by "Nibby" (nibby68)
Published 05/24/2017 at 09:15
by "Nibby" (nibby68)
Published 05/24/2017 at 09:15
No Tags
STARS: 8
Got 4 desktops on local craigslist for a total of $30 the other day. I expected crap and I did get mostly crap but I found a couple decent things in there. The first one we’ll feature is a Dell Dimension XPS T600 which was in pretty good shape. PIII 600MHz, 512MB RAM, 13GB 7200RPM HD, IOMEGA Zip Drive, DVD-ROM + CD/RW drives, 3.5" floppy drive, 3DFX VooDoo3 3000 16MB AGP (!!!) Turtle Beach Montego II A3D Aureal AU8830 PCI sound card, 56K PCI modem, PCI ethernet card, a spare ISA slot. Runs 98SE perfectly. These machines are versatile, you can install whatever you want from MS-DOS + Windows 3.x to anything in between until (and including) Windows XP. These machines as well as the VooDoo3 and Turtle Beach sound card are highly coveted in the retro gaming community so I’m selling it on eBay.
dem ports
clean
had to sand some scuffs lightly
inside all cleaned up
voodoo3
Came with the original keyboard... run of the mill Dell rubber dome
Found a Zip Disk lying around, put the drivers on it.
BIOS screen
Windows 98SE
internet ready!
Next one is this shitty Dell Dimension 2400. It would not post/beep/no video and the motherboard diagnostic lights indicate motherboard failure. Not worth anything to fix so I took out anything useful (drives, CMOS battery, processor, RAM, etc.) and will recycle this.
Also had a fair amount of rust
A Dell Dimension 8200, 2GHz Pentium 4, 1.28GB RDRAM, 80GB hard drive (didn’t come with one, yanked from that 2400), DVD-ROM + CD/RW drives, 3.5" floppy drive, NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 64MB AGP graphics. Also going on eBay
The case was pretty filthy but it came out okay.
Swivel design which is a bit annoying
Original keyboard and a spare USB mouse
BIOS screen
Windows Me! 98SE hates more than 512MB RAM and then you gotta edit VCACHE settings and I did what I could but it wasn’t stable at all. This seems to run perfectly after disabling system restore and installing an unofficial service pack.
dem programs
net ready as well!
The 4th one is some Powerspec 6340 with an AMD Sempron 3000+ 2GHz, 1GB RAM, no HD, DVD/RW + CD-ROM drives. Ordered an NVIDIA AGP card + a hard drive for it, then will try 98SE on it once those parts arrive. Should end up with 3 out of 4 complete systems... I’m gonna sell this one too.
This next one is a keeper. Found a Lenovo ThinkPad T420 listed as damaged on eBay for cheap and I ran its serial # through Lenovo’s Parts Lookup tool. That’s why I bought it... Sandy bridge i5, 8GB RAM, 14" 1600x900 screen + webcam, 1GB NVIDIA NVS4200M... had some spare drives lying around from previous stuff so I replaced the DVD drive with a 2nd bay SATA caddy that houses a 320GB data drive. There’s a 128GB mSATA drive in the mSATA slot and a 120GB SATA drive in the main bay. XP on mSATA for retro gaming purposes and 7 on main SSD. Also got an ExpressCard 34 USB 3.0 card + Thinkpad docking station. I’m getting rid of all these old retro things and going to use this machine for whatever retro purposes: MIDI, older games, futzing around, etc.
Bonus, the T420 came with a bunch of different keyboards by part #. Apparently this one came with the most desirable one.
speccy
missing “V”
underneath, after a fresh cleaning of the fan + heatsink + new thermal paste
side
the other side
the rear... total of 6 USB ports in a laptop which is a bit much but USB 3.0 was necessary!
Was able to sell off ALL of my spare retro parts to someone on a vintage computer forum... so right when I got rid of all my old junk... got 4 more desktops. Even with the cost of shipping I’ll be able to make a decent profit on these, especially the white one. Anyways thanks for looking.
"Tripper" (tripe46)
05/24/2017 at 09:20, STARS: 1
Haha you always come up with nearly the exact PCs of my “growing up” days!
I had the below, only mine was 900mhz and it came with my first MP3 player! It held 13 songs lol. I remember my friends at school being like, “but where is the music though?”
"Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer" (smallbear94)
05/24/2017 at 09:23, STARS: 0
What do you actually do with these? Just clean/fix and resell?
Been wondering for a while now... seems every week you’ve got another that you’re “keeping to replace my old x”. Whatever it is this is cool stuff
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 09:25, STARS: 1
DELL MASTER RACE
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 09:25, STARS: 1
yeah pretty much
"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck)
05/24/2017 at 09:26, STARS: 1
I still have a Dell with the swing case serving as a net storage device. I’m going to set it up as an internal web server so my daughter has a place to learn/practice web design. My son just asked about getting our old Minecraft server back online. I’m thinking the newer Dell I just inherited will do just fine for this.
"facw" (facw)
05/24/2017 at 09:28, STARS: 0
Ooh Thinkpad is nice.
Also 3Dfx! Now you can play those rare games that only were best with Glide, and only had sucky D3D/OpenGL support (only one I can think of off the top of my head is Independence War). Maybe there are other ways to do that (are Glide wrappers still a thing?)
"R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet" (r-saldana)
05/24/2017 at 09:31, STARS: 0
That IO on the t420 though
"R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet" (r-saldana)
05/24/2017 at 09:32, STARS: 0
Also, Nibby. I’ve got some 4:3 5:4 monitors in 17" up to 19" lcd Dell’s if you’re ever interested.
"itschrome" (itschrome)
05/24/2017 at 09:34, STARS: 0
man You’d be upset to find out all the top end hardware from this time period that just ended up in a big box labeled “chromes box of shit to shoot.” I use to just fill it and every so often take it down to the range and have fun. this includes things like the unicorn Voodoo5 5500 ,couple of them actually. they didn’t OC very well and would blow. and soo many OC’d thunderbirds it’s not even funny. I went through like 5 of them in one month!
"jimz" (jimz)
05/24/2017 at 09:39, STARS: 0
Those Palo Alto cases were pretty neat at the time. The retail ones (PA-ATCX) could be easily converted from tower to desktop. Dell used them as towers, HP did both.
"TDIGuy" (owenrosier)
05/24/2017 at 09:40, STARS: 0
I do alot of the same things you do. Pick up old/broken computers clean them up/fix them and resell them and sometimes keep them. For the most part it is with old macs for me though. Mostly because I used to work for a mac repair shop
"DutchieDC2R" (dutchiedc2r)
05/24/2017 at 09:40, STARS: 0
My former workplace (DOW Chemicals in Terneuzen, Holland) used (and maybe still uses) those Lenovo Thinkpads, exactly like you bought one, up until the keyboard layouts and everything.
It mightve been the smaller model, but it looks exactly like the one you posted. I didnt mind the laptops, my personal one was better, but it was alright for the job.
"Tripper" (tripe46)
05/24/2017 at 09:45, STARS: 0
This was the first tower that I added a CD-R drive to. My dad bought the drive for me, and I paid him back in a week, slangin’ mix CD’s to my classmates.
"Tripper" (tripe46)
05/24/2017 at 09:47, STARS: 0
Hah, that is exactly how I take care of old hard drives. Sure a drill works, but not as good as 30 rounds of .556. As nostalgic as I am about old hardware, I’m never sad to see it go. I hate clutter to the point where I’ll throw out stuff and then be like “Fuck, I could have used that.”
"itschrome" (itschrome)
05/24/2017 at 09:49, STARS: 1
me too! I Hate “stuff”. I use to be very minimalist in my life. I had just what i needed and nothing more.. it’s funny how that all went out the door when a woman moved in with me..
"Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs" (yowen)
05/24/2017 at 09:51, STARS: 1
That’s awesome! I used to have the VooDoo2 on my P166 (with MMX, can’t for get that! :P Man did I think that sticker was cool). I used to have that Geforce2 MX on P3 800mhz, I believe.
Then there’s that zip drive, haha, I had a friend that had one, I was always jealous, so much storage! Never ended up with one of my own.
I really did love that Voodoo2, the graphics it was able to produce vs the S4 I believe it was that I had in that computer, it was amazing!
"jimz" (jimz)
05/24/2017 at 09:52, STARS: 0
Same, though mine was a Dell Dimension Pentium 200. Of course, the CD-R drive we picked was the HP 6200i which was notoriously failure prone.
"themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles" (themanwithsauce)
05/24/2017 at 10:45, STARS: 0
What kind of profits do you get on these systems? I flipped a few laptops in college by replacing screens and hard drives and the like but never made more than 50-100$ a system.
"promoted by the color red" (whenindoubtflatout)
05/24/2017 at 11:06, STARS: 1
Glad to hear you put some fresh thermal paste on the T-series! My T520 with the same specs was running rough after spending two years running CPU+GPU intensive tasks - have yet to do the repair, though.
Should you ever tire of those fingerprint smudges on the trackpad, the replacement is a pretty fun job.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
05/24/2017 at 11:51, STARS: 0
How much are you expecting to sell the towers for and how much do they cost to ship? I’ve just finished refurbishing two 90s beige boxes with some decent parts (one is a 486DX-2 box, the other an AMD K6-2/400) and was hoping to toss them on eBay for car part money.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:31, STARS: 0
Shipping depends on where in the USA it’s going but it’s usually $25-50 and I’m looking for $180 for the White one and $100 for the others
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:32, STARS: 0
They were but probably not anymore
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
05/24/2017 at 12:42, STARS: 0
Who do you ship through?
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:49, STARS: 0
FedEx or UPS, don’t do USPS it’s expensive
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:50, STARS: 0
This is unnecessary
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:50, STARS: 0
Other brands did too I think micron pc did
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:51, STARS: 0
Around$50-150 but once I made $300+ profit
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:52, STARS: 0
I’m good thanks
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 12:53, STARS: 0
Sweet which kind of Macs
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
05/24/2017 at 12:59, STARS: 0
Do you just bring the computer to their store and say “pack and ship this shiz” or do all that yourself
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 13:05, STARS: 0
Always do it myself
"TDIGuy" (owenrosier)
05/24/2017 at 13:09, STARS: 0
Mostly intel based. I have some pre unibody macbook pros right now and I am putting a macbook air together for myself. And I also have the last unibody white macbook and the last back macbook
"jimz" (jimz)
05/24/2017 at 13:20, STARS: 0
oh yeah, it was really popular. The bigger PA-810 was even better, you could get it retail or find it from HP (Visualize workstations) and SGI (both the Intel-based 320 and the MIPS R16000 Fuel)
"themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles" (themanwithsauce)
05/24/2017 at 13:35, STARS: 0
Neat! Though I don’t have the passion for old pentiums that you do. I’ll stick to screen repairs lol.
"itschrome" (itschrome)
05/24/2017 at 13:40, STARS: 0
I mean, yes and no. remember the great K capacitor diabolic? those days I could easily collect 20 to 30 dead pc’s in a week. this went on for about 2 years.. pc recycling wasn’t what it is now and often cost you money back in the day. so yeah it was easier to go shoot the hell out of them and have fun then pay some guy to take them away.
"NojustNo" (front24200)
05/24/2017 at 15:11, STARS: 0
Man I’ve been recycling stuff like that Dell p3. I find it amazing that people will pay the cost of shipping much less hundreds of Amerobucks for them.
I must be missing out!
Any luck selling retro stuff locally on Craigslist?
Any chance you are in Seattle area? Id make you a screaming deal on a bunch of p4 desktops and have core 2 duo/quads as well
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 15:15, STARS: 0
East coast, so that wouldn’t work out. I haven’t tried selling much old stuff on Craigslist except for a Dell XPS 710 I got for $30, cleaned it up, tossed in a spare drive, and sold for $80 locally.
"NojustNo" (front24200)
05/24/2017 at 19:06, STARS: 0
Lol thanks for replying anyways . I have fun messing with old hardware from the local thrift stores. I have a stack of desktops and laptops I need to do SOMETHING with. Ill find somebody to take the lot cheap
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/24/2017 at 20:40, STARS: 0
do you have any thinkpads
"NojustNo" (front24200)
05/25/2017 at 21:51, STARS: 0
Just several old r500s with single core Celerons that boot but have bios passwords and a random t60 and t61.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
05/25/2017 at 22:15, STARS: 0
doing anything with that T61?
"NojustNo" (front24200)
05/26/2017 at 21:46, STARS: 0
Ill check if I can find it when I am home over the weekend lol