Trash and Treasure

Hi All,

Trash and treasure !. In Adelaide (South Australia) the local Councils have a hard rubbish pick up twice a year. People can put any hard rubbish (furniture, fridges, etc) out on the pavement for collection. While driving home not a block away I spotted some printers etc and what looked to be a PC tower case. Stop, reverse, have a look. Well, a carton full of cables, a Microsoft Live Web camera (USB plug in type) and other goodies including the front of the PC tower case.

The PC case was a bit, “pre-loved” but what the heck.

At home, stripped the case and found it contained an Asus P5KPL-AM EPU (64bit) motherboard, hard disk, ram chip, the lot. The CPU fan had broken away from the motherboard, that was the only problem and easily fixed. Hmmm, a 1GB RAM chip, ok but not for much. So, bought a 2GB RAM chip to match it (DDR2) which now gives me 3GB RAM. Celeron 1.8Ghz CPU, ok, not fast but not slow either. And !, the graphics card is quite good being open GL, 3D, and DX compliant and can be pushed quite a lot.

Asus drivers are easy to find even for XP 64bit. And yes Elizabeth23, up to date chipset installed.

Great, a “new” 64bit PC for nothing from the roadside and sort of half decent specifications.

Now, which OS ?. XP Professional 64bit it is. A bit different to XP 32bit but the same if you get my meaning. And, very good performance indeed with the specs of the “new” PC.

Oh, the tower case also had an 80Mb Seagate hard disk as well and CD/DVD burner. The CD/DVD burner had seen better days, replaced with one of my spares. The hard disk is a newish Seagate but slower than a Maxtor 100Gb I have.

As I say, one person's trash is another person's treasure. A “new” PC with the addition of an extra 2GB RAM, the only cost.

Cheers from Aunty Jack.

 

great find !!