Friday´s night and time to unwind a bit, so will take the opportunity to post something quick about my "new segment": Random Hardware Loot! (I´m a clever gamer... lol)
I didn´t plan to get some random stuff right now because I´m very limited in my movements due to the pandemic and still not vaccination, but a neighbor ask me if I wanted an old computer that somebody else was throwing away and my answer was: Of course!! (I have survived quite a bit with random parts that I have found here and there, my Quarian instincts are quite strong ;) )
The loot!
Even if it’s a 14" CRT monitor and a case sporting a floppy drive I feel like kid in a candy store with this happens, so let´s do a quick check of the hardware!
First the monitor, since I don´t have so much space it’s a matter of "go / no go", if it’s broken I cannot keep it around and...
Works perfectly! Surprising, its quite clean and well conserved aside the yellowing of the frontal section (the back looks white), have it working for a few hours and no strange noises or smells, so score! I have a couple more of 15" CRT screens, but since those are more "modern" having a more "old looking" is going to be perfect for my projects.
Here some data on the model, no much aside this since Likom was never a big brand and I only remember cheap peripherals from them back in the day, maybe some CD-ROM drives. Likom still is out there but they don´t do much of relevance.
Now the computer...
Sadly, busted capacitors, around 4 like the one in the picture, so probably the motherboard is dead. Not exactly a surprise since it’s an Asrock P4i45GV R5.0, this boards were dirty cheap back in the day and were used in almost every pre-build computer sell in appliance stores, and not exactly the best model combined with less than tech savvy people was not a good combo. And my money is that the processor is going to be a Celeron, so not losing anything big there.
The rest looks quite fine, aside some dust. Two DDR 1 memory sticks, 512 MB and 256 MB, hopefully still good to use in another system. The power supply is much modern that the original date of the machine, so was change in some point, hopefully it’s still functional. Plus a CD-ROM unit and a 3 1/2 floppy drive.
IDE Hard Drive of 80 GB, crossing fingers that it’s still good since it’s also a good candidate to use in other projects.
The case looks mostly fine aside a big oxide blob in the bottom, but since it’s only in the exterior that is an easy fix even for my current skills. Also good material to repurpose in another project.
So that´s it! Once I have time to do a diagnostic on the computer or individual parts will know for sure but there is potential there!