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What is the NEWEST/SPEEDIEST computer that you have been given or picked up?

D

dpatten

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2006
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285
Location
Melbourne, FL
All the threads on thrift store pickups and the like have started me thinking about the shifting age of stuff we find in junk shops, in dumpsters or that we are given by co-workers as outdated junk.

When I first started realizing interesting old computers were being tossed in the early-mid 90's you could pick up IBM ATs and PS/2s in thrift stores for just a couple of bucks. Now those same thrift stores typically have Pentium II or even P3 machines for similar prices. I still have an IBM 5170 that I picked up off the curb in 1995,

I recently had a co-worker give me a "hopelessly outdated" 5 year old Dell.

It's a Dimension XPS Gen3 with a P4 3.6 Ghz processor 2 Gb of DDR2 Ram 512 MB PCI-e card and 2 160 GB drives arranged in a RAID-0 stripe.

It apparently won't play her son's video games at a high enough framerate...

I figure it will work really well to replace the P3 machine that I am using. My wife's is still faster.

Anyone else?
 
The computer club I frequent has been given bunches rack mount DELL's with P3 and P4 in them. Some nice IBM-servers as well. Personally I think the fastest thing I've been given is a dual P3.
 
Dumpster dove for a Dell Dimensions not too long ago, 2.8 GHZ Intel (hyperthread), 512 ram, 40 gig Western Digital. Replaced bad psu with extra one I already had. Runs XP well. Thought it was a pretty decent find for the price.

Slightly earlier than that one, same dumpster, AMD 2300 EMachine, 256 ram, 32 meg ATI AGP, dead hard drive but worked otherwise. Once I replaced the drive and cleaned all the stupid EMachine stickers off of the front, it actually looked half way decent too. :)
 
Picked up a dual cpu PIII 1 GHZ dell server last night.
Using a P4 dual core 2.x GHZ that someone was discarding for the dxspider server for the local radio club.
 
The newest thing thats been dumped on me is a Gateway that has an Athlon of some kind. I haven't really bothered it so far but I think its 800Mhz or something in that area.
 
Didn't think I'd been given anything but I now guess my brother gave me the computer I built for him when it was having some OS issues and he bought a cheap emachine (the machine I built him cost around $1200 in parts since it was a nice non-generic Athlon 1.6Ghz system). Still have it but haven't used it much.. like most of my newer stuff. I think I have Ecomstation on it or something.
 
TomFCS said:
Dumpster dove for a Dell Dimensions not too long ago, 2.8 GHZ Intel (hyperthread), 512 ram, 40 gig Western Digital. Replaced bad psu with extra one I already had. Runs XP well. Thought it was a pretty decent find for the price.
Click to expand...

I have 2 Toshiba A75s that have the HT 2.8G processor in them. Works good but I sure can see why they stopped around 3Ghz as far as max speed goes. Both of the Toshibas make great SPACE HEATERS. Pretty noisy too with all that fan action. There is a loud sucking sound as the battery gets eaten alive.
 
Quite a number of PIII units on my shelf, either stuff we have retired from work or from similar sources, though a couple years ago a co-worker gave me an Athlon 1.8 Ghz system...motherboard was bad unfortunately, but everything else, including the 160 GB HD was good, DVD burner, etc etc. I told him what the problem was and offered to give it back/fix it, but they had already bought a new one, so...
I'm still a believer in the close to 1 GHz PIIIs though - I have one with 1 GB of ram in it that was running XP like a dream, is now being prepped for Ubuntu linux. Good machine for general use.
 
About a year or so ago I was given a system (minus HDs) which had:

Athlon XP 2000+
256MB RAM
Geforce XF5500 128MB
HP DVD+RW burner
Liteon DVD+/-R Burner

I was there to pick up some old mac stuff and he asked me to take it, worked fine once I put a HD in (he kept those because it has business info).

I have been given other stuff but not whole complete machines, like a Athlon 64 system minus CPU and PS, a motherboard from a Dell Dimensions 3000 with CPU and heatsink (P4 3.0Ghz works fine). I was given a DELL GX150 (p3-1Ghz stipped of drives) system last year that I rebuilt and gave away on freecycle for christmas.



Mostly I go looking for the old stuff, and sometimes I pick up something newer while there.
 
I have a 2.6Ghz Pentium D that was given to me after it went through a house fire. Case was no good (but the opticals still worked) but the inside was okay and after a month stopped smelling of burnt furniture.
 
Now I live in hillbilly land and there's not the oportunities I used to have in the city. :( Slightly off topic, but a few years ago I got a decent machine from back lane garbage. I don't remember the speed, but the cool thing is that all the software was there and when I plugged it in I was able to use the last owner's ISP and check all their e-mail. I thought that was pretty funny, but resisted the urge to send a couple of rude or cryptic e-mails to some correspondents. I decided that the thought was funny, but the action wouldn't be.
 
Ole Juul said:
Now I live in hillbilly land and there's not the oportunities I used to have in the city. :( Slightly off topic, but a few years ago I got a decent machine from back lane garbage. I don't remember the speed, but the cool thing is that all the software was there and when I plugged it in I was able to use the last owner's ISP and check all their e-mail. I thought that was pretty funny, but resisted the urge to send a couple of rude or cryptic e-mails to some correspondents. I decided that the thought was funny, but the action wouldn't be.
Click to expand...


Well atleast when you live in hillbilly land you can make a few bucks fixing their computers and probably find some cool gear they want to trade in instead of paying you.
 
I was so shocked by being given the $5,000 Dell gaming machine that I forgot to mention the lady also gave me her other old computer which was a ~700mHz Slot A Athlon with 512 MB of RAM and a 40 gb HDD. I'm probably going to take the drive out and freecycle it...


There is also supposedly an old laptop of some flavor laying about too. It's a wonderful thing to be the designated disposal source for old computers.

Now that I have it running, i'm not sure what to make of the Dell machine it has 6 fans in it and it sounds like an F-4 spooling up for takeoff. Much louder than the p3...
 
The fastest computer I've been given for free is an IBM X Series 345 server.

It's got 2GB of RAM, and 2 x 2.8Ghz Xeon Processors. Plus 3 36.4GB 10K SCSI drives and SCSI/Gigabit Cards.

It's a nice little machine, and it was bound for recycling! So I picked it up for free...
 
Two possible answers:

2 months ago, work was going to throw away a 1U dual 3.8 GHz Xeon server... I saved it fromt he dumpster... works. I dont use it for anything...

My "main" machine I use is comprised of "free" parts including a 965OT intel board I won at a LAN party tournement, an "Intel COnfidential" Core 2 Duo @ 2.66ghz that I saved from the garbage (actually has a razor blade cut across the bottom, but still works) the GeForce 8800 GTS 640mb vid card was given to me by my brother. The 4U Istar chassis was rescued from a salvage fate... my coworkers call me sanford....
 
My fastest rescues

My fastest rescues

* Shuttle SSV1G system sans case and hard disk with a P4 2.4ghz chip and a standard ATX case with motherboard and a P4 2.5ghz chip found in the office hallway for disposal. Currently using the Shuttle with an external DVD burmer, 60GB drive from the item under this one, GeForce 6200 video card and memory from the next two items.

* HP pavilion computer with 2ghz Celeron, 768MB RAM, 60GB hard disk. Bad motherboard and optical drive.

* Emachines computer with Athlon XP 2400, 512MB RAM, bad motherboard, power supply and optical drive.

* ATX case with Athlon XP 2200 and motherboard with slightly bulging caps and a Radeon 7000/32MB AGP video card.

* Gateway P4 board with dual-channel DDR capability and 800mhz bus speed support. The processor installed in it initially, a P4 2.6/800, was dead.

* P4 3.2ghz/800mhz processor
 
My 1100FD. Still busted...
I did manage to take it apart and put it back together without too many complications... The esc and f1 keys are jammed, though.
 
Hmm, let's see..

Quite a few Dell laptops in the P4 1.7 - 2.0 Ghz range

Misc desktop computers (HP, Dell) in the 1.7 - 3.6Ghz range.

I can't believe that people throw away things like that.

Sometimes the HDD's have all the personal data on them as well. Of course I delete everything, but someone with cruel intentions could do a lot of damage with that data.
 
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