Vintage E-Waste Haul - The Battle of the OEM's!! 

Thanks!

Thanks for this!!

Great suggestion!

Ah, now that makes sense. Thank you!

Mac users had firewire external hard disks

Oh Mac....

Hahahahah hosting my own VCF Canadian edition!

He does know the e-waste staff on a first name basis.

Lol

Thank you so much!!!

Socket AM2. Athlon 64 x2

Definitely very possible! I just remember it's reputation, however this syetm has some potential.

@@TheRetroRecall of course, this was also the era when a bunch of companies couldn't decide between quality and garbage, and bounced back and forth to oblivion. So who knows what direction Acer was headed that day.,..

Well, at least they are still going today!

Donations, big lots, borrowing etc.

It tested well, just need to put an actual fan on it and test out an OS.

Great to know, thanks!!

Good call out. Many options are on the table on how to restore these.

Thanks!!

Great to know! Don't get me wrong, I owned Aopen boards and other components that were amazing. I just found the pre built systems were a bit low end.. But there were some that were geared for better performance. I love to hear they had some extra compatibility.

The only reason I did not like Acer as they were bare bones systems with the cheapest possible parts. Working on a brand new Acer was like working on a 5 year old Dell. Crack the case open and it was using SiS chipset on a FoxCon board Acer was bottom of the barrel hardware. I just moved and I had 15 desktop PC's I had to ditch a few and I ended up taking my Acer to the e-waste centre. I wish I had kept it to make a video of it now. 😞

Yeah, that was a common occurrence! Video?? Do you have a channel?

@@TheRetroRecall I have 2 channels, I have just started/re-branded my personal channel to @brbTechTalk, I have a few old videos there and a brand new one, I also have @brbadventurer that spun off of my main channel. I am going to focus on retro PC's through the winter as adventure in the winter in Canada is brutal. I have one video up on retro PC's but I have a couple more in the works that I am editing. I have quite a few old desktop PC's and laptops to feature.

Love this. I will definitely be subbing!

Haha, oops?

Just recently. There is a place I get some of these E-waste systems and they asked if I ever wanted some of the PowerEdge stuff. I have been toying with the idea of showcasing servers in the tower format and this could be one of them. I am probably going to stay away from the rack mount 1, 2 or 3U servers as they are way to bulk. I will keep an eye out.. Who knows.. There may be a server video special!

Love this comment, thank you and glad to have you aboard!

@@TheRetroRecall 27:42 the CPU is the power supply, then the power supply has 2.4 GHz 🤣🤣🤣

Lmao!!! Ok ok, that's a powerful power supply!!

Yeah I thought the same thing. Will be good for my spinning rust drives lol.

@@TheRetroRecall Spinning rust in a RAID array is a good thing. I am using 4 WD 4TB Yellow drives for 8TB of storage. RAID 10 is the way to go if you can find a case that will support 5 drives, many modern Z series motherboards support 6 SATA drives.

Awesome!!!

No problem!!! Except I am not looking forward to this one lol.

@@TheRetroRecall soapy water and a sponge

You mean to a generic case?

yes @@TheRetroRecall

That actually sounds like a good idea. I hate the Clamshell design.

Thanks!!

Nice. Have an extra one? Hahal

Haha! Stay tuned for tomorrow's release!

Haha! I think Windows 7 is now knocking on that door too lol.

So funny.. I mean I wasn't going to check it at that point and thought.. Heck why not. I wonder how many of these systems were thrown away because of that battery!

It's crazy to think that's all it can be.. And that some people toss the computers into the trash because 'they don't work' anymore!. Very happy that you are enjoying :)

100 dollars, not bad! They were exciting times... Do you remember your gaming build config?

​@@TheRetroRecallI remember having a Celeron G1840, Asus H81M-E motherboard, 4 GB of system RAM, a used AMD Radeon HD 7770, 1TB Western Digital Caviar Blue Hard Drive, Windows 8.1, Antec VP450 power supply, and a OEM case I found trashpicked (and cleaned up the dust afterwards) to use for the build. For roughly 400 dollars in total at the time, it was a simple yet effective replacement for my dying Craigslist PC. Plus it was on a socket platform that was upgradable meaning performance improves upon upgrading the CPU. I currently have, since mid 2021, an i7 4770, 16GB RAM, 1tb SSD (with an extra 128gb ssd for backup), AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB, Windows 10 LTSC, Seasonic 520w II PSU, and a rosewill case (to replace the oem case since the card was too big).

Lol! What will we do to ever fill that space!! 😂

That's awesome, glad you were able to save a piece of tech. I'm surprised it all worked for you worked for you - truly shows these systems can take a little bit of abuse haha.

Haha as was I! It actually opened on the opposite side like a BTX case as well. Confused me for sure.

Take an old dead board and practice :). One that it doesn't matter how it turns out. Even use the old caps on it and take them out / put them back.

Thanks. There has to be some differences in the architecture.. Enough to warrant some of the branding.

Amazing how they could actually be able to do that, without any differences in the chip.

Haha I was too!!! Kinda threw me off.

Ahahhaha well arguably it's better than some of mine lol!! (hangs head in shame)

Lmao, so true!! Dell El Stinko is the new nickname for this system.. Lol. At least that's what I call it in the outro :)

@@TheRetroRecall Let me guess, it stunk like cigarette smoke? I was expecting the internals to be way dirtier, are you sure you did not blast some air in the guts before recording?

Hahah no, maybe the camera isn't picking it up, but it was pretty dirty. It almost smells like cat urine to be honest.

@@TheRetroRecall Ewww, 🤮 I had my own business where I fixed computers from the 80's to the early 2000's I am 62 semi retired. I love retro machines but I hate Windows.

Hahaha yes!!! See, you have become a legacy lol

Nice, it still sounds like it was a capable machine. Thanks for watching and supporting the channel!

@@TheRetroRecall Great for getting back, you do what you say which is not common in this day and age, sub granted and possible patronite support in the foreseeable future, as you do know what you're saying and I clearly state that this is the channel worth supporting! Yeah it was a capable machine back in the days, despite gaming as all the dx9, dx9b and so on were the massive pain in the ar*e. And we're talking about x1950xt, top tier and not a low end x1300 with no disrespect to the owners of a latter.. Cutting long story short, it basically put me off pc gaming. I did have x360 and ps3 back then and left alone pc gaming. Nowadays I have an asus laptop with rtx 3060 and it works like a charm. Of course you need to adjust your expectations accordingly, but in 1080p I didn't have any problems running new games with usually high settings. As for the video, could you make these systems run Crysis, the original one please? It will give them a good stretch and we'll see how they'll cope. Thanks, looking fwd to next video and all the best. Greetings from the UK.

I learned a long time ago - do what you say as your resume is your word :). All the way from the UK.. Hello from Canada! I was much like you and tended to lean towards console gaming VS computer gaming. I will definitely look into testing Crysis out on that machine. I am working on different projects but will see what I can do to fit that in. I may just include it in a future video that involves a decent video card :) again, thanks for your kind words!

Something like that for sure. It was soooo gross lol. I mean I've had some dirty systems.. But this one stank as well.

Yes they literally are saved from the scrap pile. Fortunately I have a few connections that gather 'lots' of systems that these pop up into that they are going to send to ewaste. That and some others are literally on the side of the road or at the recyclers. For me it's not about putting them in a full working state of today's standards.. It's the mystery of seeing what condition they are in and the challenge of restoring them. Once done, they make great retro machines of the era and eventually I will pass them along. It's all about the fun and content for everyone to enjoy.

thanks for taking the time to respond! so as I suspected they're not being put into "daily use" haha, got it. I saw you responded as I was watching the new video with the 4550 @@TheRetroRecall

Haha yes!!!! I remember all of that all too well lol. Those days were fun.

@@TheRetroRecall and then u fould power strip and changed the gpu clock....then looked deep in the case at the mobo for the ICS PLL. clockset.exe. in windows !!!!!!!! while its running. sleed fan would do this if u were lucky also

@@TheRetroRecall i miss my 1 ghz duron. on a purple ! K7S5A. board. i think ECS made it

Haha... 'hoof' :)

Ah. Funny how something so simple could render a system unable to work. I wonder how many systems were tossed because of that.

I mean they weren't terrible... Just not as great as other OEM's.

@@TheRetroRecall OK maybe not terrible and it's a regional thing maybe but I felt Acer at the time had the worst price to performance ratio compared to other OEMs and their restore procedures were convoluted.

That I can agree with :)

Thanks and yes, for whatever reason I literally have no memories of it. I must have just used USB :)

I 100% agree with you. I was shocked myself that a simple battery would cause the entire system to no longer function.

@@TheRetroRecall On newer dells that have core i series they actually did thought about this issue. They will light up diagnosic lights 1 2 3 if the battery is dead but the other manufacturers still don't care

Yes I remember that from some of the other Dell's I've worked on. I think it's cool if the end user knew what it was for of course.

To be honest no, but I think there are live cd's if I'm not mistaken - I could definitely start doing that. Do you have a recommendation?

Knoppix, Puppy Linux & Debian Linux Mint & Peppermint are all good choices for older machines. Most of them can be run from a live cd or usb@@TheRetroRecall

You rock! I will check it out, thanks!

I keep extra working ram & hds from when I used to work on pcs. Most have bootable Windows & linux on them. Unfortunately 32 bit support has ended for most older processors that older systems use. Any processor pre SSE3 will not have full Program & software functionality. @@TheRetroRecall

I do!! I have way too many to count, however I will use those during the restoration videos :). What I will start doing is using a LiveCD to boot from to make sure all is well. Stay tuned!

@Karataus ah I see. It's my first video of yours so didn't know you restored them and such

Welcome to the channel! Hopefully you re subbed haha and enjoy the rest of the content :)

Hi there, thrift stores, recycling centers, side of the road, yard sales, online market places, connections who order computer lots etc.

Thanks!

Yeah, that XC100 looks like a pretty low spec'd machine.

@@TheRetroRecall It's slow but had some fun with it and installed windows 11

I have!! It was short lived lol.

What did you think of it?

I didn't love it... But it did set the stage for Windows 7 :)

@@TheRetroRecall Yeah, I don’t think most people did. Windows 7 was beautiful!

100%!!

Thanks!

Sad day that would have been haha. I just wish I could find the original restoration cd's!

@@TheRetroRecall i meant I would use it for my Windows experiments if I still had it but you can do whatever you want

Haha I know. I just meant it was a sad day when your dad threw it out :)

@@TheRetroRecall yeah

It's crazy to see older systems running just fine with slight upgrades and a flavour of Linux. The thing is, with all of these ewaste systems, I'm destined to restore them haha. Hoping Linux can help with that part. I'm sure your channel will also assist!

It’s such a great feeling to save old technology and keep it out of the landfill. There are quite a few lightweight Linux systems (or distributions) that run pretty well on older hardware. If it’s 64-bit, there are tons of current options including Zorin OS Lite Edition, Linux Lite, Lubuntu and Linux Mint XFCE or MATE editions. If you want 32-bit (or want some other 64-bit options that also have a 32-bit version available) then there’s MX Linux, Peppermint OS and Q4OS. I’ve covered some of these in the past, but really should do a roundup of the best choice(s) for different ages of older hardware.

Nice! I wonder how good the video card that came with it is. I'd like to keep using it if possible when it's restored.

@@TheRetroRecall It's pretty weak, unfortunately, fine for games up through 2000 or 2001. As I recall it would only run GTA 3 at 800x600 resolution and Unreal Tournament 2004 really tortured it. I think it struggled with even MechWarrior 4. When I first got it I played mostly Combat Flight Simulator 2, Test Drive 6, Unreal Tournament (the original) and it did great but tech moved so fast back then it got obsoleted very fast. I was happy to see this on your channel, I was watching another video where you had other similar vintage Dells and was hoping to see you get a 4550 and what you'd do with it.

Well I promise I will restore this in a video! :). Just have to figure out a video card for it. May use your recommendation.

@@TheRetroRecall Awesome, I look forward to it! Something period-correct but with better performance would be ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, some people would get the 9700 non Pro and flash it to silly performance, or a 9800 Pro. Nvidia cards back in that era were fairly weak, it may be fun to pick up an ATI card for it as those were hot back then.

Perfect. I think I have one of those in the stash!!

Haha I love this overview.

I don't have too much experience with lightscribe - I'd like to explore it more for some fun. Back then all types of techs were popping up that didn't last today :)

@@TheRetroRecall There's something about lightscribe that fascinates me. I've been able to get pretty results with it. There's someone on the web that made modern software for it as well.

I'm definitely going to check it out! Thank you!

@@TheRetroRecall Of course! If you find any good drives out in the wild it would be cool to see you test them out 😁

Lmao!!!! And thanks for the info on the live! designation.

You are sooo right - it deserves a restoration... future video maybe?!?! ;) And awesome - glad you are enjoying!

Hahah you said this with so much enthusiasm that I absolutely have to try this now lol. Seriously... Going to look into that!

Thanks for this recommendation! The caps were bad enough, but didn't think about the PSU. I'll have to see if I can use a generic or if is a proprietary one.

@@TheRetroRecall It should be standard ATX power supply as far as I know. Been playing a lot with these older HP machines back in the day and all of them had regular ATX power supplies :) Just recap the board, add known-good PSU, SSD, and some more RAM and you've got yourselves a decent internet browsing machine! :)

Love it. Stay tuned!

The first PC I ever built with new parts was an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe from 2005, I had to sell it because I needed cash and it worked but it turns out it came right in the capacitor plague era and maybe it was pure luck that I got the cash out of it before some blew up and destroyed traces.

It's odd that it is unrecognizable, yet the HP Toolset locates it to scan it. When you say recognizable... do you mean when you attempt to install an O/S on the drive? Do you see it in the system BIOS?

@@TheRetroRecall no. When I go to boot normally, it throws the boot drive error. And, when I last turned the computer on - two nights ago - the HDD didn’t even try to start up. There’s already Windows 10 on there, upgraded from 8, by the previous owner, my ex….who just has to have all the current stuff when released. And as far as the BIOS, it was there before. I should check it just to be sure.

Save them all!!!

Good to know and yes, I had no idea it was hiding in there and they are two dvd Rom drives. It would be good to get a different more flexible type of optical drive in this system when restored.

Definitely on the agenda! I have a few systems to recap now, just waiting on parts :). Stay tuned!

That's probably why I have a huge gap in my memory over them. I mean I know what the connection was, but that was it. It's seems USB took me from day one. :)

I have not, but it's an option.

Haha I'm happy you are enjoying and that someone else is inspired by my bad habits lol.