can net you more hardware then you could imagine. Just look at my attic!! Almost all AT cases I found on the str […]
Show full quote

Dumpster diving can net you more hardware then you could imagine. Just look at my attic!!
Almost all AT cases I found on the streets 8 years ago.
And best is, it's all free, but you won't know what you find and if someone before you already took the good parts out. Sometimes you find zilch and sometimes you find a virgin dumped PC (I found even 3 or 4 at one time, I had to make a choice what case to bring and which ones to strip...and what to strip and I left the carcasses neatly screwed shut again.).

One word of advice:If you go dumpsterdiving, better not leave a mess or people will start disliking dumpsterdivers. Leave your carcasses, if any, in a tidy(-like) fashion 😁

And be friendly, I was gifted stuff for free when they saw me work (calmly, if you are greedy they might call the police 🤣) and gave me some more extra stuff 😁

We have a big clean up in my town a few times a year where you can put anything out for pickup and it won't be questioned. All the scavengers are out on the streets on those nights. The scrap metal guys, the antiques guys, the furniture restorers, the old computer guys, the lawn mower and small engine repair guys, people just looking for useful stuff in salvageable condition. It's very competitive finding good stuff in the piles. That's where having friends with similar interests comes in handy so you can split up and cover more territory in less time then divide the loot after.

sliderider wrote:

We have a big clean up in my town a few times a year where you can put anything out for pickup and it won't be questioned. All the scavengers are out on the streets on those nights. The scrap metal guys, the antiques guys, the furniture restorers, the old computer guys, the lawn mower and small engine repair guys, people just looking for useful stuff in salvageable condition. It's very competitive finding good stuff in the piles. That's where having friends with similar interests comes in handy so you can split up and cover more territory in less time then divide the loot after.

Haha, that must be a very fun day. But those scrap metal guys... sometimes, they seem to be taking the good stuff the other type of "guys" want just to scrap it.

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Dumpster diving can net you more hardware then you could imagine. Just look at my attic!! Almost all AT cases I found on the str […]
Show full quote

Dumpster diving can net you more hardware then you could imagine. Just look at my attic!!
Almost all AT cases I found on the streets 8 years ago.
And best is, it's all free, but you won't know what you find and if someone before you already took the good parts out. Sometimes you find zilch and sometimes you find a virgin dumped PC (I found even 3 or 4 at one time, I had to make a choice what case to bring and which ones to strip...and what to strip and I left the carcasses neatly screwed shut again.).

One word of advice:If you go dumpsterdiving, better not leave a mess or people will start disliking dumpsterdivers. Leave your carcasses, if any, in a tidy(-like) fashion 😁

And be friendly, I was gifted stuff for free when they saw me work (calmly, if you are greedy they might call the police 🤣) and gave me some more extra stuff 😁

We have a big clean up in my town a few times a year where you can put anything out for pickup and it won't be questioned. All the scavengers are out on the streets on those nights. The scrap metal guys, the antiques guys, the furniture restorers, the old computer guys, the lawn mower and small engine repair guys, people just looking for useful stuff in salvageable condition. It's very competitive finding good stuff in the piles. That's where having friends with similar interests comes in handy so you can split up and cover more territory in less time then divide the loot after.

Yup, it's about hawkeyes and doing lots of kilometers 😁
In my area, Amsterdam is the best for doing scavenger hunts. Theres trash in at least some neighborhoods 6 days a week 😉 😉 😉
Just be sure to have some screwdrivers and lots of (antistatic) bags handy. Sometimes I find motherboard boxes with stuff etc. I even found some old games like a 5 1/4in version of Strike Commander or something. But I'll bet the disks are bad by now.

Tetrium wrote:

Yup, it's about hawkeyes and doing lots of kilometers :D In my area, Amsterdam is the best for doing scavenger hunts. Theres tra […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Dumpster diving can net you more hardware then you could imagine. Just look at my attic!! Almost all AT cases I found on the str […]
Show full quote

Dumpster diving can net you more hardware then you could imagine. Just look at my attic!!
Almost all AT cases I found on the streets 8 years ago.
And best is, it's all free, but you won't know what you find and if someone before you already took the good parts out. Sometimes you find zilch and sometimes you find a virgin dumped PC (I found even 3 or 4 at one time, I had to make a choice what case to bring and which ones to strip...and what to strip and I left the carcasses neatly screwed shut again.).

One word of advice:If you go dumpsterdiving, better not leave a mess or people will start disliking dumpsterdivers. Leave your carcasses, if any, in a tidy(-like) fashion 😁

And be friendly, I was gifted stuff for free when they saw me work (calmly, if you are greedy they might call the police 🤣) and gave me some more extra stuff 😁

We have a big clean up in my town a few times a year where you can put anything out for pickup and it won't be questioned. All the scavengers are out on the streets on those nights. The scrap metal guys, the antiques guys, the furniture restorers, the old computer guys, the lawn mower and small engine repair guys, people just looking for useful stuff in salvageable condition. It's very competitive finding good stuff in the piles. That's where having friends with similar interests comes in handy so you can split up and cover more territory in less time then divide the loot after.

Yup, it's about hawkeyes and doing lots of kilometers 😁
In my area, Amsterdam is the best for doing scavenger hunts. Theres trash in at least some neighborhoods 6 days a week 😉 😉 😉
Just be sure to have some screwdrivers and lots of (antistatic) bags handy. Sometimes I find motherboard boxes with stuff etc. I even found some old games like a 5 1/4in version of Strike Commander or something. But I'll bet the disks are bad by now.

Disassembling stuff on the spot takes up too much time. I'd rather fill up the car with as much as I can, drop it off home, then go out again and sort it all out later. It's not as if cases, power supplies, drives, etc won't get used eventually. The only things I leave behind are CRT's because they just take up too much space and use too much electricity. I'd rather buy a used 4:3 LCD if I ever run out of monitors.

sliderider wrote:

Disassembling stuff on the spot takes up too much time. I'd rather fill up the car with as much as I can, drop it off home, then go out again and sort it all out later. It's not as if cases, power supplies, drives, etc won't get used eventually. The only things I leave behind are CRT's because they just take up too much space and use too much electricity. I'd rather buy a used 4:3 LCD if I ever run out of monitors.

I've become pretty quick about it. Btw, can't bring 5 computer cases by bike 😜

Best I've managed by bike was a ][e with monitor and box of drives & software. But that was an antique bike with racks - the stability of the old beasts under load is phenomenal. As Tetrium is in A'dam he probably knows about that first-hand.

Sometimes the best surprise is a dead part 😜

I found a mac Performa 6400/200 in the trash last year but just recently tried to power it up. Naturally it does not show any sign of life when i press power, even though it looks absolutely pristine, barely a speck of dust inside the thing.

5 minutes ago after inspecting the suspected power supply, i found a busted resistor.

Finaly a lead 😁

MaxWar wrote:

Sometimes the best surprise is a dead part :P […]
Show full quote

Sometimes the best surprise is a dead part 😜

I found a mac Performa 6400/200 in the trash last year but just recently tried to power it up. Naturally it does not show any sign of life when i press power, even though it looks absolutely pristine, barely a speck of dust inside the thing.

5 minutes ago after inspecting the suspected power supply, i found a busted resistor.

Finaly a lead 😁

When I find a whole computer, I test the parts one by one as theres often something wrong with it. Last thing I'd want is for a good computer to completely fry because the PSU corroded while in the owner's shed, before he tossed it to the street where I found it

You are right, i should have checked psu first. I did start by opening the case and it looked so brand new i was sure it would all work like magic.

Almost all the full computers i found before had nothing wrong really. One even had a hard drive with the woman's delivery moment pictures still on it. (Im not even joking... why would people simply throws these things out without verifying the hd is beyond me)

MaxWar wrote:

You are right, i should have checked psu first. I did start by opening the case and it looked so brand new i was sure it would all work like magic.

Almost all the full computers i found before had nothing wrong really. One even had a hard drive with the woman's delivery moment pictures still on it. (Im not even joking... why would people simply throws these things out without verifying the hd is beyond me)

Because they are either too dumb to consider doing so, or think that simply formatting a hard drive will erase everything and make it unrecoverable. Which is why I usually hold on to my broken ones until I find a feasible method to make the data unrecoverable.

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

MaxWar wrote:

You are right, i should have checked psu first. I did start by opening the case and it looked so brand new i was sure it would all work like magic.

Almost all the full computers i found before had nothing wrong really. One even had a hard drive with the woman's delivery moment pictures still on it. (Im not even joking... why would people simply throws these things out without verifying the hd is beyond me)

Because they are either too dumb to consider doing so, or think that simply formatting a hard drive will erase everything and make it unrecoverable. Which is why I usually hold on to my broken ones until I find a feasible method to make the data unrecoverable.

You can just use the magnets from an old hard disk to erase the data on the platter. Should become completely unreadable by then