Rebuilding old PCs

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Hey guys...I am in the middle of rebuilding two PCs I brought back with me from Grimsby, one of them was very very dusty on the inside so I was must have spent a good hour cleaning it out. they both take Intel CPUs, one of them being the old Slot 1 Pentium 3. the only damn problem was whilst I was cleaning the mobo last nite I couldnt take the damn CPU out. anyway thats not the big problem. the big problem with this PC is it was installed with XP Pro and there were 4 users and a Guest on it. I went into it and not only was the damn thing so slow but there was no start menu at all...I couldnt go into Device Manager using the Start button and Pause/Break key...the only way I could go into it was by a folder on the desktop...the whole system was just corrupted. so I have uninstalled XP Pro and have instead installed Win 98 SE. however since there was no installation CD or drivers CDs with this PC, I have decided to replace the sound card and graphics card with my old ones from my first PC. also the PC came with a CD ROM drive and CDRW drive. so I will take those out and replace it with a CDRW/DVD combo drive I accidentally got when I ordered parts to build a PC (I got two of them instead of one and a floppy drive). so hopefully by the end of this week I will have repaired and rebuilt a whole PC system for the first time ever yeah I feel good...I will let u know more soon...but just thought I would tell you...if I do face any problems I will let u know...havent started on the other PC yet but just to let u know it wont boot up at all...maybe something to do with the PSU but more on that later...yes before u all ask I will be selling them both once they are working to my satisfaction. but hey its all about practice and that what I am doing here...besides the money will come in handy for me and the missus wedding which we're getting married on Aug 28th Bank Holiday weekend...

 

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Sounds like you've got some work on your hands, I always enjoy bringing an old PC back to life so somebody can get more use from it. In the school I work there are plenty of machines just like it and as the school cant afford new equipment (not got AJ's schools money) theres a lot of refurbishing to do. Its a satisfing job when the old beasts come back from the dead.

Si

 

ok your first mistake was putting windows 98 on it
big no no
why on earth did you do that?
XP runs FINE on a p3 even one as lowly as the original 450s
you just had a corrupted one, probably spyware/malware related
also up the mem to 512m, best thing you can ever do for an old system like that is give it more memory

good luck with it mate, should be a good bit of fun for you
wouldnt worry about the inability to remove the processor, its unlikley dust actually got in there with the processor seated, your likely to get more dust in there by removing it and trying to clean it
(like the 'rubbing the top of a coke bottle with your hand if your sharing it analogy, puts more bloody germs on the damn thing than before you rubbed it!!)

 

exactly thats what I am talking about Si...its good to bring back old PCs from the brink of death...its like we're doctors in a way...hey maybe they should a PC equivalent to the likes of Casulty and Holby City

 

cos there was no XP Pro disc with the PC and the person who installed it was doing dodgy dealings anyway so I since I dont have a copy of XP Pro I couldnt reinstall it with XP Pro...explain that one...or didnt u read my post when I said it came with no installation CD or drivers CDs?!?! second of all I can up the memory to 512Mb...its just explaining to my missus we need to spend more money on it and she wont take kindly to that cos we're meant to be saving up for the wedding...damn I am so under the thumb arent I

 

hehe sorry mate, assumed you had XP somewhere, dont you use it on your main system?
yup deffo under the thumb, but on a machine you paid very little for you can hardly go wrong with a bit of memory, it likely uses very old PC100 (prob not even PC133) which is kinda pricey these days unless you can find a deal on ebay or something

 

well it does take PC100 SIMMs...had a look on ebuyer and they had none in SIMMs but the DIMMs are very pricey no doubt I will have a look on ebay and see what they are offering...I have XP Home on my main system...and there is no way I can duplicate that cos of legal reasons...otherwise I would. but lets see what happens so far....cos at the mo it has just 128MB RAM (standard back in those days) so 512 would do it a world of good...and like u said I didnt pay for it so hopefully adding more memory will up the price a bit...I was going to sell it at about £200...but maybe £250 would do it...wot do u reckon?

 

Are you sure that there SIMMs, only you said that it was a slot1 P3 and I would have thought that it would have been DIMM memory myself. Just seems odd thats all.

 

well am I right in thinking that SIMMS only have 8 modules on one side of the stick and DIMMS have 8 modules on both sides of the stick? if so thats what I am talking about....otherwise can someone please explain?...thanks...

 

i rekon you dont have a chance of selling it mate
i thought you were going to keep it
you can pick up old compaq AP400s with dual P3 600s - 833s, 128 - 1GB ram, 9gb SCSI hard disks on ebay for 35 - 70 quid
i can buy a pallet of 10 for 200 quid

think your barking up the wrong tree there mate

 

not really
count the pins
168 bins spread over three blocks is a standard DIMM
positioning of the modules is meaningless as the circuit can be routed through the PCB wherever it needs to be routed
modern ones have memory chips on both sides due to thier large capacity requirements

 

You can also tell by the notches on the connecting edge of the memory module. The SIMM memory will have one notch near the center and a notch on one corner the DIMM memory will have two notches one near the center and another a few centimeters from the corner. See the pics:

 

ok my mistake so they are DIMMS...PC100 DIMMS to be exact...and dont tell me I have no chance in selling it cos I know I will and I can sell it :...even if it takes me 2yrs...I will sell it...I cant keep it cos the spare room where I have my PC and I am doing these two is not big enough to house them for me to experiment on...but maybe for the time being I will do some work on them...we'll see what happens...

 

thanks Si...

 

You prob will sell them just not for the price you posted previosly.

 

yeah thats what i meant lol
cheers Si :P

 

ok ok...fair do's...lol...

 

Why not keep it as a headless server to network with? Once you've set it up then you can take the monitor (if it has one) away and remote it.

 

please explain more nugget....I am intrigued to know more...