Rokkaholik Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 ... Is sometimes YOUR treasure! So... Went down to the recycling center the other night to get some shipping boxes out of the cardboard dumpster. A guy pulls in and lays down 4 PC towers as well as a box of miscellaneous parts next to the electronics dump box, which is LOCKED, because you have to pay a small fee to ditch your stuff. I looked at the stuff and asked the guy if anything worked and he gave me a snotty look and said something like "if they worked, I'd be keeping them". He then went on and on about how he's tested everything and none of it is worth a crap. So... He then leaves. I grabbed his "junk box" as well as the 4 towers and brought them home. Much to my surprise, 3 of the 4 towers needed very little work to get them going. The 4th does have a bad motherboard. They were: Dell Dimension 3000 Dell Dimension 4700 Dell Optiplex GX280 HP Pavillion A306X The HP had a dead stick of memory. Once replaced, it booted just fine and I hit the F10 and it restored itself to new The Dell GX280... No CLUE what the hell the guy was talking about, because I did nothing more than plug it in and it worked perfectly. Dell Dimension 3000: has a faulty motherboard. Boots to Bios, but then the screen goes blank after 45 seconds Dell Dimension 4700: No hard drive but boots to Bios just fine and stays up and running for over 45 minutes without a problem Extra box o'goodies EVGA 790i FTW motherboard: noticed a small burnt area up by the heatsink at the top of the motherboard, but what REALLY caught my eye was the fact that it still had a CPU in it. I wiped away the thermal greast and found a cute little E8500. ASUS M2N-DH: This won't post no matter what I do, but I happily took the 1gb of memory out of it ASUS M2N: This one had 2 bad caps, which I replaced both and under the overly crapped up heatsink sat a 4200+ AM2 Socket CPU. After some cleaning and cap replacing, it booted just fine. Dell Inspiron 530/530s motherboard: After researching what this motherboard came out of, I found a CPU compatibility list, which showed an E8500. So I took the E8500 that I got from the EVGA motherboard and threw it in this motherboard, took OUT the 2gb PC2-3200 that was in the board (This board needs a minimum of PC2-5300) and installed the correct speed memory and everything booted correctly. ASUS A8N-E: Boots to the ASUS screen and stays there. The keyboard flashes quickly and then nothing. I can't get it to go to BIOS at all. The Athlon 64 3700+ CPU was still under the perfectly good heatsink, so I tested it in another board and it works fine. ASUS M4A7BLT-M LE Motherboard: This one was missing the white CPU cradle, which I found in the bottom of the box later along with a AMD Athlon II X2 2.9GHz CPU. The CPU was pretty beat up and had MANY bent pins. I have them all corrected now but unfortunately, there are 4 broken pins along one edge. I'm calling the local jewelery place sometime this week to see if the goldsmith can add 4 new pins Also found in the box: AMD Turion 64 x2 TL-50 CPU: I can't test it right now so I don't know if it'll work or not. A few bent pins that were easily corrected. Centrino Duo 1.73GHz: Pulled this out of a nasty laptop motherboard that looked pretty worn, like it was skipped down a driveway. Tested in a laptop I have here and it worked fine. Intel T2300 Core Duo CPU 1.66GHz: Haven't tested this yet Many sticks of 256mb memory which all worked fine. I can only assume these were pulled and thrown in favor of upgrades? Many power cords, which all work. You never have enough of these Many various wireless PCI cards for laptops. I'll test them as I need them 3 Power supples. One of the 3 actually worked. It's a 300w 24pin, so it's pretty universal 6 various ROM drives, 4 of which work, but haven't tested their DVD/CD burning capability as of yet. WD MyBook External Hard drive with both it's cables. The drive clicks like crazy, but I'll use the case and throw in a new drive. Seagate 160gb SATA Hard Drive: powers up fine and I can read and write to it. Will do a full test later All in all, I made a pretty good haul from someone who obviously didn't know what they were doing Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bosco Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 You got all of that for free I think someone lucked out big time nice work Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onion Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 Dang. I'll go to the dump more often lol. Nice find! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewr05 Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 I love when people throw . away and act as if there is nothing that can make it work. Well, I mean I don't and it is stupid but its great for the people that find it. I helped my brother in law fix a chainsaw a few years back, his buddy was going to throw it away because he ran straight gasoline through it and couldn't get it to work. We pulled it apart, it hadn't scored anything inside fortunately but the piston WAS stuck in the cylinder, all it took was a smack with a small dowel and it was free. Ran it overmixed for half a tank and its been running ever since. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 (edited) I'm assuming the guy "repairs" or upgrades his own PC's or possibly other peoples stuff, but isn't all that great about trouble shooting things. Process of elimination lead me to find that the one motherboard wouldn't boot due to the wrong memory inserted and the other PC not booting thanks to the dead ram stick. I'm not too sure I'd trust that guy to fix much of anything after finding all this crap. I did have high hopes that the EVGA 790i FTW would work until I saw the sizzled area. The real finds for me were the E8500, AM2, AM3, 939 CPU's as well as the working motherboards that I can resell on evilbay. I just hope the AM3 can be saved by the goldsmith and it actually works. I did forget to add another motherboard as well. It's a Biostar p4m800pro-m7. It gas an AGP video card slot, but is apparently a 2006 motherboard. The motherboard boots up fine and it came with a 3.46GHz Celeron D in it. This one had ZERO issues, but the heatsink and fan were pretty much frozen in place thanks to the dark tar-like crap loaded up on them. Must have been in a smokers home. I managed to get it all cleaned off and it runs quiet now. Edited April 11, 2011 by Rokkaholik Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 Wanna sell that E8500? I'd like to play with one in the DFI board I got back from RMA but they are ludicrously expensive everywhere I look. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 (edited) Wanna sell that E8500? I'd like to play with one in the DFI board I got back from RMA but they are ludicrously expensive everywhere I look. So I can't be ludicrous? Here's the info from the top of the CPU INTEL '06 E8500 INTEL Core 2 Duo SLAPK MALAY 3.16GHz/6M/1333/06 Q814A161 Edited April 11, 2011 by Rokkaholik Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 I would hope not. I'm not sure what you're looking to get for it if you do want to sell it. They are going for a little over $100 on Ebay but for that price I can get a Q6600. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewr05 Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 I'll be the mediator, I say Waco gives you $40 for it and he owes you a discount of $15 on a later purchase towards an item he may be selling. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 $60 is more than I was hoping. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewr05 Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 $60 is more than I was hoping. $60? I don't see $60 anywhere, you're obviously delirious. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted April 11, 2011 Posted April 11, 2011 I have to research the stuff this week before I list anything here or on evilbay anyway Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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