The world's deepest, rarest diamonds revealed a big secret about our planet's interior
https://www.livescience.com/63233-bl...eep-boron.html

We all have heard this about computers: Garbage in = Garbage out.
However, try this and see, what happens if you put in good things into a
computer such as diamonds:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34258

My life pushed me down and kept me there, so I made peace
with my poverty, badluck, other challenges and my environment
in life. I tried to become a diver and look for treasures at the
bottom. The intangible treasures are amazing. Some of the smart
rich folks also pursue these well. Old computer with linux on it is
excellent for intangible treasures hunting.

By the way, a lot of big people have been suddenly pushed to
the bottom, the Titanic passengers are a good example. So I tried
not feeling too unlucky when this happened to me, atleast I am alive.
Need to appreciate the intangible treasurs even more and forget
about other things that I can't control. I need to setup
another old computer well but am pulling my feet about this.
Will get to this in future sometime.

This film takes a deep look into the lives of the poor men who race shopping carts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi-f...ature=youtu.be

I am just a very small poor old person, a cut and paste hero that
looks for and shares interesting info. It is up to the younger folks
to pursue the good in all these and capitalize. Also, what I share
here are just a few cents here and there, if one searches net well,
a lot more valuable current info. can be found.

Edited to add:
Here is an amazing related bonus from the past -
https://librivox.org/a-raw-youth-by-fyodor-dostoyevsky/

I've finally decided to retire my third computer oldboy. Oldboy is a 32-bit HP Scenic that was once my main computer. It runs painfully slow now, even with AntiX. And as I have put 64-bit AntiX on littleboy, I don't need another version.

No one, however poor, will want such an old banger so I shall have to dump it. I am still deciding what to take out first:

1) Hard drive. Only 20 GB altogether, so hardly any use as a secondary disk. I have 100 GB on bigboy and use only a small part of it. But I had better take the disk out and trash it as a protective measure.

2) Memory. 250 MB. Again, not much use for an upgrade. And it may well be incompatible with modern memory modules.

3) Network card. Realtek RTL8139. Worth keeping. Several people here have recommended having a spare network card.

4) Writable CD drive. Normally I'd say worth keeping. But I already have one stashed away. Maybe keep it just in case.

5) Floppy drive and disks. Probably not worth keeping.

There are also a huge and heavy scanner (Umax) and an old HP ink-jet printer. The scanner still functions; I don't know if the printer does. Probably the cartridges have dried up. Both require the use of the parallel port and neither bigboy nor littleboy have one of those, so without oldboy, they're useless.

I wish I had someone like rvijay living nearby.

The power supply is potentially the most useful item to keep around, if it has the 4 pin square power thingy. From the specs, I'm guessing it doesn't have any SATA power connectors, though, and it's been a while since hard drives came with PATA->SATA power adapters, so you may not have any of those around.

If it doesn't have that 4 pin square power connector, though, it's not very useful for anything. Without that connector, it won't power anything above Pentium III. With it, it may power pretty modern motherboards, albeit you might not have the adapters on hand to help it power SATA drives...

Not sure even he'd want that old thing.

Network card, if it is the same type as could be fitted & used in bigboy.
I'd second keeping the power supply as a back up, if it is the same type as bigboy uses.


(I wouldn't worry about a 20GB HDD, pendrives are much bigger these days, & not many people would bother trying to see what you were up to on that size of disk, I'd just overwrite it a couple of times, then dump it along with the rest at your local recycling centre.)

It's not the same. It's a Realtek and bigboy uses an Intel. But why should that make a difference?
Is it safe to take the power supply out? I was always told those things can give you a nasty electric shock even when unplugged from the main.
OK.

Not manufacturer, but if it is a (can't remember what came before) PCI/PCIe slot that it sits in.

Only if you try opening up the unit as it has capacitors within. Just unscrewing/unbolting & removing it is OK, (as long as you remember to unplug it! )

I think bigboy has multifunction PCI slots so any type of card should match.

I've begun to dismantle oldboy and its quite interesting. The first thing I noticed was that there are four memory slots but only one card. (But see below for an explanation of that)

I took the power unit out and that revealed the cpu. Another surprise: there's no fan, just cooling fins. It's an Intel Celeron P3 and I thought all Pentium-type cpu's had fans.

The drives are traditional ide's with ribbon connectors, so I doubt if the power unit has the square sata connector that Isaac Kuo mentioned. I won't know for certain till I've untangled the wiring. And the CD drive is probably incompatible with a modern mobo with that kind of connector, so probably not worth saving either. I think I'll junk the lot when I've finished examining it, just save the ethernet card.

Postscript: Oops and triple oops! I was wrong about the memory. What I took for a memory card was actually the network card. That just shows you how ignorant I am about hardware. The actual memory is two cards and there are just two slots, so no upgrades possible.

Isn't it fun, the first time you dismantle a computer.

Yes, ram modules have 2 clips to hold them in place, so next time you'll know.

Most anything that has a connector at the back of the computer is likely to be a removable card.

(I think the P4 introduced the absolute need for cooling fans, before that it was an option to air cool them with big fins.)

Edit: You might find this page interesting/informative.
http://www.playtool.com/pages/psucon...onnectors.html

I have had several machine of about that age that had either two or four memory slots, but could handle memory cards of four of five different capacities. You expanded the memory by getting bigger capacity cards.

Any CPU can run without a fan IF you manage adequate cooling another way. Water cooling and an external cooling tower can work, for example. Only a few of us are so hardware insane as to make a habit of such PC construction, so those solutions are not well supported. (But fun.)

It probably relies upon the power supply fan to suck air through the CPU cooler. A number of Pentium III era computer models did this sort of thing, with either a very close PSU fan or a ducted case fan. For a while, a popular case layout was to have the power supply directly above the CPU slot. This was perfectly fine for Slot 1 CPUs, but it became a problem when Intel returned to the classic style of mounting a CPU directly on the motherboard. With the classic style, placing the power supply directly above the CPU created a "tug of war" where both the power supply and the CPU fan were trying to pull on the same bit of air in opposite directions.

Stupid design, right? Well, it made some sense at the time, because of Slot 1 CPUs (Pentium II and early Pentium III).

Anyway, if things were ducted just right, you could have the power supply fan actually do double duty as the CPU fan also - if it were right up against the CPU cooler and/or included a duct to direct airflow as desired. This wasn't the greatest design, though, since it ensured hot air from the CPU would feed into the power supply.

Anyway, a Pentium III class Celeron motherboard doesn't have the 4 pin power connector thing I was talking about. As such, this power supply is likely not really useful as a spare.

Yes, that's how the Scenic is built. I was only able to see the cpu after I had removed the power supply.
I wouldn't know how to recognise a Slot 1. But I can tell you that the slot has a side lever to insert and remove the processor. The cooling fins seem to be integral to the processor; they don't come off. Maybe they are glued on.
No, I checked that and decided to discard it.

A Slot 1 CPU is mounted on a little card that sticks up vertically from the motherboard:

https://www.3sfmedia.net/wp-content/...s6111_9642.jpg

The Pentium II and Pentium III slot 1 CPUs would usually have a plastic outer case hiding the card, but their equivalent Celerons would lack the outer case (this is just cosmetic - the case can be removed with no effect).

Anyway, the point is - with this CPU location, the CPU fan is pulling the air "sideways" to the motherboard, instead of straight down toward it. As such, a power supply fan could be right next to it without causing a direct "tug of war" effect on the air between them.

If it has a lever to the side, then it's a socket of some sort - in this case, Socket 370. A CPU "socket" is a square-ish interface that connects to pins or contacts on the bottom of the CPU.

The CPU and cooling fins are separate things, but the thermal paste used to ensure full contact will typically glue them together after some time (not necessarily very strongly). It's always possible to remove the CPU cooler, but in this case there's no point.

No, the processor was plugged directly into the motherboard.
Yup, it's square with one corner missing to ensure correct registration. Much like the very early cpu sockets that I have seen, only they had a lot fewer pins and no lever. You had to press them down into the socket, which I imagine was a pretty nerve-racking process. Just imagine you spent all that money on a processor and then bent one of the pins!

Hi,

Most early processor would use a thermal glue to attach the heat sink thus allowing good heat transfer for a fan-less heat sink/cooler.

Yes, sometimes it would be a pain to remove a glued heat sink but it can be done. I always kept a spare socket that could be vise mounted to remove a glued heat sink.

Slot 1 CPU usually would have the means to direct air flow and I have seen some manufactures use a duct way to force air flow to slot 1 CPU.

I no longer provide support for older units. Still get calls and only support when the client cannot get anyone else. I still have some older Laptops but no boxen of that class. Donated all the older units with no warranty or support.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

I've been revisiting Tiny Core lately, it's come on quite a bit since I last investigated it.

Even found a battery monitor/sound level/clock panel to install to keep an eye on things.

My present setup only takes about 170MB of disk space, & romps along with my 2 GB of ram, even firefox seems to run reasonably well.......& all this on a 1.6GHz Atom netbook.

Edit: Forgot to put a link here - http://www.tinycorelinux.net/