Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Just went to pick up a FREE load of computers, here's the haul

MrCheeto

MrCheeto

Suspended
Original poster
Nov 2, 2008
3,531
353
Posted to Craigslist looking for free computer stuff so that I can donate, sale and practice customization.

I got a call at 8am today from a guy that had 17 computers "for the price of hauling them off", in other words, you want it, take it.

He was happy to have someone clean out his garage sale leftovers, and I was happy to find the same model Packard Bell keyboard and monitor as my first computer from 1995! (I shall keep them)

And now, the haul.

First, I took 2 steps into the man's house before I realized he had counted the monitors to figure the number of computers that were hidden in the piles of junk. Turns out, there were only 3, how disappointing.

The first is a Dell Dimension XPS 133c from 1995, if I come across a copy of 95 I'll be sure to load it on there, but first I'm going to see what it's got and maybe install 3.11 (you'll see why)

It's got a Pentium P54cs 133(mhz). It's too bad it couldn't have been a LITTLE older, I really want a P54c with the Pentium FDIV bug. (Wikipedia, read it!)

Click any images, they're huge!


At first, 8 slots looks like a LOT of expandability from the outside, until you realize that there are 2 bus standards in play: PCI and the ancient ISA. Man, I forgot how big those suckers got, IBM leading the way >=\

What's that slot above the CPU? I remember something about these for expanding bandwidth or something similar, anybody know?

A whopping 64mb of EDO memory! Look out, NT, here I come with a potential of 128mb!!

I'm guessing this is some sort of magnetic tape storage?



Next up are two machines by Hach Associates Inc. From what I read, I'm lead to believe it was/is an educational equipment provider and these machines were ordered by and educational institution. They date from somewhere around 1991, as the chip is an Intel i486 SX (the last before the Pentiums), specifically the Intel A80486SX-25(mhz). Man, the ceramic is beautiful, if no better purpose is found, I may just frame the thing, it's wonderful and historical.



Did I say 25mhz? Well, take a look, this Turbo button (I presume) cranks the clock all the way to 33mhz with an LED readout to display the "Power". I could be wrong, somebody explain what those old Turbo buttons are, specifically.



Have a look at that. Parallel and Serial and SCSI, oh my. You each should take a moment and be thankful for today's hot pluggable and limited, easy to differentiate, standards. Counting pins before buying a component, restarting and dipswitch flipping is now a thing of the past. It's mostly USB and FireWire for us, and then RJ jacks for networking.

More EDO memory, but there are more slots that appear similar, though shorter :confused: No idea, computers from these days were like Japanese knock-offs. 50 different standards, 50 more non-standards, cryptic functions, and more proprietary parts than a Panzer.

Hm, ISA and VLB slots...there's no hope for upgrading either in this day and age. Besides, I'm afraid to touch a single thing with that many menacing little jumpers flea-gripped to the motherboard. You people wonder why computers were for REAL geeks 2 decades ago? It's because you had to have 10 manuals equaling the size of the Gutenberg Bible and a whiteboard that would please Ben Stein to make calculations to save from spontaneously combusting.



213mb?! That's almost 200 floppies!!!



Moving on
I hauled off 2 boxes of other goodies. About 20 keyboards (the heavy responsive clacky ones I dream of every day), some manuals and software.




Ah, my 10" Packard Bell. I remember the day I installed Timon and Pumbaa's Jungle Games myself, it was a proud moment. OH, I have a DOS box now! I'm soooo loading that game if I can still find the disk. (Yes, believe it, I do have that disk somewhere).



This one had me jumping out of my shoes, I thought I had hit an Apple III stash! Alas, I don't get that lucky. Damn you Dell, 20+ years and still rebranding Apple's. *cough*Adamo*cough*



That huge dirty *#&% at 12 o'clock...she will be mine...she's PS/2!!! Half of these are DIN -.-' I guess they'll go to the hacksaw if anybody has any neat craft ideas!



Let's install that mouse now, Wolf 3D just came in the mail!



Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS 6.22 anybody? I'd give anything for a copy of 95, but damn it comes on soooo many disks.




I've got about 30 disks, anybody have any crafty ideas? Let me know, I'm WAY into stellar geek art.

Some power supplies of all standards, at least I can salvages some wire and take the rest to scrap.



Yo! It's Time! The Radeon Rage XL is the first chip to integrate flat panel support! So when you run out to pick up your 10" cold cathode-backlit 1024x768 flat panel for just $1,790, you'll have something to generate each eye straining frame of Quake III Arena within the 5º viewing angle without flinching! Epileptic seizures be damned!



I mustn't lie. I jumped in the air and did a little twirl when I came upon this. "Yes! USB 2.0 for my Power Mac! Good golly yes!" Alas, I'm only so lucky to have received an empty box. Dreams born and crushed with but a box :(



Welp, I'm glad to hear of any projects for these artifacts. I'm going to most likely get them running in prime condition before I rip them apart and paint and morph them to practice case modding, and if I find Windows 95, I may just keep the Dell with the 133mhz Pentium ;)

Thanks folks.
 
It's beautiful! This is similar to the same display and image I saw the very first time I started up my own personal computer.



Oh the days...
 
This is BY FAR the coolest floppy I've ever come across! I'm saving this one for some special purpose!

 
MrCheeto said:
This is BY FAR the coolest floppy I've ever come across! I'm saving this one for some special purpose!

Click to expand...

Store all of your passwords on it!
NO ONE will think of checking that!
You should be able to fit, what... like 10 or so passwords on that?
SWEET!
 
Yesh! A whole 1.44mb!

I'll just have to label it "ALL PassWords" so I don't forget ;)
 
I once stored a tiny image of badly executed emotibreasts and emotibooty that was labeled "Hard Core Pr0n: With B00BS!"

Why not? LUL

Floppies are fun, I wish I could make one into a thumb drive and turn a floppy drive into a discrete USB port so that once you press the disk into the slot, it still clacks around as if original but it's really just plugging into the USB port ^.^
 
Dumpster diving :p

I have a small collection of macs I should probably do the same - advertise free for pick up. They're collecting dust in my closet.

Good find and enjoy you're no treasure.
 
WHERE'Z?! No matter how deep the clutter, thou shalt dive!

LUL

As we speak I'm posting most of the parts or complete machines to sale on these forums in the appropriate forums ;)
 
*sigh* Not even Wolf :(

Maybe in my next haul I'll come across some OG's...original gamers 0.o LUL

I just wish I had more places to look than..*shivers* Craigslist ><
 
MrCheeto said:
The first is a Dell Dimension XPS 133c from 1995, if I come across a copy of 95 I'll be sure to load it on there, but first I'm going to see what it's got and maybe install 3.11 (you'll see why)

At first, 8 slots looks like a LOT of expandability from the outside, until you realize that there are 2 bus standards in play: PCI and the ancient ISA. Man, I forgot how big those suckers got, IBM leading the way >=\
Click to expand...

I had a Compaq Deskpro EN (Pentium II 400) for a while; it also had a combination of PCI and ISA slots on a riser daughterboard. Remember those? Good thing, too-- my favorite old-school audio card, the Turtle Beach Monterey, was a behemoth of an ISA card, so an all-PCI machine was a no-go for me at the time.

MrCheeto said:
Next up are two machines by Hach Associates Inc. From what I read, I'm lead to believe it was/is an educational equipment provider and these machines were ordered by and educational institution. They date from somewhere around 1991, as the chip is an Intel i486 SX (the last before the Pentiums), specifically the Intel A80486SX-25(mhz). Man, the ceramic is beautiful, if no better purpose is found, I may just frame the thing, it's wonderful and historical.

Did I say 25mhz? Well, take a look, this Turbo button (I presume) cranks the clock all the way to 33mhz with an LED readout to display the "Power". I could be wrong, somebody explain what those old Turbo buttons are, specifically.
Click to expand...

If I remember correctly, the Turbo buttons switched the motherboard's bus speeds between 4.77 MHz (the original speed of the 8088, for compatibility with older clock-speed-sensitive programs and games) and the CPU's native speed. (Thanks to Google for help with the specifics there.)



MrCheeto said:
Yo! It's Time! The Radeon Rage XL is the first chip to integrate flat panel support! So when you run out to pick up your 10" cold cathode-backlit 1024x768 flat panel for just $1,790, you'll have something to generate each eye straining frame of Quake III Arena within the 5º viewing angle without flinching! Epileptic seizures be damned!

.
Click to expand...

LOL. My aforementioned Compaq had a Rage XL (or maybe Pro?) chip on the mobo. It worked fine for the occasional bout of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

Good times, good times... :D
 
My Packard Bell Legend 100cd had a daughter card...it was a "pizza box" so I guess the card was to make the ISA cards sit parallel to the desk...not so sure.

Junk? Oh buddy...somebody's never made a Floppy Toaster.
 
The memoryslot above the pentiumchip is external cachememory for faster computing. Hitech at the time and expensive.

The smaller memoryslots in the 486 is 30-pinn memoryslots. There where both kinds in the change between the two kinds of memory.
 
It's kind of sad, if you think about it.

All that equipment is considered obsolete junk, with no resale value whatsoever. Someone paid thousands of dollars for the computers and hundreds of dollars for those monitors, and only a few years later they are completely worthless! Why? Simply because we seem to be creating the "bigger and better" goods far faster than we can consume the ones we buy. These things are built to have a useful lifespan of 20 years or so, yet we only keep them for 3 or 4.

Repeat that scenario millions of times over, and consider the huge amounts of heavy metals and chemicals being dumped in landfills because of all this e-waste.

I'm glad you rescued a small bit of what would otherwise have become landfill!
 
The first computer my dad ever brought home was one of the HACH ones... Now I know what brand it was! Who can forget the turbo button with the little display on the outside and that key lock on the case..
 
Man, every time I think back to the way things were, I want to just slap those that complain every time their computer stalls.

I remember when I set up my machine for the first time. C:\Win95\bla bla blee bla blu. Don't even get me started on configuring a network card and network connection. *shivers*

Looking at all the jumpers, dipswitches, busses, terminators, jacks, ports and slots...it's like a space ship, it's really intimidating.

Today the most confusing part about building a computer is...um...hm...oh bus widths...yeah that's a pain.
 
notjustjay said:
Repeat that scenario millions of times over, and consider the huge amounts of heavy metals and chemicals being dumped in landfills because of all this e-waste.
Click to expand...

This process would be easier to reverse if ecycle weren't such WORTHLESS expletives!
 
Oh man. I remember seeing the Windows 95 logo and wanting a computer sooo bad. (I wanted one long before that but never really saw any in real life. I had no friends with computers). I used to desperately want to try one out but EVERY store you went to that sold computers had them password protected. (Way to kill splurge buying retail).

I didn't really know what Mac OS was back then. I heard of Apples but never really knew the difference from that and windows.

My first real computer was a windows 98 machine. A "gateway 2000". My parents bought it for me as a double surprise birthday present. The first surprise being that they bought it, the second surprise being I got to make the payments on it.
 
We just dumped 25 computers that were 4-6 years old at the recycling center :D The first computer I had (or my parents bought rather) was an intel 60mhz packard bell. I was jealous because my friend's parents had a 65 mhz computer.
 
The first time I encountered a Mac, I had NO idea what was going on. I had just taken for granted, "computers run Windows".

It was a Bondi Blue iMac in Speech class. It frustrated the expletive out of me because the mouse didn't have a right click and it was OS9. Sorry, but as far as interfaces go, System 7, OS8 and OS9 were GARBAGE!

I didn't figure out what it was until about a year ago, I've only been using Macs since September 2008 and ever since, it's been a wonderful miraculously pleasurable experience, and I can't say I'm anything less than a major fan.
 
Any of those capable of being converted to a low end server using Linux? I hear you don't need much of a CPU to do it. I am thinking about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back