First post, by digger
- Rank
- Oldbie
So I transplanted the components of a very dirty old discarded Compaq machine to a clean ATX case, tested the rebuilt system, and played around with it a little. See also this post in the dumpster finds thread.
The only things I think are really worth noting about this system:
- The integrated audio has an S/PDIF digital audio output in the form of an RCA jack, right on the motherboard.
- The motherboard has a legacy PCI slot in addition to PCIe slots.
- The PCI bridge on this motherboard supports subtractive decode, which could be useful for certain legacy hardware compatibility.
- For a system from 2008, it runs surprisingly silent, both the ATX PSU and the CPU cooler.
Otherwise, it seems like a pretty unremarkable system. Honestly though, now that I have reassembled the system in a newer case, and have confirmed it to be working like a charm, I don't really have a use for it. And after watching LTT's recent $69 gaming PC video, it's become even clearer that this system would hardly be worth anything.
I also did a little on-line searching to find out if charities would be interested in a system like this, but one (Dutch) charity that collects old computers and laptops for developing countries mentioned that only systems no older than 8 years are accepted.
Do you think anybody would be interested in it? Would it be worth putting on offer on-line, even for free pick-up? Or would it be better to just bring this old beast to a recycling center?
It's a dual core Athlon 4450e CPU with 2GB DDR2 RAM in an nForce 430 motherboard. Only 2 of the 4 RAM slots are currently populated, and apparently this chipset supports up to 8GB of RAM, which is not bad. The motherboard has multiple SATA connectors, as well as a legacy IDE connector, and even a floppy connector.
Despite the on-board nvidia graphics, the system also came with a GeForce 9300 graphics card, that I don't really have a use for either.
Perhaps this fits into a broader discussion about what's worth keeping and what's truly ripe for recycling.
I'm a big believer in the historic value of old computers, but this is just way too common a system, and I really need to start getting rid of stuff. What do you guys think?