Salvaged a junk P4 box today \ VOGONS

Salvaged a junk P4 box today

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First post, by GXL750

Posted on 2012-02-10, 08:30

GXL750 Offline

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One of my drinking buddies gave me his old desktop today and actually seemed glad to have the thing gone. It was in interesting shape. The empty PCI slots that didn't have the metal cover piece had black tape over them and black tape was also used to fill in the empty space left by the lack of a cover plate to go around the motherboard's ports. CPU heatsink was missing it's fan (I remember two years ago, when I had to work on this computer for him, he had a household fan blowing into the computer) and the computer itself smelled like an ashtray. Also, the power supply was a Micro ATX type which was too small to mount where the PSU should go and was in the case suspended by the wires coming out of it.

It had two 160gb hard drives though one is flakey and only works sometimes, 1gb RAM but one of the two 512mb sticks was faulty, 2.26ghz Pentium 4 Northwood and an ASRock P4i65GV motherboard which is interesting for using the version of the Intel i865 chipset that lacked AGP support and has what ASRock calls an "AGI" slot that's compatible only with a limited number of AGP cards. On the plus hand though, the motherboard runs nice enough and seems stable. Also, it has 6 USB ports built in and enough headers for the 4 USB ports built into the case I moved the system to making for a total of 10. I'll never use that many at once but it's nice to know I'll never need a USB hub for this thing.

The computer is now in a smaller case with a proper power supply (the case came from a circa 2008 Acer I found outside with a dead mobo), the heatsink has a new, quiet running fan mounted on it, the bad hard drive and ram module have been removed and the computer is running a fresh install of Windows XP. The specs would have it pinned at being entry level 2003/04. It's sitting at my office desk now as a general use system/internet terminal until I can think of some use for it. I'm sure if my friend saw the computer now, he'd be surprised I was able to salvage it. The thing really was a piece of junk when I got it but can be called decent albeit dated now.

Reply 1 of 4, by sliderider

Posted on 2012-02-10, 12:37

sliderider Offline

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How are you dealing with the smoky smell? I've had that problem with computer parts in the past. Because of all the small parts that could break off easily, it is difficult to give them a thorough cleaning.

Reply 2 of 4, by ProfessorProfessorson

Posted on 2012-02-10, 13:51

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As far as normal parts go, run them in a dishwasher, then shake them out as much as possible. Preheat the oven for a few mins @ 210 degrees Fahrenheit, then put said parts in the oven for 10-15 mins to get rid of the majority of the moisture. Use foil on corners and stuff when you lay the parts in the cookie sheet if need be. After that let them dry out completely for a day or two and you should be good to go. Obviously you may want to remove any fans, etc attached and clean and dry them separately.

Reply 3 of 4, by GXL750

Posted on 2012-02-10, 14:16

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The only fan in the system was in the PSU which is not in use. The smokey smell is almost entirely on the original case. However, if I ever can get my lazy self to take care of it, the motherboard could use a good cleaning as there is a good bit of dust on it.

Also, I've replacedthe 2.66ghz Celeron D with a 2.26ghz Pentium 4. The few hundred megahertz drop in clock speed was more than canceled out by the increase in L2 cache. Also, the chip runs cooler; between 70 and 80F under normal use in this system (though the Celeron D still ran very cool as well).

Also, I later tried the stick of RAM I thought was bad and it seems to work now; system's back at 1gb RAM and it all tests good. I am thinking it was actually dirt in the slot that caused issues with that module. Also, the faulty hard drive seemed to work again after I checked and corrected the jumper settings. I felt like a real Einstein after realizing what I was doing wrong with that thing.

Reply 4 of 4, by GXL750

Posted on 2012-02-12, 08:40

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As it would turn out, the motherboard in this old computer actually is AGP. There was one letter difference between model number for this motherboard and one that had a non-AGP version of the i865 chipset paired to an "AGI" slot so now I am actualy considering finding a decent video card for this old machine. One of the 160gb hard drives which had a lot of data was removed to give back to friend I got the computer from.

BTW, I took some photos of the computer in it's current state. I ever bothered taking photos of the computer when I got it but believe me, just between the rather beat up case and the improper psu dangling from wires, it was ugly.

The case in use originally housed a dual core Intel system of some sort. I like the case because it's tiny, very easy to work on and has four USB ports on front vs. two like most cases would have. I'm now wanting to find some way to put all ten USB ports in this computer at once just for the hell of it.

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