Old PC Resurrection
Copying this from a larger post made elsewhere, and modifying it to be all present tense...
About two and a half weeks ago I found an old tower sitting outside by the garbage cans while I was walking the dog - people don't seem to get the whole no electronic waste in regular trash thing yet.. So I took a look inside it, was missing RAM, HDD, video card and optical drives but otherwise seemed like a working Athlon XP-based PC.
So I bring it inside, throw some DDR in and turn it on. I didn't have an AGP video card at this point, but I was able to determine by the POST beeps that it seemed to be working and just needed a video card. So I went on Kijiji and got a Radeon 9250 from some guy up the road for $10, plugged it in and lo and behold it worked. A Thoroughbred Athlon XP 2400+, now with 2GB of RAM and a 40GB Maxtor HDD.
I quickly discovered some of the issues that likely resulted in it being trashed. The secondary IDE channel seems broken, as it wouldn't detect my optical drives or hard disks. No problem as this board has SATA, albeit requiring recent drives to be jumper-set to SATA1. Second issue is cooling, as I found it there was just an aluminum heatsink on the CPU with no fan, but I salvaged an old Intel CPU fan and clipped it on. It worked until I got something better.
Restoring this PC became a project of mine, likely to keep me distracted from more depressing things, but a project nonetheless. I've spent a fair amount of time dicking around with it. I ended up putting two optical drives on the primary IDE channel, a CD-RW and DVD-ROM, and using a 250GB WD SATA drive for storage.
I put a bit of money into this which is unusual for me but so is spending close to $250 for home theatre related stuff I'll likely never use. Guess I'm in a generous mood this month. So far in total I've spent $10 on a video card, $5 on a TriCool 80mm fan, and $15 for a Barton Athlon XP 2500+ off eBay along with trading some DDR2 for two good quality 17" CRT monitors.
When I ordered the better CPU I figured there would be no way that flimsy aluminum heatsink could keep it cool, especially if I wanted to try overclocking it up to a 3200+, just like in the old days with my 2600+.
So I placed an order with DirectCanada on the 23rd, owned by the same company that owns NCIX, for three items. A replacement USB version of my keyboard (MS Comfort Curve 2000), the 80mm TriCool fan, and an Antec Socket A heatsink that was shown as In Stock, both at BestDirect, NCIX and DirectCanada. At this point I'm thinking great, some leftover stock, works for me.
I end up getting the fan and keyboard the very next day - keyboard is great. But I noticed when I placed my order the stock status on the heatsink changed to Not Available and on some sites the SKU just disappeared entirely. So I finally emailed them on the 26th and get told no it's discontinued etc etc do you want a refund or exchange. Since they have no other Socket A coolers, I get a refund. That refund is still sitting my PayPal with a temporary hold placed on it for who knows what reason.
I ended up getting a Volcano 6cu from a guy free, fine by me. The 6cu isn't rated for Barton-based Athlon XP chips, but paired with adequate case cooling (two Antec TriCools, 120mm exhaust + 80mm intake, both set on medium for now) and modern thermal paste, I figured it'd be good enough. At this point I was under the impression the existing heatsink was pure aluminum, when it actually had a copper inset base as well, albeit a smaller one with stock thermal paste.
Shortly thereafter I impulsively bought a 256MB Radeon 9600 Pro off eBay for $16.50 shipped, about what I got refunded from DirectCanada plus $4. Compared to the 9250, the 9600 Pro is a way better card. Due to ATI's retarded numbering system at the time, the 9200 is R200-based while the 9600 and above are R300-based. R300 natively supports DirectX 9, and is supported by Catalyst up to 10.2 on XP and Vista, though I have no intention of going beyond XP with this system for now. Catalyst stopped supporting R200-based cards at 6.11.
Funny thing is that this PC doesn't really have a purpose so long as we live here, but if we end up moving in the next 3-6 months, it'll become Shed/Garage PC 2.0. Once everything is said and done, the specs should look something like this:
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @ 2.2 GHz (Barton AXDA2500DKV4D)
Heatsink: Thermaltake Volcano 6cu
Motherboard: Asus A7V600-X
RAM: 2GB DDR-400 (2 * 512MB + 1 * 1GB)
HDD: 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE (WD2500JS / 7200rpm / SATA)
CD/DVD: HL-DT-ST 52x24x52x CDRW (PATA - Master)
CD/DVD: Liteon 8x DVDROM (PATA - Slave)
Graphics: Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB AGP 8x
Wireless: Netgear WNA3100 802.11n USB
Display: Viewsonic G70mb 17" CRT (1024x768 / 85hz / VGA)
Keyboard: Compaq 104-key PS/2
Mouse: Logitech Optical Mouse USB
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3
So total money spent on this project: ~$45 CAD
Entertainment and nostalgia value: Priceless.
I find the nostalgia in this to be quite strong, one of my first custom built PCs was an Athlon XP 2600+ on the exact same motherboard IIRC, with a Thermaltake Volcano cooler at that.
The CPU came yesterday, getting it installed was easy. Unfortunately it turns out I can only run at DDR400 with 2 DIMMs on this board, and I have 3. No big loss, I figure it's better to have 2GB of RAM at PC2700 than 1GB at PC3200. If I end up getting a pair of 1GB sticks, I'll be able to run at DDR400 but I don't think it's a real pressing issue.
So after getting the RAM running at 333MHz with the right timings, I got to overclocking. FSB up to 200 and slight increase in voltage, effectively making it an Athlon XP 3200+, just like in the old days...the motherboard is a value board, so I doubt I'll have any luck getting it any higher.
Temperatures are surprisingly good given that this heatsink was only rated for earlier Thunderbird Athlons and Durons, around 50C under full load. Now I'm just waiting for the new GPU, and my future shed PC will be finished. It's ideal for this, because while it's running quite cool, it's also a loud ass motherfucker.
Picture time!
About two and a half weeks ago I found an old tower sitting outside by the garbage cans while I was walking the dog - people don't seem to get the whole no electronic waste in regular trash thing yet.. So I took a look inside it, was missing RAM, HDD, video card and optical drives but otherwise seemed like a working Athlon XP-based PC.
So I bring it inside, throw some DDR in and turn it on. I didn't have an AGP video card at this point, but I was able to determine by the POST beeps that it seemed to be working and just needed a video card. So I went on Kijiji and got a Radeon 9250 from some guy up the road for $10, plugged it in and lo and behold it worked. A Thoroughbred Athlon XP 2400+, now with 2GB of RAM and a 40GB Maxtor HDD.
I quickly discovered some of the issues that likely resulted in it being trashed. The secondary IDE channel seems broken, as it wouldn't detect my optical drives or hard disks. No problem as this board has SATA, albeit requiring recent drives to be jumper-set to SATA1. Second issue is cooling, as I found it there was just an aluminum heatsink on the CPU with no fan, but I salvaged an old Intel CPU fan and clipped it on. It worked until I got something better.
Restoring this PC became a project of mine, likely to keep me distracted from more depressing things, but a project nonetheless. I've spent a fair amount of time dicking around with it. I ended up putting two optical drives on the primary IDE channel, a CD-RW and DVD-ROM, and using a 250GB WD SATA drive for storage.
I put a bit of money into this which is unusual for me but so is spending close to $250 for home theatre related stuff I'll likely never use. Guess I'm in a generous mood this month. So far in total I've spent $10 on a video card, $5 on a TriCool 80mm fan, and $15 for a Barton Athlon XP 2500+ off eBay along with trading some DDR2 for two good quality 17" CRT monitors.
When I ordered the better CPU I figured there would be no way that flimsy aluminum heatsink could keep it cool, especially if I wanted to try overclocking it up to a 3200+, just like in the old days with my 2600+.
So I placed an order with DirectCanada on the 23rd, owned by the same company that owns NCIX, for three items. A replacement USB version of my keyboard (MS Comfort Curve 2000), the 80mm TriCool fan, and an Antec Socket A heatsink that was shown as In Stock, both at BestDirect, NCIX and DirectCanada. At this point I'm thinking great, some leftover stock, works for me.
I end up getting the fan and keyboard the very next day - keyboard is great. But I noticed when I placed my order the stock status on the heatsink changed to Not Available and on some sites the SKU just disappeared entirely. So I finally emailed them on the 26th and get told no it's discontinued etc etc do you want a refund or exchange. Since they have no other Socket A coolers, I get a refund. That refund is still sitting my PayPal with a temporary hold placed on it for who knows what reason.
I ended up getting a Volcano 6cu from a guy free, fine by me. The 6cu isn't rated for Barton-based Athlon XP chips, but paired with adequate case cooling (two Antec TriCools, 120mm exhaust + 80mm intake, both set on medium for now) and modern thermal paste, I figured it'd be good enough. At this point I was under the impression the existing heatsink was pure aluminum, when it actually had a copper inset base as well, albeit a smaller one with stock thermal paste.
Shortly thereafter I impulsively bought a 256MB Radeon 9600 Pro off eBay for $16.50 shipped, about what I got refunded from DirectCanada plus $4. Compared to the 9250, the 9600 Pro is a way better card. Due to ATI's retarded numbering system at the time, the 9200 is R200-based while the 9600 and above are R300-based. R300 natively supports DirectX 9, and is supported by Catalyst up to 10.2 on XP and Vista, though I have no intention of going beyond XP with this system for now. Catalyst stopped supporting R200-based cards at 6.11.
Funny thing is that this PC doesn't really have a purpose so long as we live here, but if we end up moving in the next 3-6 months, it'll become Shed/Garage PC 2.0. Once everything is said and done, the specs should look something like this:
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @ 2.2 GHz (Barton AXDA2500DKV4D)
Heatsink: Thermaltake Volcano 6cu
Motherboard: Asus A7V600-X
RAM: 2GB DDR-400 (2 * 512MB + 1 * 1GB)
HDD: 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE (WD2500JS / 7200rpm / SATA)
CD/DVD: HL-DT-ST 52x24x52x CDRW (PATA - Master)
CD/DVD: Liteon 8x DVDROM (PATA - Slave)
Graphics: Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB AGP 8x
Wireless: Netgear WNA3100 802.11n USB
Display: Viewsonic G70mb 17" CRT (1024x768 / 85hz / VGA)
Keyboard: Compaq 104-key PS/2
Mouse: Logitech Optical Mouse USB
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3
So total money spent on this project: ~$45 CAD
Entertainment and nostalgia value: Priceless.
I find the nostalgia in this to be quite strong, one of my first custom built PCs was an Athlon XP 2600+ on the exact same motherboard IIRC, with a Thermaltake Volcano cooler at that.
The CPU came yesterday, getting it installed was easy. Unfortunately it turns out I can only run at DDR400 with 2 DIMMs on this board, and I have 3. No big loss, I figure it's better to have 2GB of RAM at PC2700 than 1GB at PC3200. If I end up getting a pair of 1GB sticks, I'll be able to run at DDR400 but I don't think it's a real pressing issue.
So after getting the RAM running at 333MHz with the right timings, I got to overclocking. FSB up to 200 and slight increase in voltage, effectively making it an Athlon XP 3200+, just like in the old days...the motherboard is a value board, so I doubt I'll have any luck getting it any higher.
Temperatures are surprisingly good given that this heatsink was only rated for earlier Thunderbird Athlons and Durons, around 50C under full load. Now I'm just waiting for the new GPU, and my future shed PC will be finished. It's ideal for this, because while it's running quite cool, it's also a loud ass motherfucker.
Picture time!
Comments
It was a pretty decent little computer and I've had it for years. Now it has a Pentium III 500 in it, 128 MB PC100, and I think an ATi Rage 128 Pro, though I can't recall as it's had several different GPUs in the past few months.
Yeah I'm running out of space for extra PCs as well, I've got quite a few to clear out. On a related note, from that room of to-be-recycled computer supplies, I snagged a P4 3.4 HT, and a couple complete Athlon XP systems with 512MB DDR each, running XP Home. Not bad, though unfortunately the P4 set me back a PSU, if I'm to rebuild it...
I was also running low on DDR though, the P4 was missing a hard disk and RAM, of which I've only got the RAM. I've got a stock of 20GB EIDE drives I use for replacement drives for old PCs, but those were cheap when I bought them, for $2 apiece