MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Anyone got old PCs to show off?

I wasn't sure whether I should put this here or the Loony Bin, but I just wanted to waste everyone's time by making a list of PCs I've ended up with over the years.

All of them boot, but most of the older ones are lacking hard drives.

1. Acer T310 (my 'current' PC since 12/2005) - Cel 2.8GHz, 1GB DDR, 256MB Radeon 9550, Windows XP SP1.

2. IBM Thinkcentre 8191KMQ (ex office) - Cel 2.2GHz, 512MB DDR, Intel 845 chipset, Kubuntu 10 that works for 20 minutes then automatically exits KDE for unknown reasons (even when idle).

3. HP Pavilion 500a (my former PC since 2001) - Cel 1.2GHz, 256MB SDRAM, onboard Intel 82810E chipset, Windows XP SP1. No AGP slot.

4. IBM Aptiva 2194-45A - P3 667MHz, 128MB SDRAM (OEM), onboard Intel 82810E chipset, Windows XP. No AGP slot.

5. Packard Bell 3166D (my first 'modern' PC back in 1998) - Pentium 200 MMX (formerly P166 o/c to 200MHz), 128MB EDO, onboard 2MB S3 ViRGE 325, Windows 98 SE.

6. IBM PS/2 Model 330 6573-A02 - 486DX2 66MHz, 28MB EDO (weird amount), onboard 1MB Cirrus Logic 54xx chipset, Windows 98 SE. Original Seagate hard drive (541MB). Interestingly, it does not have any VESA slots - it's all PCI and ISA with a SurePath BIOS dated 1995/03/30.

7. Intel Desktop Boards board(!) in generic ATX case - Pentium 4 3GHz, 512MB DDR, Radeon 8800 or 9200/9250?, old 6GB Quantum drive saved from seizing (also thrown around with Compaq Presario below), Windows XP Pro SP2. Even with the ancient graphics card, it runs MAME faster than my main machine. Proof that CPU speed trumps hi-rez! Also has a repaired exhaust fan which was originally seized (the fan came from a blown power supply, wonder why it blew).

8. NCS 486 - 486DX2 66MHz, 48MB EDO, 1MB Trident 9440 (VESA Local Bus), Western Digital? 516MB (1048c 16h 63s), Windows 95B with the 'Active' Desktop update. AMIBIOS 5.02-2.1 (04/04/1993). The case has a door on the front which hides the removable media. Dead battery makes the date reset to 01/01/94 after cold boot, also forgetting the drive's C/H/S layout in the process.

9. L+C generic case - Pentium 100, 32MB EDO, 2MB S3 Trio, DOS 7 transferred from floppy (Windows 95 4.10.1111).

10. Generic no-name AT case (Soltek SL-586V board) - Pentium 100, 32MB EDO, 2MB S3 ViRGE 325, Windows 98 Plus! (4.10.1998), Western Digital Caviar WDC AC21600H 1.6GB.

Laptops:
Toshiba Satellite 440CX - Pentium 100 MMX, 16MB RAM, onboard 2MB Chips and Technologies 65554 video (800x600 LCD), unknown 1.5GB HDD, Windows 95 (4.00.950B) with no (proper) USB support despite having a port at the back. Despite this computer being used in the mid-1990s in high schools down here, there is no CD-ROM drive on this machine, no network card or even a 56k modem; the only means of transferring anything at all is via stupid 3.5" floppy disks!!! I will admit though, I did see one of these Toshiba laptops with a CD drive, so it was possible to get them.

Apple PowerBook 100 - 68000 16MHz, 8MB or even 4MB RAM, System 7 and probably a 20MB hard drive, and a black and white screen (in true 1-bit mode rather than grayscale). The screen used to have trouble turning on back when I last tested it in 2006, never ran it since. At one point we attempted to get it on the internet, using what little there is for 'pure' 68000 Macs; the only 'decent' thing we could get running was Netscape 2 I think, the others either used too much RAM (Netscape 3 or later), required MacOS 8, required an '020 or better!

Incomplete PCs:

HP Workstation 4500 (ex Holden Australia) - 2x 2GHz Xeons, 2GB RDRAM (Rambus), unknown graphics. No hard drive (most likely retained by Holden).

HP Pavilion 8800 - AMD Duron 850, 512MB SDRAM, unknown onboard graphics. No AGP slot, no hard drive.

Compaq Presario 5600 (PCB only) - Socket 7 CPU, 8MB onboard RAM (with an additional2 EDO slots), onboard 2MB S3 Trio64V+, onboard ESS AudioDrive ES1888F sound, AT power socket, PS/2 keyboard/mouse, riser slot with 2 PCI/3 ISA slots. Because of the onboard memory and graphics, this board actually boots with just a bare CPU and power supply hooked up! The board doesn't fit into a standard AT/ATX case (it was found on the nature strip; the original case was thrown around by some idiots and wrecked beyond repair, but the board somehow survived undamaged!).

Generic AT case with an old power switch (Epox P55IT board) - Pentium 166 at 200MHz, 16MB EDO, 2MB S3 ViRGE or Trio card, no hard drive.

'Bedrock' generic AT desktop case (Gigabyte GA-586ATS board) - Pentium 120, 32MB EDO, 2MB S3 video card. No hard drive.

Asus TX97 board. Socket 7 CPU, 3 SDRAM slots, AT power connector.
Tekram P6B40-A4X board. Slot 1 CPU, 4 SDRAM slots, 4x AGP slot, ATX power connector.
Gigabyte GA-6BXC board. Slot 1 CPU, 3 SDRAM slots, 4x AGP slot, ATX power connector.
Soltek SL-75KAV board. Socket 462, 3 SDRAM slots, 8x AGP slot, ATX power connector. Blown caps everywhere but still powers up.
Microstar MS6172 board. A complete dud, brand new board that has never worked once, keyboard LEDs blink then nothing regardless of what you do. Identical board works perfectly in the same configuration (and any other way I've tried). The working MS6172 board has an Athlon XP 3000 if I'm not mistaken (I'm not an AMD person).

There are many other cases which I can't get to right now. Mostly Pentium 1, 2 and 3 and the odd 486 or two. No AMDs apart from two above and two bare PCBs. One of the boards has a 180MHz Pentium Pro. I used to have a Socket 7 Cyrix CPU in one board but lost it years ago.

Broken PCs:

Suntek generic ATX case (Gigabyte GA-586T2 board) - Pentium 150, 64MB EDO, Windows Me, 4GB(?) Seagate. The board supports both AT and ATX power supplies (using AT mode to preserve newer PSUs for others). The board also has 2 SDRAM slots which can be run alongside EDO (not used by me, but 32MB PC66 worked when tested, and can be used with existing 72-pin RAM). Graphics card missing (the one and only reason it is 'broken').

Packard Bell "486SX2-50" - 486DX4 100MHz, 8MB EDO (used spare RAM just to boot it), onboard 1MB Cirrus Logic chipset, Windows 98 SE. Original Seagate ST3391A hard drive (341.3MB - 768c 14h 62s) (when it worked). As of last year (and still yesterday) a dead battery which the factory decided to solder to the board causes all problems for it, it's not a CR3032 either. Computer boots with the date showing 00/00/>200, when you highlight the year it corrects itself to 00/00/4200! Regardless of what you do, it forgets its settings after exiting the BIOS so it's stuck on the POST looking for media that it doesn't know about (it auto-detects the HDD in the BIOS but forgets it once you "save" and exit). The Packard Bell case is identical to the Pentium 200 '3166D' above.

Compaq DeskPro DP4000s - Pentium 233 MMX, 32MB SDRAM, 2MB S3 Trio64, 2GB Seagate ST32122A Windows 98 (which will not be for long). The hard drive (ex Packard Bell 3166D) is on death row, it works fine when cold booted and has no surface errors, but after being on for more than 5 minutes it starts clicking randomly and bringing down Windows with it, most likely due to ageing read/write heads rather than platter damage.

After all that, there isn't even 300 gigabytes of hard drive space if you counted every single hard drive I had!
Seagate ST340015A (40GB) (Acer T310 OEM)
Seagate ST360015A (60GB) (Acer secondary drive)
Seagate 80GB (IBM Thinkcentre with Linux)
Fujitsu MPF3153AT 15GB (IBM Aptiva OEM)
Western Digital Protogé WD100 10GB (IBM Aptiva secondary, possibly dead as Windows says it isn't formatted)
Samsung 20GB (HP Pavilion 500a OEM)
Seagate 4.3GB SCSI (HP Workstation)
Seagate ST32122A 2GB (Packard Bell 3166D)
Seagate ST3391A 341.3MB (Packard Bell 486)
Seagate 541MB (IBM 486)
Seagate ST32122A 2GB (Compaq DeskPro DP4000s, dying)
Seagate ST32122A 2GB (Bedrock case, dying after meeting the floor and completely killed by inexperienced user running a full Scandisk surface scan to death before I got home; it still worked the night before despite being damaged, now it just clicks a few times and powers down)
Maxtor 40GB (Compaq Celeron 833)
WD? 516MB (NCS 486 with dead battery)
Maxtor 71336A 1.3GB (Generic L+C AT case)
Western Digital Caviar WDC AC21600H 1.6GB (Soltek board)
1.5GB drive in Toshiba laptop
40MB(?) drive in 68k Mac PowerBook
Seagate ST38410A 8GB somewhere
Quantum 6GB 5.25" half-height

295138 megabytes (assuming 1000MB in 1GB), not counting anything I've missed.