Toys in the Attic

My wife called me later in the afternoon to inform me that her boss had some stuff he wanted me to go through. The instructions were simple: Keep what you want/need, recycle the rest.

I went home and took care of the dogs and then walked over to the deli that I was going to meet my wife at and waited. While waiting I looked at a menu and was not very impressed so when my wife got there I told her we needed to go someplace else. We ended up eating at Arby's for much less and the food was probably just as good. As we drove home, my wife had to stop at Target and Kroger to get a few things so I stayed in the van to inspect the stuff her boss gave her

My wife brought home some office supplies (folders, printer paper), one of the "Left Behind" novels (gee, I only have 12-15 or so more to get), a 17 inch e-machines CRT, a 19 Viewsonic CRT, several keyboards, and a Compaq Presario 7998. All of it was caked with dust and smelled horrible, but I told my wife I would go through it.

When my wife got done running errands, I helped her unload the car and then took Little Man for a walk. Once I got back I began putting things where they needed to go. I took the 19 inch CRT and put it by the curb, along with a very old P1 box (sans the hard drive). The 17 inch CRT and one of the keyboards matched the PC I gave one of the guys at church (I blogged about that a while back), so I set those aside for him. The office supplies and the book were put away and that left the Presario for me to look at.

When I picked it up and looked, I noticed first that it had a Soundblaster Audigy sound card...an audiophiles sound card. Intrigued, I looked in the back and notice it had a dual head video card and a TV tuner card. Hmmm, someone spent a lot of money tweaking this machine. Since I was already in hyper curious mode, I researched the PC on the web and found out that it had a few goodies that came stock on this. While the machine is hardly a speed demon, it is much faster than megaserver (500 mhz AMD, 384 megs RAM) was. Here is what I learned about the machine:

Compaq Presario 7998
1 ghz Athlon prcessor (back in the Win98 days, this must have SCREAMED)
128 megs of RAM (it had been upgraded to 256 megs, thought they were mismatched)
Upgrade to Nvidia FX 5200 (128 megs RAM)
Upgrade to Soundblaster Audigy
Upgrade to Hauppage WinTV Tuner card
DVD-ROM reader
1 Seagate 40 gig 7200 rpm hd (Data drive)
1 Seagate 60 gig 5400 rpm hd (OS drive)
Zip 100 Zip Drive (with brand new disks)
Firewire ports
USB ports

Now this thing is the largest case I have seen in years...it is huge. The previous owner obviously spent a lot of money at one point making this machine into a real A/V toy. Now since the specs of this were better than anything on megaserver, I decided I would keep this. I would have transferred all the parts into the megaserver case (or even the old e-machines case I have but this board/case was ATX while the others were mini ATX. All I had to do was clean it up.

I spread out one of the old dog sheets (old bedding we use we need to keep dog fur off of furniture) and took the machine apart. It was disgusting to say the least. It smelled of cat and was caked with fur and dust. I took it out side and used a whole can of compressed air to blow out the majority of the crud, then as I was taking it apart, I wiped down each piece with a damp cloth, blowing dust out of the ports, slots, holes, and vents as I went. When this had been done, I wiped the case and mobo down with the same cloth (rinsing it very well each time) and let it dry. I had just enough compressed air to blow out any stray dust and fur I may have missed the first round. While it was not dust free, it will suffice until I can get some more during my lunch break.

When it had dried, I started putting it back together, omitting the things I did not want/need in it and replacing things that I wanted the box to have: This is what I decided on to use to replace megaserver:

* 256 megs of matched RAM (the board only has two slots and all I have spare is 128 meg sticks. The hunt begins for 256 meg sticks)
* 1 Seagate 40 gig 7200 rpm hd (OS drive)
* 1 Seagate 60 gig 5400 rpm hd (Data drive)
* 52x CD-RW (I will not be using this for multimedia so the DVD player is a waste right now, but it could be installed later if I decide I need it.)
* ATI 9200 video card (128 megs RAM) -- I have never used ATI in Linux before.
* Soundblaster Pro (I could have just left a card out but I had this lying around
* Basic 3Com 10/100 NIC

The Zip drive I did not re-install. The TV tuner card will go into my Windows box but I could work on making this a Myth TV box since I have the parts. I do not know if the "Win TV" card will be supported so I need to check before I waste a lot of time. The rest of the stuff I kept if it was better than what I had stored. I plan on going through it all again and recycling the old stuff. We love our environment.

I put it all together and tested it with a live Ubuntu 6.10 CD to verify that it was connected properly and all looked good. There was a small issue but that was quickly resolved (I had not pressed the power cord in all the way and it refused to power on), so with it reassembled and sitting in the spot megaserver once ruled, I went to bed. I was not going to start putting an OS on it at 11:30 at night. I can do that some tonight as well as tomorrow and Sunday. I have couple of basketball games to watch, a couple of yards to mow and a house to vacuum before the weekend is over. I am gonna be busy!

If I am not mistaken, the whole process took about 3.5 hours. Not bad really. I realize that the case is not dust free but it will be soon enough. I have time.