[rescue] modern rescue

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On Apr 1, 2010, at 11:41 PM, "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." 
> <rescue at hawkmountain.net> wrote:
>
>> I know this isn't a rescue of classic gear.... but I rescued some 
>> nice modern usable
>> equipment from the recycle bin....
>>
>> Dell Optiplex 755, Optiplex GX520, and Optiplex 210L
>>
>> They were pretty well stripped (no CPU, no RAM, SATA cables removed,
>> optical drives removed, etc).
>
> <snip>
>
>> The only kit I've rescued from recycling piles in the last several 
>> years has been PC or
>> Mac.... I haven't even run into a single Sun, SGI, IBM (non PC), etc....
>
> What are the chassis types? The 755 comes in at least three forms...

Sorry... you are right.... mini-tower... not desktop, SFF, or USFF....

>
> Before investing any significant time/money in any of these chassis, 
> run a warranty check on them. The 755 is pretty recent, not sure off 
> the others off the top of my head about the others.
>
I've done that... the 755 has a year left on it !  To transfer ownership 
you need to
know the prior owner... and another Dell in with it (That I didn't 
rescue as it was
older) had a business card on it... so I grabbed that card, and used 
that company
name.... the form said I'd hear from them in 2-3 weeks... so I'll find 
out then if I
succeeded in transferring the ownership over.

The power supply has a very noisy fan in it... so I could get that 
replaced.... and
I could probably get the rubber feet for it... but as the rest of the 
box is ok... it
really only gives me protection moving forward against a board that goes 
bad.

> I work on Dell kit at $work, and while shops vary, we would never 
> strip and trash a functional system. I suspect the trashers (the folks 
> that tossed these systems) had short warranties and when the MB/PS 
> died outside warranty, they stripped it for parts and tossed it.
>
I honestly don't know why these were tossed.... they all seem to work.  
The only
thing I've found so far is a bad fan in one of the power supplies..... I 
don't know if
the company downsized.... buys new hardware frequently, etc ????  I find 
it odd
the 755 was tossed, as it was configured as a Core 2 Duo... it wasn't a 
'shabby'
box....  I wonder if their norm was to get systems that had the standard 
1 year
warranty... and for some reason this one came with more... and they 
didn't bother
to check... so when the power supply started making noise, they replaced the
system ? ????? 

They obviously kept all the 'good' stuff (for spares, or maybe for the 
company's
IT guy to build a nice box at hom :-) ?).  They took the CPUs, RAM, hard 
drives,
all but one optical drive, all but one floppy (or whatever device was in 
the 3.5"
bay), the SATA cables....

On two of the units, the power supplies were even removed... but discard 
with
the systems....

I'm short one cpu heatsink as well (for the 755, although I believe it 
uses (but
not by part number) the same as in the Optiplex 210L (the only 
difference being
the cable guides in the plastic shroud.... I have the shroud from the 
755, but it
doesn't have the alumin 'block' heatsink).

> I find it hard to believe a tech would toss a functional system 
> capable of supporting a Quad Core CPU after stripping out the easily 
> removed parts.
>
make no sense to me.... but especially if I get the ownership/service 
transfer on it,
I'm not going to be arguing... as if I find the mainboard to be flaky... 
I'll just have
Dell send me a replacement :-)

> I work in a K-12 school district in NJ, and we toss GX270 systems when 
> the MB goes, but we've just learned we will be trying to make PCs last 
> 10 years now. Anyone have pointers on sources for re-capped GX270 MBs? 
> I haven't googled yet, just curious if any knows of a vendor they have 
> used previously...
>
I've re-capped a few mainboards.... all but one was a success....  I 
have one on the
bench now in the basement, I've gotten all the bad caps removed, and 
most of the
holes cleared... but I really need a desoldering station, and a 
soldering station with
a bit more punch than my Ungar (or my Weller).  It is very hard doing 
these when the
caps tie into ground planes.... I had to use a soldering gun ! to get 
two of the caps
out of the board on my bench.  (The board probably has about a dozen 
failed caps
(all of the same make and value).  As that is a Asus made board out of 
an HP media
center PC, and I now have these boxes I've aquired... I may not finish 
that one...


> It should be interesting to see a single core Pentium w/HT running 
> windows 7 in 2014!
>
As long as you've got a reasonable amount of memory, and it's not one of 
the slower P4
CPUs... I can't see why it wouldn't do it.  The OS itself is more memory 
hungry than
anything... and if you've got glass effects on, it will want an 
appropriate 3D accelerated
card of course....

But they'll run faster longer on a non Microsoft OS :-)

I've had some coworkers go through two generations of laptops (from D500/600
Latitudes to D610 Latitudes to D520/530 Latitudes) while I'm still 
running my
1M cache Pentium-M 1.7GHz D600.... and it runs just as well as it did 
the day
I installed it 5 years ago....  (I have done a memory upgrade once as I 
occasionally
run Windows XP under VMWare Workstation on it).

I spend much more time under Linux/Unix than in Windows.... but so far I 
like some
of the stuff in Windows 7 (but I don't imagine I'd ever move to Windows 
for my primary
systems).

-- Curt

> Lionel_______________________________________________
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