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I'm becoming a magnet for old PCs

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Billyray

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2007
Messages
186
Location
NE Ohio
Word is starting to get out that I have an old computer hobby. Just got a Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook donated from my sister-n-law. She's gone tablet. The Inspiron is quite an education on the horrible stuff Dell used to foist on unsuspecting buyers. Even though it was purchased in '06/'07 it only had a single core AMD Turion with 800 or so MB of RAM! It's woefully inadequate 60 GB hdd was partitioned with Dell's hidden diagnostics (which didn't work) so that in effect the hdd only had about 40 GB left for Windows XP home. More than half (26 GB) was filled with her own program installations, not to mention tons of Dell bloatware. 3 keyboard keys were missing, and the battery was dead. But after a couple of days here, I got the battery charged back up (still needs a replacement though) repaired the missing keys with new ones, and removed the 60 GB hdd, and replaced with my own spare 160 GB hdd with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Amazingly it booted right up. Had a little tweaking for the wireless card, but otherwise everything worked right away. I originally had this hdd in an Acer Aspire One Netbook, which I removed when I installed an SSD instead. So now the Dell is quite speedy again, has a good full keyboard, much more storage, and I have 2 GB of memory on the way! I'm also considering doing a clean install of Windows XP home on the hdd, but I have to figure out where I can get SP 3 to supplement my old Installation disk which has SP 2. Plus I'm wondering about activation. Will MS still activate old XPs?
 
Good news, thanks Rick! Chuck, it has a S1 socket which can handle a 2.4 Ghz AMD Turion X2. I would have to check into the BIOS config. to see what version I have. Interesting Idea though. :roadwork: I just updated the BIOS to the last one (12/7/07) which was only available as a Windows updater. :nervous: I know that is the worst way to update a BIOS, but I held my breath and double clicked the program on its desktop. LUCKILY it went ok. When Windows rebooted it was all fubared though. Probably had to do with the Secret Dell Diagnostic partition. But after rebooting again, it was normal. So I yanked the Windows XP hdd out and reinstalled the Ubuntu one. So if I do ever update the cpu, I might have a chance of it working. :lookroun:
 
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These days being "the guy who collects old computers" will just get you a bunch of P4 junk. It takes some work to get people to understand what an "old computer" really is.
 
While I've gotten some "P4 junk" most of my offerings have been decidedly mixed. Also, unfortunately, I've had my share of unserviceable systems and the need to refuse units do to lack of space. As we all know, space and time prevent us from doing as much as we please. Try explaining 20+ computers to wife V1.0 (if you dare). Besides variety is the spice of life I'm told.
 
I adopted a cute HP P4 machine from work that got retired, around the same era.
Popped in a couple of 2.5TB drives, it's my new home file server, does a great job and is silent as a lamb. Runs Debian.

My other one was working as a Windows 2000 domain server, but the original PSU went bang (in my face - not impressed Inwin *shakesfist*), and the replacement only fits upside down and overheats after a while. I should sort that out.

If you're going to use yours as a daily-user e.g. photos, downloads etc etc make sure to keep regular backups - all is well until one morning 'click click click'. I'm just coming across too many clickers to trust them with anything valuable.
 
My thinking is; Some day those early Windows machines might be classics. They can still be used for useful work. Back in the post-war era of late 40's and early 50's those old Classic Duesenbergs, Packards and Lincoln's from the early 30's were sitting in the back row of used car lots. The purists only wanted brass-era cars. Something like that may be happening now. The vintage PC hobby is still too new to know what will be the "heyday" of vintage computers. I am also fascinated by other makes like this Dell Laptop, (I have never owned a Dell in my life before this) which has an AMD Turion (another oddball) But to each his own. :D
 
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