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I got a another pc...

dontabandonmedontabandonme
edited April 2012 in Hardware
Hello I have family friend that gave me a PC that has a AMD CPU. The problem is I can't seem to identify the brand of the pc. I also got some external CD-RW drives. I can't seem to identify 2 things on the drives. !) on 1 drive the cord for it goes in to a certain port that and I don't what port it goes in. 2) another one needs a power cord of a certain type. I wish I had pictures, but my phone is dead.

Comments

  • stitchstitch
    Pictures would really help here, so charge the phone. If the machine boots CPU-Z will give you the board manufacturer, if it's a large OEM their name will probably be there.
  • dontabandonmedontabandonme
    well, before I can do that I need to know what's on it. My dad is looking at it right now for the weekend. I know every thing (the tower, the printer, the 3 external CD-RW drives) will work, but he will install a fresh copy of Windows if it's to much to remove in 10 minutes worth of searching. But I do have the cords, so I can take pics of those.
  • gdea73gdea73
    if you're responsible for the data on it, just dump the contents of the disk to another medium, and then format it afterward. (Assuming the disk works, do a SMART test first, make sure SMART is enabled in BIOS as well - many BIOSes disable it by default, at least older ones.)

    Can you get it to boot? Boot to an Ultimate Boot CD or something, try to get some sysinfo out of that. Or just open it up and write down the motherboard's model number. That'll give you the FSB/RAM/CPU, or at least something close.
  • dontabandonmedontabandonme
    Well I don't think it works now (the pc) because when it boots all I hear is beeps. Nothing appears on screen.
  • stitchstitch
    Why don't you take a *full* photo of the board, there's probably some identifying model info on there somewhere
  • dontabandonmedontabandonme
    I can't seem to remove the motherboard. But what I can tell you is that:

    -It is a custom case
    -A ASUS brand motherboard
    -It needs some uncluttering of cords/dust
    -It needs a hard drive (which I just ordered).
    -256MB RAM
    -AMD CPU
    -1 floppy and 2 CDRW drives

    The picture will come soon just be patient.
  • gdea73gdea73
    It's an ASUS board, okay... well the ASUS boards (at least older ones) that I've seen are normally a brown/tan-colored PCB, with the model name in between the AGP slot and first PCI slot. Or between two of the expansion slots. Look there, you should almost definitely find a model number, if it's an ASUS.

    I had a similar-ish PC, which was an HP Pavilion 8860, which had an ASUS A7V-VM, IIRC. Smaller (micro-ATX? / square dimensions) board, Socket A with an Athlon 1 GHz Thunderbird installed, took PC133. This is all from memory, but it could be close to the board you have.

    Just curious, where'd you order an IDE hard drive from, and how much did it cost? I ordered a 160GB SATA from eBay for ~$20, a few months ago, turned out to have 600+ bad sectors, but would have been a good deal.
  • dontabandonmedontabandonme
    I found the model number. It's "A7M266". The IDE hard drive is coming from newegg (yes suprisingly they still sell those). The socket is Socket A.

    EDIT: I found documentation on ASUS's site.

    EDIT2: What is the best method for removing a cpu (and dust)?
  • gdea73gdea73
    Newegg's prices on hard drives in general, and before all of them were high, on IDE drives, weren't very impressive. But whatever, Newegg's great for new components.

    Why would you remove the CPU again?

    I sort of forgot and I don't really want to reread the thread, what are you trying to do other than identify the thing? I mean there you have it, it's a Socket A Athlon, it takes PC2100 (DDR 266) SDRAM, it's got an AGP Pro 4x slot, etc. Once you get your hard drive in the mail, hook it up as PriMas, and you should be good to go.
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