Have a previous PC you dug up out of a closet? Post it here!

[Katja]

Figure I'd toss a thread to start this since my girlfriend has given me full reign over her last two PCs and didn't have really anywhere else to post it.

Top PC is her old main system, which after some digging had a Phenom II X4 955 with 8GB of DDR3-1333 and a Radeon HD 5850; something I thought was kinda neat. We booted it up and found two ancient installs of Kubuntu and Debian, probably that hadn't been touched since around 2012 (if file dates are anything to go by) and the clock was rather close to the current date and time.

I haven't delved into the bottom PC, which was apparently originally a file server she had, but the most I know is that it's an AM3 platform system, which will be fun to figure out what specs it has; at some point I'll probably repaste the Phenom II and maybe the 5850 and repurpose it.

We booted up the top system and found two ancient installs of Kubuntu and Debian, probably that hadn't been touched since around 2012 (if file dates are anything to go by) and the clock was rather close to the current date and time. Lots of old music and memes from 2010, some old game installs, and some other stuff. Really cool find. (screenshot taken with capture card via OBS)

 

What other cool stuff have you dug up and looked at? Could be anything from a PC you found at a local thrift store, thrown out, in your closet, or otherwise!

[ryan]

on a more serious note I had a computer in the shed for a few years, dug it out/ below is a picture of me tinkering with ram timings

 

[cylix]

So im visitint my parents this week, dont come as often anymore sadly.. But i found 2 bad boys that i used in my childhood.  They are bout working and one of them was a little bit upgraded from my brother in his visits.

 

Nr 1. The old boy.  A Pentium E5200 Dual core  with 3 Gb Ram and rocking a Nvidia 8400 GS 😁😁 in one of my oldest case that was my first custom. I cut the biohazard sign and put a green fan inside. And it still has a floppy drive🤣.

 

Nr 2. The "new one". An Fx-8350  with 12 Gb of ram rocking a 1050Ti! 😂

My brother is still using it when he comes to visit.

 

And i found an  Amd k6-2 CPU still lurking around wanted to be used and build😁

 

 

[cylix]

[ryan]

thats pretty old man. I don't even remember my first computers specs it was a macintosh and im pretty sure the ram was measured in KBs not Gbs. HDD was like a few MB. good for almost nothing....one thing I dont forget was loading a web page at 12....took like 4 days to load a text based page from gamefaqs.com....ah yes but it was advanced it was doing basic 3d games and more advanced sprite games than the consoles of the time, but I won't lie PS and xbox were a pretty huge leap and even tied pcs of the time for a fraction of the price. last time we had that was actually recently with the xbox series x. 600 for a 2080 and 16 core cpu with 1 tb ssd and 16gb of ram....pretty solid deal

[Sandy Bridge]

To me arguably the most fascinating thing about exploring a long-abandoned PC, especially one that I used to use, is seeing the state-in-time aspect of the files.  What was my browser history or bookmarks like in 2011?  Was this the computer where I set my Minesweeper high score?  Etc.  So that Phenom II 955 does indeed sound like a great find.

 

And sure, it's also great experiencing the slow hardware again, and hearing the sounds of a Maxtor hard drive getting up to speed.  But I don't think it would be the same if it were just old hardware I'd never used.  It needs to have that Windows 98 desktop with so many icons that they would fill up the entire screen if it were at 640x480 resolution.

 

----

 

I haven't dug one out of a closet lately, but over the years I've explored or tried to restore various old family computers.  The most reliable is, not surprisingly, a circa 1997 ThinkPad with a whopping 104 MB of RAM and a gigantic 2 GB hard drive, that runs Windows 98 SE and has both a floppy and a CD-ROM drive, swappable.  Actually pretty high specs for its time, the RAM is maxed out.  I've wanted to put an SSD in it, but the screw securing the compartment with the hard drive is stuck so that'll probably never happen; it also would require a specialty 1.8" PATA SSD and those aren't exactly numerous these days.

 

Next up after that, and the best from a revisiting-old-times standpoint, is a 1998 Sony desktop that pairs Maxtor and Matrox on HDD/GPU.  It supports 1200p resolutions over VGA flawlessly, Matrox might not have beat 3dfx in speed but they built good GPUs.  That desktop got regular use for about 8 years, and had a large enough hard drive to accumulate a lot of files.  It even features an original late-'90s DVD drive, and on a day with enough good luck and favor from the gods, its GPU can even play a film from that drive.

 

The real "pulled from a closet" though, was an unsuccessful attempt to revive my family's first PC, an AMD 486.  At some point in the early 2010s its motherboard failed, probably due to capacitor leakage, maybe old age... research indicates it was a cheap mobo so if anything it lasted longer than expected.  I still have a bunch of parts from that one, it seems wrong to recycle parts that are increasingly rare.  If anyone needs a questionable 486 motherboard, vintage 250W no-name power supply (still working a few years ago!), or a VLB graphics card, you now know where to ask.  Probably going to keep its no-longer-functional 800 MB Caviar 2850 though, it looks good on a bookshelf and is a good reminder of the progress we've made since the '90s.

 

The one part I was able to rescue intact and working from that ancient 486 was its floppy drive, which now lives in my primary desktop and works as good as it did when it was new.  I plan to carry it forward to my Ryzen 7000 build this winter.  Do I need a floppy drive with Zen 4?  Probably not.  But do I want one?  Absolutely.

 

On 10/2/2022 at 5:06 PM, cylix said:

Nr 1. The old boy.  A Pentium E5200 Dual core  with 3 Gb Ram and rocking a Nvidia 8400 GS 😁😁 in one of my oldest case that was my first custom. I cut the biohazard sign and put a green fan inside. And it still has a floppy drive🤣.

It's interesting though, the logos on the case indicate a Sapphire ATi card and an Athlon CPU.  Was that from the case's previous build?

[cylix]

@Sandy Bridge

Yes that case saw alot of builds, i remember me and my brother took turns and used it. I think that k6-2 was at one time inside aswell.

 

Sadly i tried again to find my first PC: Intel 386..but i was indeed throw in the garbage by my parents, they had it in the basement and i got all rusted away 😒