OLD PC's...

[BCB]

Recently I got a new computer. My old one finally croaked. I am going to donate the monitor and speakers to Goodwill or some other organization that can use them. The harddrive is done. Is there anything I can salvage from the tower that might be useful to me? Maybe even something that I can use in the casting hobby? Otherwise it is going to the landfill--if that is even legal! Any suggestions? Thanks...BCB

[PDshooter]

Schools are just filled with "OLD PC"
If it junk like you say.........Take it to the "Range".... [smilie=l:

[imashooter2]

What sort of RAM does the old box have? Compatible with the new one? If not pull it and offer it for sale or trade. A spare power supply is always nice to have. A second CD drive is convenient for disk copying.

[StarMetal]

Depends how old it is. If it's old the memory chips won't fit anything recent. As for the power supply, most new Pentium IV's are running 350 watts and up, preferablly 450 watts. So again, if it's from an old pc the power supply is probably about 250 watts. Another thing on power supplies is if it is an old pc the power plug into the mother board won't fit the new ones. Example, on the ATX type motherboards, they take a one piece directional ATX powersupply plug. As for two CD's, with a rewrite CD program you only need one CD to copy anything. The program writes to the harddrive and then copies it onto the new disc you're making. So if it's old, most of it is junk.

Joe

[BCB]

Yea, it's old, at least by computer standards. I was hoping to be able to salvage something or even donate it, but I kind of figured it was totally obsolete. Using it at the range did cross my mind. As a matter of fact, I was at my range today shooting some 357 Magnum and cast boolits of course. I rode the H. Davidson there so I really didn't have any room to carry the P.C. Maybe some other time...BCB

[imashooter2]

There are still lots of people running PC's with PC100 or PC133 RAM. A second CD drive skips the copy to hard drive step when copying CD's or let's you listen to music while you burn.

Maybe it's just me, but shooting the stripped case would be just as fun...

[BCB]

I'm gonna ask the "Computer Guru" at work also. The end by cast boolits will be my last resort!!!...BCB

[Gunload Master]

As for myself, I work on many computers and so just scrapping it down and using pieces and parts of it to fill other users older computers that go down is really helpful to me. Chances are you are using SIMM RAM chips that are only good on older computers, newer ones take DIMM Chips. BUT, you could take out your SIMM chips and notice how many MB's (megabytes) they are and throw them up on E-bay and make a few bucks. Another floppy drive is good (as long as it's 1.44 inch) to keep as a spare if you use Floppys a lot. If you have a CD-RW drive and put your older CD-Rom drive in you could get some Read errors because how slow your older CD-Rom drive runs. If it's at least a 32x it would be great, maybe even a 24x, but if it's anything slower than that, it's cast boolit bait. Older power supplies I don't like to trust too often and most of them won't work in new computers anyways because of what starmetal said. (Older computers = AT power supply: Newer Computers = ATX powe supply) You won't get any money for older power supplies, CD-Rom drives, Floppy Drives. The best bet would be the RAM. But personally, in your case... Draw a circle on the side of the tower with a bullseye in the middle and test out your .357 skills :D

[lar45]

If you don't want to strip it down and part it out, then maybe check at the goodwill and see if they have somebody that puts the old PCs back together? Maybe they can use the parts to get something running?

If not then the processor and ram should bring something on ebay.
If it's PC100 or 133 ram I might be interested for my garage computer.