Taking apart old family XP computer

[MatazaNZ]

I found my old family PC in the storage area under our house, and my curiosity got the better of me. I took it completely apart, taking a few photos along the way. There was so much old tech in there, I haven't seen any of this kind of thing in person before, so it was very interesting for me. Some of it, I still don't know what it is. Bear with me with the photos, as the lighting in my room is terrible, and this was taken with my phone's camera.

 

The computer looks to be a Packard Bell iMedia M22000NW. I think we've had this since about 2004, so that makes it about 10 years old.
 
So this is just a glamour shot of the tower, in all it's old glory.

 

The top of the case included a sticker with some of the specs of this PC. It seems it had an Intel Celeron at 2GHz, 128MB of DDR RAM and a 40GB HDD, with 1.5GB reserved for system recovery.

 

 

Let's open this baby up. After opening up the side panel, I'm greeted by the sight of a mess of cables, mostly IDE and floppy cables, and those from the PSU. After pushing some off to the side, this is how it looks.

 

A closer look at the heatsink.

 

A couple of things I'm not sure what they are just yet.

 

Here is the RAM. It seems, in addition to the stock 128MB, my dad went and added in an additional 512MB. Kind of makes me cringe seeing two different brand and memory sizes of RAM, but this PC worked just fine when it was in it's prime.

 

Pop off the front bezel, and it reveals a few screws for the HDD mount, and exposes the optical and floppy drives.

 

It seems this case had some sort of cable management feature, although, the holes are way too small to make much use of it, so I'm not sure why it's needed.

 

Here's the 40GB HDD, Seagate, no less.

 

It had some sort of rubber casing, part of the original drive, possibly as an anti-static and anti-vibration measure. This is the drive with the rubber removed.

 

The PSU. It was a 250W, generic, non-modular PSU.

 

This seems to be either a NIC, or the 56K V.92 soft modem the specs speak of. EDIT: This is indeed a 56K modem.

 

EDIT: I now know this is a S/P-DIF digital sound header

 

Now onto the more fun stuff, the CPU and heatsink!

This is another look at the heatsink fan

 

A close-up of the aluminium fins of the heatsink, caked in dust (ew).

 

It took me a minute to figure out how to remove the brackets that held the heatsink in place, but once I figured it out, the heatsink was off in no time. Here are the brackets for those interested.

 

And now the revealed CPU and socket! EDIT: I know now that this is likely to be Socket 478

 

And here is the CPU, cleared of all the thermal paste that was caked on it, which looked like toothpaste in my opinion. And is that a QR code? After some research, based on the knowledge that this is 2GHz, and it says "Intel '02" on it, I found out this was the Celeron 2.0

 

Just taking a little tour around the motherboard now.

Overview of the motherboard

 

A few blown capacitors on the motherboard

 

Cell battery for the BOIS

 

Rear I/O panel. EDIT: The yellow port seems to be a game controller connector (joystick, maybe?), the pink connector is a parallel port for printers and such, and the port to the left of the VGA is a serial connector.

 

CMOS jumper

 

That PCB though

 

One of the IDE cables

 

There you have it, the parts of my old family computer. It was fun to take apart. Now some parts will serve as little trophies in my room, like the CPU and RAM. The HDD now serves as a coaster for me, as it does not work at all. This computer was my childhood computer, so I suppose it's kind of poetic, in some twisted way, that I am the one to strip it of it's innards. I hope you all enjoyed this look into the past as much as I did.

 

EDIT: Thank you @lani100, @daemonowner, @FizzyFantom and @LukaP for confirming what some of the parts were, the help was appreciated

[lani100]

Yep that's a cell battery for keeping the bios and time/date settings when the pc is turned of.

I beleive this is a socket 478 motherboard which was very popular in that time.

[daemonowner]

Yes those are blown capacitors.

I deconstructed my grandmothers ~12yo PC not long ago. I already hate IDE cables. The power supply had most of the capacitors blown, and was a 300W piece of junk anyway, so I smashed it to bits with a sledgehammer.

^Socket 478 as well.

[LukaP]

56K modem, socket 478 id say.

 

blown caps, a cell battery for clock keeping, and some parallel ports

[MatazaNZ]

Thanks for the quick replies on the things I was unsure about. Hoped you liked the trip down old PC lane

[LukaP]

Thanks for the quick replies on the things I was unsure about. Hoped you liked the trip down old PC lane

and that orange thingy is a S/P-DIF digital sound header

[Tygron]

That pink connector there is a parallel port. I believe the thing most plugged into that were printers. Yes. Printers didn't always run on USB.

[MatazaNZ]

That pink connector there is a parallel port. I believe the thing most plugged into that were printers. Yes. Printers didn't always run on USB.

Thanks for the info I'm still learning all these things, it's actually really interesting. Even though the knowledge isn't really necessary in a practical sense these days, it's handy to have

[FizzyFantom]

The pink port at the rear is a parallel port, mostly used for printers, but I have a Zip Drive that connects to a parallel port. The round orage port is an RCA most likely for digital audio output. The yellow connector is a game controller connector, which I have never seen used. And the one left of the VGA is a serial port, which was used for mice (before PS2) and other expansion, for example an old scanner I have in a box. Very interesting to see an older machine with a digital audio out (if that is what it is), thanks for sharing

[Guest]

Not to bad.

 

Who am I lying to??????

[Tygron]

Yea the little orange one is digital out. Didn't know that about the game controller port though, but i'd heard about it.

And no problem .

[MatazaNZ]

The pink port at the rear is a parallel port, mostly used for printers, but I have a Zip Drive that connects to a parallel port. The round orage port is an RCA most likely for digital audio output. The yellow connector is a game controller connector, which I have never seen used. And the one left of the VGA is a serial port, which was used for mice (before PS2) and other expansion, for example an old scanner I have in a box. Very interesting to see an older machine with a digital audio out (if that is what it is), thanks for sharing

Thanks for the info More and more people helping with gaps in my knowledge, it's great! I was happy to share this. I found the computer (wrapped in cling wrap of all things), and decided to take it apart, and thought "why not take some pictures and share them on LTT?"

[The Crazed Child]

I cringed when I saw those blown capacitors. It almost looked like the chemicals inside were about to flow out.

[MatazaNZ]

I cringed when I saw those blown capacitors. It almost looked like the chemicals inside were about to flow out.

This thing has been sitting under the house in a storage area for years, I would say since about 2008