MaxWar wrote:Aw so sad to hear stories of how humans trash their good stuff around.
At one house, I saw the ultimate trashed computer. I don't know what they did to it, but it looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. The case was dented in, the motherboard was cracked, the video, sound and network cards were broken, the ram sticks were broken, the CPU chip was in a nearby box and about 1/4 of the pins were bent over. About the only thing that looked intact was the hard drive, which I took. However when I plugged it in as a slave drive, the system wouldn't boot. It also sounded like a vacuum cleaner.
I found two DVD-ROM drives and one burner at a house right nearby, but none of them worked. I also found a pile of 3-4 wireless keyboards, but no receivers, so I didn't take them.
Oh, I also found an old Compaq laptop. It looks complete, but I have to find a power supply for it. I also have a cute little Toshiba Libretta 50CT that I found. The batteries are shot, but it works fine with a power supply. Has Windows 95 on it, but nothing else. It also doesn't have any ports, other than one on the bottom meant to connect it to some kind of docking station, so I can't even install anything on it.
One house that had a quite large pile of junk last year, had two computers (my friend found them, so he claimed both for his brother, since he doesn't use computers himself), an LCD monitor, about four Dell keyboards (used) and about six Dell mice, still sealed in plastic bags.
I've also gotten a bunch of sound cards, one of which I'm using now, and some older graphics cards. I have two GeForce FX5200 graphics cards that I got from different houses. One is a PCI card with a fan on it and the other is an AGP card. They both work, but when I plugged the PCI one in, before I'd cleaned and lubed the fan, the heatsink got hot enough to burn your finger! It also performed worse than my current card. The AGP version seemed to stay cool, even without a fan, but after my experience with the other one, I want to mount a fan on it, before I trust it. I know the FX5200 isn't the best card, but I have an older system and right now I only have a GeForce MX440, which doesn't have pixel shaders, so I figure it's a step up.
I have a couple Microsoft Sidewinder joysticks, but they're both missing the cords. I bought a copy of one of them at Goodwill for $2, so I should be able to use that as a guide to put a cord on one of them. The other one is a big, force-feedback model so the wiring is probably a bit different. I figured that I could find some info on the net, but so far I've come up dry.
Oh, I even have a Mac clone made by Power Computing. I couldn't do much with it as I didn't have a mouse for it at the time. I found a couple Mac mice this last time, but haven't felt like digging out the computer and setting it up.
Not to mention that in past years, I've lugged home a bunch of older outdated system from Dell, Compaq, HP, etc. Most are either incomplete or don't boot. The best system I found was 2.4Ghz P4 with XP on a 30GB hard drive. Of course it was so full of crap that it literally took 20 minutes before the drive stopped loading! I still haven't gotten around to wiping it and trying to re-install XP. I just disabled pretty much everything in the startup. Doesn't anyone really need three different IM programs running at boot???
I even found a little home-made porn on a couple of them. 😉
MaxWar wrote:I happen to have a case just like the upper one. I also found it on the side walk, Mine contained a AMD-K6-2/500AFX still on its motherboard with the keatsink and and PSU. But in a funny way the rest of the case was used as a dumpster for verious parts, cables, screws, a floppy drives, nic adapters, a modem. Everything just thrown in there then the lid screwed back on. A real treasure box 😁
I haven't even opened them to look inside. The first one is lighter and has something loose rattling around, so they probably took out the HD. The PB one is heavy. It's also big. If it were completely hollow, the other computer would practically fit inside it.
And what is it with the rubber feet? Almost every computer I find is missing at least one of them, even when they're the type that plug into the holes! Those things don't come out that easily.