Recently I ended embarking myself in an unexpected and unplanned tech adventure while trying to resurrect a motherboard that was tossed around like trash.
Starting the story from the beginning, I got this board in an event called CyberCirujas, organized by a group of the same name in the terrains of the UNC (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba) on April, where people shared hardware, knowledge and tips so people that was needing something to complete a basic computer could finally do so. I was only able to go briefly and put in the “pot” a netbook and a couple of tablets (tablets are not my thing really) but grabbed a few things and helped at least two persons to get off the event with potentially (if they worked) “complete” computers (well, motherboard + processor + RAM since they did have the rest needed). Hopefully this experiences will be repeated! In one of the pictures you can see the netbook I donated having its RAM upgrade by Nicolás Wolovick (@nwolovick on twitter) one of the organizer of the event. 
Between the things I picked up, where for example this two beauties, that I hope to test out in some point, but worth to have even if they don´t!
But returning to the subject of this post, another of the things picked was this Asrock 945GCM-S board, along an Intel E5200 dual core processor (without the cooler and battery, but I was already testing the board when started with the idea for this a post). The board initially have a tape that translate as “Discard motherboard gifted to me in Villa Maria, teachers capacitation UEPC 2019” and talking with Nicolás he confirmed to me that a IT business give that board to him as trash just to have something to demonstrated what was a motherboard to the people going to that capacitation. I picked the board thinking “well, at least I can practice soldering/desoldering of components”.
And indeed, the first test were… anticlimactic, basically nothing… a black void. The motherboard was getting power and starting but nothing else. But after reseating the processor again.. glitches! Random glitches witch each reset (Example picture, I forget to take a photo but was very similar to this).
Why so happy do you ask? Well, the board was not completely dead! In that moment, and since it was a weekend and really needed something to take my mind of things, my curiosity went onto overdrive. Was time to dig in my stash for memories and CPU´s. My first choice was an untested Intel E2200 dual core, that I knew once visited the floor and have the scar to show it. Cleared the CMOS memory once more, tried it and…. Bingo! We have image and its posting!
First thing was to monitor is the CPU temp was correct since didn´t remember is the cooler was good and run some memory test with a couple of different memories sticks.
The test looked good for the most part… a couple of weird errors, but they disappeared when I cleaned the memory slots. So time to test out some operating systems annnnnnd….
Well… yeah, a lot of nothing… no matter what operating system I tried the result was the same, the computer was unable to go beyond of the first screen of the booting process of any Windows or Linux installer, not freezing but just hanging there. What to test… another CPU, adding a GPU in case the on board chip is having problems?
Luckily recently another technician passed to me an ATI Radeon X300 SE, which I needed to test anyway so tried and… forget to film that (lol).
Basically the system wasn´t hanging in blank screens anymore but just rebooting every time something like the logo of Windows 7 or Ubuntu tried to start loading. Time to remove the ATI card and go back to the drawing board with the CPU.
So, found a Celeron 420, single core, again untested, between my options and tried it and… 
Success!! After a quick test with Ubuntu, went to try another installation of Windows 7 and this time it worked “well”, for a very basic Celeron.
But the system wasn´t entirely stable. Really weird freeze happened at random, and those freeze were so severe that even the CMOS clock was freezing the time in that point, and that is really odd to see. In that moment I notice something, a very small glitch in the screen that was really hard to catch on camera.
As you can see, a very faint glitching line was coming and going on the top of the screen. That told me that there is a problem with the on board graphics of the motherboard. After putting again the ATI card, that glitch went away completely and the computer become much more stable but the performance was… almost basic netbook levels, not good enough even for a basic general use, even with 3 Gb of DDR2 RAM. But at least is working, but is not good enough!
So without any other options in my stash was time to do some experiments and maybe found a better CPU… with the help of my pretty much dead old test bench computer. Tune in for the second part to see how this adventure continues!
You can also follow me in twitter at @HADL2015!