VanillaFairy wrote on 2026-05-17, 12:44:

Took in a really old PC of a friend's who didn't want it & just had it in their attic unfortunately the motherboard is toast, bu […]
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Took in a really old PC of a friend's who didn't want it & just had it in their attic
unfortunately the motherboard is toast, bulging capacitors. Probably fixable but I lack the equipment or skills to do so.

I'm hoping that whatever CPU in it isn't toast, at least... (unless it was a Celeron competitor, but even then I don't really want it to be dead.)

There's a saying, "you cannot break what is already broken."

Though, I'm not entirely sure the same phrase isn't catalogued in a list of famous last words.

MattRocks wrote on Today, 09:19:

There's a saying, "you cannot break what is already broken."

Though, I'm not entirely sure the same phrase isn't catalogued in a list of famous last words.

I guess that's right, although I have a tendency to be very accident-prone so I don't know if soldering new caps would be feasible without accidentally kiling my lungs with the fumes or just generally being stupid and getting myself hurt.
Could probably also just try sending it, seeing what happens if I plug it into 240V as-is, though I feel like that could make things even worse assuming it somehow works-

worst case scenario though I can probably try to either get a new motherboard for that PC, or just strip it for parts and use the case for my P4 build. (though I feel like it'd be a downgrade going from some form of Athlon around 2004-2005 to a Northwood P4 with a lowend motherboard from 2002. even putting aside how this system has SATA while my P4 motherboard only has IDE.)