Nightmare "upgrade"

[SavannahLion]

For the most part, upgrades are pretty rare for me. Long ago I stopped pumping money into piecemeal upgrades with my PC's. Oh sure, the occasional RAM or HDD upgrade happens or the occasional GPU upgrade when a game calls for it. Or, more often, I'll upgrade some component when the original fails. For me, I build the PC in its entirety and all the components are effectively "married" together for the life of the machine. Once its useful life ends, I'll scavenge the PC for parts to keep my other older PCs operating.

So bring in my mother with her 7+ year old IBM. It's running dog slower than usual. So I drop in my usual Bart recover and scan disc and... nothing. WTF? OK, drop in Knoppix and... I get punted into the command line... Huh?

Alright, OK whatever. Took me about forty minutes before I realized the PC was running 32MB of RAM. Holy ---Cleveland steamer---. So I pull out some random compatible board (P5A or the BH6 I forget) yank the measly 128MB sticks in there and toss them in the IBM. As I'm pulling the IBM RAM out, I pop one of the numerous ill placed capacitors. I don't just bend it over, one of the legs actually pops right out. Oh ---Cleveland steamer--- on a stick. So I fire up my soldering iron, pull the entire board out to take a look and... lo and behold, it's got Badcaps. Well ---fudgesicle--- a duck, no wonder it's running like ---Cleveland steamer---.

I was presented with a dilemma. Try and repair an aging board with about $5 worth of caps or go the upgrade route. I took the upgrade. Bumping a MicroATX (It looks more like a Mini ATX but whatever) board from an 800Mhz CPU to the newer dual core jobs.

$124 later I walk out of the store with a new MicroATX board, E2200, and a stick of RAM. More than enough to meet her browsing, email, and Grim Fandango fix. Toss in another Franklin and I can replace that crap ME install with XP. Made sure I lined up the mounting holes and jack position with the demo board on display. It'll fit in the case.

Go home and start pulling parts out of the case. Oops, the old PC has a 150 Watt 20 pin connector. Guess it's back to the store for a new power supply. The IBM supply looks like an MicroATX so that's what I buy. The store really only had two types anyways (four if you count their eMachine and AT supplies ) Drive back home. Pop the old supply out and... ---fudgesicle---.... I knew this wasn't going to be easy. The old PSU "looks" like a MicroATX but it's slightly larger and the screw positions are more like a full ATX. In fact, it's like they took all the measurements of a full blown ATX and scaled them down about 15%, right down to the positions of the screw holes. No way any other power supply was going to work without some serious case hacking nor was I going to get an IBM OEM replacement, the largest was 188 watts and none have the 20+4 connectors I needed. And they cost too damn much for such old hardware. ---fudgesicle--- that.

So here I am, trying to explain to my mother that with over half the parts swapped out, I might as well go for broke and build an all new PC. She's balking at replacing the capacitors but also at building from the ground up. Not much that I can do. 

I really hate returning hardware, but it looks like I'll be making trip number 3 for those returns. 

[Malenko]

I had a similar problem, I went to replace a power supply and bought one that was supposed to fit. the connectors were right but the screw holes were like 1/2 inch off, I just drilled new holes in the PC case and it worked just fine.

sounds like you should have just built a new one from the ground up from the start. good news is you'd have a buncha old parts to add to your collection.

[DaOld Man]

sounds like you should have just built a new one from the ground up from the start. good news is you'd have a buncha old parts to add to your collection.

I have a whole closet full of parts that have been in my collection since the 90's. I wonder if it is really worth even saving computer parts when you do an upgrade.

[Malenko]

got a "good" PCI video card? lol I pieced together a PC for my mame cab but all I have is PCI-e and AGP vid cards; but the PC was "free"

[DaOld Man]

I probably do, but I cant guarantee how good it is.
Let me take a look, if you really want it, I will give it to you.
Most likely dont have the drivers though.

[DaOld Man]

got a "good" PCI video card? lol I pieced together a PC for my mame cab but all I have is PCI-e and AGP vid cards; but the PC was "free"

PM sent

[SavannahLion]

sounds like you should have just built a new one from the ground up from the start. good news is you'd have a buncha old parts to add to your collection.

I have a whole closet full of parts that have been in my collection since the 90's. I wonder if it is really worth even saving computer parts when you do an upgrade.

I've been wondering the same thing myself. When I moved out of my cottage a few years back, I had a huge box of Compaq parts that I just tossed out. The kind of stuff that's standard in every respect except for one connector or one screw hole or a notch that's in the wrong place or whatever. The kind of stuff no one can figure out for years, so they sit in the supply box in the hopes someone can eventually figure out how to use them.

About a month ago, Hfe was selling a box of random memory modules for something like 50 cents or a dollar a piece. I half expected to see EDO or something similar in the box, turns out to be mostly DIMM modules. I spotted a few decent brands like Corsair, Crucial, and Kingston (Oddly, I didn't see any Mushkins). The first stick I picked up was 128MB. Talk about depressing, I've got half a dozen 128MB modules that I paid something like $40 or more a piece for and here's a 128MB stick selling for a few quarters. I couldn't even sell the crap I have on Craigs.

So I decided to thin out my hardware "collection". I tossed out all of the Compaq crap and all the CPU's older than a PII. I kept a few of each type of component for testing and recovery purposes. I'm trying to decide if I should toss the motherboards or strip them for usable components. It's all surface mount components so I don't know if there's any worth in that. I can't decide if I should keep the optical drives or scrap them for components. The hard drives I've started removing their data and moving it to DVD. I'll move them into a TB drive if I ever want to pull something off. Strangely enough, I couldn't find any of my old Graphic cards.... I know I didn't get rid of them, but I have no idea where they are. In any case, I'm happier for getting my closet space back. I'm bummed at seeing so much money gone.

[DaOld Man]

Yeah it sucks.
My first PC was a POS packard bell. It came with 2 megs of ram, no cd or sound card.
I spent 100 bucks for a soundblaster card, nearly that for a cd drive (I think it was a 4X), and a whopping 200 bucks for 4 megs of ram! (Thats right, 200 bucks for 4 megs!)
Now the whole thing is in a box collecting dust, well, the monitor has been long gone, I think i gave it to someone whose monitor had crashed. The case is gone too, not sure what i used that for.
I need to just throw the whole lot of junk away, but it sure is hard to do, knowing how much money i have tied up in it.

[RayB]

I walked into a store a couple weeks ago, looking for a power supply and walked out with an "off lease" computer that's 80% faster than my current computer (3.2ghz, 512mb, 80gig, U-ATA and SATA support, etc, etc) for the equivalent of $150 us.  Even came with a valid Windows XP key.

Beats going the upgrade path, and I can still pop in a few parts from my old computer (ram sticks, video card and sound card). Then the old computer becomes the family computer that I originally needed the power supply for! :-)

[SavannahLion]

I spent 100 bucks for a soundblaster card, nearly that for a cd drive (I think it was a 4X), and a whopping 200 bucks for 4 megs of ram! (Thats right, 200 bucks for 4 megs!)

Heh, that's the same way I feel about my Voodoo2 cards. I never had the heart to chuck them. I don't even know where the drivers are, much less if anybody still even has drivers to download.

[danny_galaga]

i saw the movie made by 'the onion' last weekend. i think this is relevant:

edit: woops. language warning!

[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=TRpuMYC6qyE[/youtube]

[abzman2000]

I have the space so I take whatever I can get.  I love being able to say "why of course I have that <insert obscure component here>, how many do you need?" I always want to build out all the components into like the 10 best computers I can make, but I never get enough time to do it.  All my parts are free, so whatever I can't use I scrap for components (capacitors, headers, I/O connectors, etc...). 

[DaOld Man]

i saw the movie made by 'the onion' last weekend. i think this is relevant:

 

[shardian]

For her needs, you could have just went to a local PC place, the flea market, Goodwill, etc... and just bought her a used PC for $50-$100. For $100, you could have gotten a high end P3, or an early P4.

There is no point in building  a low end PC if you are buying retail priced parts.

[SavannahLion]

For her needs, you could have just went to a local PC place, the flea market, Goodwill, etc... and just bought her a used PC for $50-$100. For $100, you could have gotten a high end P3, or an early P4.

P3/P4 PC's at the goodwill disappear in a hurry around here. What's generally left is AT style crap that boasts the CPU speed on a two digit LCD readout on the front panel and sport "boost" buttons.

[ark_ader]

I buy cheap laptops on Ebay.

Prefect for the basic Internet and Office machine for even less.

The ones I look for is the IBM Thinkpad 240 or 240x.