Today I was given an old crappy computer that wasn't working right, and was just replaced by the owner, so the old computer somehow trickled down to me through the grape vine to me or something.

So I have this dust-bunny infested old piece of crap, which would lock up after an hour of use or so of use (or so I was told).

• Broken DVD-ROM, Broken CD-ROM
• Amd Athlon 750 Mhz
• Nvidia TNT2 Ultra videocard
• 256 megs of SD-RAM, and a 20 gig hard drive.
• Windows98 (not second edition), took too long to boot so never bothered looking around.

Not an amazing system, but for free I can't really complain.




About two weeks ago I ordered a used Radeon 8500 128 Meg videocard online, I got it for $30, they were $299 three years ago. I got it today, it was so cheap because the fan on the card was dying, and the seller was afraid the card would die soon.



I filled a syringe with a good amount of motor oil and injected it into the fans bearings on the videocard, good as new. (I keep syringe's and needles in my toolbox for some reason)



Next I dismantled the [censored] out of the computer, leaving it naked on the inside, then vacuumed out all the dust-bunnies, I yanked out the shitty videocard and the heatsink for cleaning.


{I'm mixing up a batch of silicon thermal paste on the plate to the left)

As it turns out, the heatsink was completely clogged with hair and crap, and the heatsink didn't have any thermal paste between the processor, instability problem solved.



I put in some extra ram I had lying around, stuck in the new videocard, and installed Windows Server 2003 (no software activation, better, etc), installed fine, I spent a half hour installing updates and installing drivers, everything was snappy.

I left the computer running for four or five hours as I went to class, when I got home it was still running stable. Total cost = $30.

I'm probably going to install Half-Life:2 and far-cry on it, then probably give it away.. Unless I can find some crazy person to buy it.

And that�s how I spent four hours of my day.

cool comments

It's amzing that all it takes sometimes to fix a computer is some TLC...

If you're giving it away... I can think of someone who wants it

Heh, your crappy computer exceeds the capabilities of my main one.