Show off your old and retro computer parts

[da na]

11 minutes ago, Bitter said:

I need to do similar and repair two older macbooks for my GF. I also may be in over my head.

Oldest Macbook I've worked on is an A1278, I have had several brought to me with failed boards. One water damaged, one dead GPU solder balls, one dead charging circuit. Not too hard to initially open but there were many different screw types and way too many screws overall.

[Bitter]

10 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Oldest Macbook I've worked on is an A1278, I have had several brought to me with failed boards. One water damaged, one dead GPU solder balls, one dead charging circuit. Not too hard to initially open but there were many different screw types and way too many screws overall.

Thankfully these all still run most of the time but very poorly, I don't even know what numbers or hardware they are. 2 of them are the old thiccboi.

Went and looked, A1260 and A1286.

[WhitetailAni]

Went to freegeek St. Paul today.

No pictures but wow did they have stuff (mostly from Computer Reset).

Bins of PCI cards and Slot 1 P2/P3’s.

A PowerBook G3 Pismo.

Two Mac Pro 2010s

An 8” floppy drive

iPods galore (they didn’t have any Touches though)

A PCIe x4 Blackmagic Studios card that I think was an old Mac capture card?

Bunch of IDE, SATA, and SAS hard drives

A light-up P4HT signpost that my dad sadly wouldn’t let me get. Yes, it did overheat.

A cursed iPad 4 that had no square on the home button

Spoiler

 

And then I got:

- PS2 network adapter for $2

- iPad camera kit in box for $1

- Replacement heat sink for my Power Mac G4 for 50 cents

- Anti static bags

[8tg]

13 hours ago, 8tg said:

I have bit off more than I can chew 

 

this is such a complicated machine, it’s genuinely impressive what some of the workarounds were at the time to create such a thin and light laptop 

Update, straight into the garbage. Just when I got all of the rubberized coating off the palmrest, it started getting sticky everywhere else. Along with that the majority of this machines bodywork is tape and glue, I was thinking I could remove the adhesive on the speaker grilles and use some double sided tape around the edges to replace it.

No, they crumbled immediately.

the entire chassis flexes, it’s covered in these annoying adhesive panels that cover up holes, some of these panels are the size of a credit card and are covered in crumbs, the Heatsink is anemic and can’t even cool the 7 watt 1.2ghz core2duo in there. 
The rubberized coating makes it look like ass, it has the worst keyboard I’ve ever used of this generation, it’s flimsy and this never should’ve been called a thinkpad.

I hate throwing away a machine like this, but there is no saving this hardware, this is garbage and I see why nobody likes them.

[SimplyChunk]

9 hours ago, 8tg said:

Update, straight into the garbage. Just when I got all of the rubberized coating off the palmrest, it started getting sticky everywhere else. Along with that the majority of this machines bodywork is tape and glue, I was thinking I could remove the adhesive on the speaker grilles and use some double sided tape around the edges to replace it.

No, they crumbled immediately.

the entire chassis flexes, it’s covered in these annoying adhesive panels that cover up holes, some of these panels are the size of a credit card and are covered in crumbs, the Heatsink is anemic and can’t even cool the 7 watt 1.2ghz core2duo in there. 
The rubberized coating makes it look like ass, it has the worst keyboard I’ve ever used of this generation, it’s flimsy and this never should’ve been called a thinkpad.

I hate throwing away a machine like this, but there is no saving this hardware, this is garbage and I see why nobody likes them.

My step dad is really impressed with his £220 Thinkpad L480.  So my Mum ended up paying for it as a birthday present for him

[Dabombinable]

For those with Socket A systems that still function - you really aren't missing out on much if anything at all by comparison to socket 370 and Coppermine/Tualatine in regards to performance. Definitely won't have as many reasons to use my Abit VP6 and Jetway994AN-L:
Lo-Cost Duel: Duron 1100 vs. Celeron 1200 - THG.RU

[Kensuki]

On 5/23/2022 at 9:26 AM, Mel0nMan said:

Could take the heatsink off, much easier to ship then

well they're gone

[kdgreen]

Need to get the LCD working again, but this is my grandfather's Toshiba T3100. When the LCD was working it had some DOS games like MathBlaster that still worked.

If I can't get the LCD working again, I might try turning this into a sleeper cyberdeck.

Also, the buckling spring keyboard is amazing to type on, 10/10.

[Kilrah]

Not mine, but on a visit for cleanup/repair. 

 

Before:

 

 

 

After: 

 

 

 

 

Forgot to take a picture but the LCD had about 10 columns missing, that was surprisingly successfully repaired.

 

 

2 of them, 2nd just needs cleaning. 

[da na]

27 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

2 of them

Nice!
For the one with missing columns, did it just need the connector resoldered? 

[Kilrah]

The issue was the actual connection between the glass and the fine flex, the trick of putting some kapton tape on top and then going over the whole thing with a 250°C iron with flat tip worked

[SimplyChunk]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

The issue was the actual connection between the glass and the fine flex, the trick of putting some kapton tape on top and then going over the whole thing with a 250°C iron with flat tip worked

I'll remember that if i ever have any issues with my Pocket

[Dabombinable]

Clean build...but another repaired mobo needs more caps replaced. Might be the board it came with - but I'm switching over to the SE440BX-2. Old reliable and I can use my PIII.

 

[harveychestbreach]

I have a Toshiba T1000 with the original box. It still has the original owners info on it lol.

[Dabombinable]

Going back to my more stable "450A" from the "500". And I have to pencil mod them to 66mhz:

Cooler came on the 300A. Best Celeron ever made.

[Unedited_Mind]

There is an old computer my father got handed to him from family back when I was like 6 years or so of age and it had giant floppy disks, I played an aircraft game on it, if I recall you could shoot things and you had to try and get to the end of the level, the screen was green. The keyboard had a spring loaded wire.

 

I to this day have never found the exact model.

[Dabombinable]

Finally finished the build side of things. Working perfectly - though my PIII 650 seems to be dead...so Celeron 300A:

[Dabombinable]

49 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

Neat! You might want to see how far you can overclock that Celeron. If I remember correctly, damn near every single one of the things could run reliably at 450 MHz. If the motherboard prevents you from overclocking it, taping over Pin B21 should circumvent that:

Already done - went all in and cut the trace on the 300A and one of my 333. Unfortunately my only board that could overvolt the 333/500 doesn't work.

[Mitko_DSV]

On 5/15/2022 at 10:10 PM, Mitko_DSV said:

I have a similar PC:

AMD Athlon64 x2 4600+ 2.4GHz

4GB DDR2 800MHz

MSI nVidia GeForce 9500GT 1GB

Haven't tested how YouTube runs on Win 7, but on Win XP SP3 it can play perfectly 1080p video from YouTube (tested in Chrome and Firefox) and the CPU sits at 50-60% usage even. Don't have a recent picture of it inside or running, but here's how it looks outside and the setup. Both Windows versions are on different 80GB SATA HDDs. The HDD that can be seen trough the hole in the front is a 500GB one and I use it as a backup (usually not plugged in when using the PC). The Win 7 install I use for testing HDDs/GPUs, but mainly HDDs in the front bay (the black one in the third 5.25" bay), can't remember what it was exactly called, I guess I'm too tired to think properly. Some day when I have time I can take a picture of the inside and it running.

A few days ago had to replace the CMOS battery and remembered to take pictures. Here's the inside:

In the bottom of the case is a dead 80GB IDE HDD (I think it was a Seagate something), two 1GB DDR2 and a 2GB DDR2 stick of RAM, which are working, but for some reason the motherboard sometimes refuses to boot with all the RAM in it, so currently it only has a single 4GB DDR2 stick, not that more RAM would make sense when running XP SP3. The top HDD is a WesternDigital Raptor WD740 10000 rpm on which is XP and the bottom HDD is a 80GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200 rpm where Windows 7 Pro is installed for testing HDDs in the front bay or testing GPUs.

 

And from the outside:

In the box under the desk is my soldering iron. I use the keyboard tray of this tiny desk to solder, not the best place, but better than nothing.

[Dabombinable]

Bit awkward since I used the connector from another cable. But it'll work:

This particular card is only good for SLI though as the output is faulty.

 

[da na]

Diasassembled my HP iPaq PDA today since I thought there was an issue with the backup battery and it needed to be replaced.

It was quite complex, even more difficult than some modern Android phones. 

Here is its small Intel CPU

These rather shiny Samsung memory chips, 64MB each IIRC. Seems to be discrepancy whether they are SRAM or DRAM but SRAM seems likely.

I apologize for the residue on the top RAM chip and CPU, there was a sticker across them and I didn't want to damage anything removing it.

Holding its resistive touch panel at an angle under light allows you to see the small points that allow the resistive touch input to work.

Now, to figure out why it will not save information if the backup battery is rechargeable. Probably just needs to be left on the dock for a while.

[Kilrah]

23 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Now, to figure out why it will not save information if the backup battery is rechargeable.

They're rechargeable but dead by now regardless so won't charge anymore.

[da na]

Just now, Kilrah said:

They're rechargeable but dead by now regardless so won't charge anymore.

might just find out what voltage it's supposed to be and swap it for a non rechargable and a diode

[Dabombinable]

Newest additon to my AGP collection. Hopefully this 3rd Geforce 2 works. Unlike the one from my Uncle's old PC which has donated fan screws to my Vanta.

[Dabombinable]

It works perfectly (ignore my Live Value! - its been disabled until I install the better drivers). Cost only $9.99 as untested. $19.27 with postage. VGA output is bad at 1080p though. One area the FX5700LE is excellent.