I've been going through lots of mixed old hardware lately and also pairing down a whole bunch of stuff I was given that was sorted as scrap.
Among the CPUs I mostly found lots of low end Core 2 Duo and Athlon\Turion laptop chips, but also found several Pentium M, Core Duo, desktop Pentium 4 (478) and others. Among the Socket 478 chips I was really really pleased to find not one but two 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 Prescotts AND a 3.4Ghz Northwood! The pins weren't very bent up. Wow... 😮
I will be moving most of the low end\common chips on as scrap because I simply will never ever use them and they are worth basically nothing. I'm keeping more than I need to as it is.
There was also a lot of RAM which I'm currently sorting through, and it has stirred up some questions in my mind...
Is there any reason to keep low capacity and low speed desktop and laptop DDR\DDR2? How about really low capacity SDRAM, like 32MB?
For DDR2 I was thinking of keeping one 512MB each of PC2-3200, 4200, 5300 and 6400 in both SIMMs and DIMMs, just in case I come across a system that is picky about memory speeds that needs tested, plus the 512mb capacity would also allow me to install Windows 9x before patching OS to support more memory if the need should ever arise. Beyond that, I will only be keeping some 1GB DDR2 5300 and 6400 modules and all 2GB+ modules... nothing else.
For DDR1 I am planning to keep 512MB+ modules, but I can't think of any reason to keep anything less than that. I can't remember if DDR systems were ever picky about speeds the way some DDR2 systems could be. I think high vs low density was the bigger issue at that time.
In general, I have always just hoarded ALL SDRAM (PC 66, 100, 133), because it seems like it's very common to find boards that simply won't work with a certain type. I am tempted to get rid of the 32MB modules just to cut down on the sheer volume of RAM I have to store, but I am afraid of getting rid of all of the sticks that the earliest SDRAM boards may prefer. Anyone have any input on this?
Finally... laptop wifi cards and bluetooth cards. The guy I got parts from kept basically all of these he'd ever come across. There are so many, and they're so hard to identify. I have looked many of them up and there are generally hundreds of results and they can be bought for less than $10 shipped most of the time. Are there any old wifi cards that are worth hanging on to? I know that for specific systems you may need specific white-listed cards, but to be frank, I hate working with laptops and I don't see myself suddenly taking on lots of retro-laptop wifi-card replacement jobs. When I can buy the latest and best card that works with a given system for $5-$20, it makes hoarding a couple pounds of cards for eternity seem not worth it. If these ever end up collectible, I'll be surprised, because they are usually among the last things to be harvested from a laptop before the system is junked entirely, and they don't go bad that often.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.