House cleaning

eMachine W3107

Recently my brother-in-law came across some old computers from a house he was cleaning out with a friend. He came across and eMachines W3107 PC. He didn't do too bad for a freebie. It came with Windows XP Pro with Office 2007(which I recently paid $$ for...grrr) . It's upgradeable and a decent machine. He told me of other computers that were at the same location and thought I'd be interested. I said sure being a sucker for old computer stuff. Heres a quick list of stuff....

HP Pavilion 6635 with Windows XP Professional freshly installed. It has a 533mhz Celeron CPU and a 10 GB hard drive. Not too bad for a beginner or someone just to do Internet surfing or email.

Sony Vaio PCV-RS320. This one was a mixed bag. upon picking it up I heard and felt something moving around inside....

The processor fan/heatsink had come loose and was rattling around inside. Not good. The green hold down lever was broken and another heatsick to another chip was floating around too. It was also missing the hard drive which was also dissapointing. Also the hook for the second heatsink had been ripped off the motherboard. That probably more than anything renders the motherboard useless. With a new motherboard/RAM/Hard drive it's rebuildable.


If you thought the previous units were on the old side how about this one? This is a Pentium MMX class AOpen PC(possibly a home or business server). What made this interesting is the pull-out bays they had. It does have a hard drive inside but unfortunately it's not the boot drive which I believe went inside one of the pullout bays.


It does power up but won't boot. It's too old for much use but is an interesting unit.



Also included was a Sony Trinitron CRT monitor(17" I believe). This one isn't too bad and works well. I like the built in speakers and the flat screen. Not a bad catch in exchange for some computer work.

Upgrading memory

The patient: HP Pavilion a705w

Well my memory from Crucial technology came in yesterday and I already installed and up and running. Now my HP Pavilion a705w works much faster without many hangups. I went from 256mb of RAM to 1.24 GB of RAM. The difference is amazing. Upgrading your RAM will give you the most bang for your buck as far as system upgrades. Here is how simple it was:

This is the new memory from Crucial Technology. For those who like specifics its a 1GB DDR PC2700 184-pin DIMM, Crucial part no. CT410256.

Open the case....



Before touching anything inside be sure and ground yourself either by using a wrist strap or the very least touching any bare metal on the case. Static + PC components = Very BAD

Here is our memory module. Always be sure and only touch the outside edges.



Find the open slot. There is a notch in the memory chip to insure correct placement. It should pop in with a firm push. If your having trouble turn it around as you may be putting the wrong way.

After booting the machine I see I have 1.24 GB of RAM. That certainly put a smile on my face. This took no more than ten minutes. The longest part was waiting for the part to come in. I'm going to add another 1 GB in the near future. It runs great. If you've had your system for awhile and it's running slow this may give you a boost. I notice many manufacturers put the minimum amount in the PC's so usually this is an easy upgrade. If you need help please let me know I'd be glad to help. Thanks and have a great day!

The castaways

HP Pavilion a705w

It's amazing what people throw away. A few weeks ago a friend of mine spots a PC tower outside to go to the trash. Being a computer guy he picks it up. He thought it look fairly new and worth checking out. He asked me if I was interested and I said sure. So I check it out and it's a HP Pavilion a705w in a little rough shape but not too bad. At first it didn't work but I soon breathed new life into it. Everything was there hard drive,dvd drive,CPU and so on. After I got it running of course I cleaned it out of the previous owners stuff. Yes they had left it with stuff on there. Very careless of them. Of course it was loaded with virus's and spyware and some really horrible pictures of early teen girls wanting to be tough rappers. Kind of sad but anyway. Not a bad machine with a 2.93Ghz Intel Celeron, 256mb RAM, 40Gb drive,DVD/Cd combo and Windows XP Home. Maybe be not a blazing machine but actually better than what I had.

eMachine 15" e15Tr LCD monitor

The second part of the story is that yesterday coming home from work I drive by a house and see a LCD monitor sitting against a fence. I turn around and pick it up. I thought what the heck if it doesn't work I lose nothing. It's 15 " eMachines LCD e15Tr monitor. It was missing the power cord so I substituted my wife's laptop plug and it worked. It's got some lite scratch's on the housing but the screen looks in good condition(that's what counts anyway). So now I've got an almost complete computer setup for zero dollars. Like I said it's amazing what people throw away.

I do plan on upgrading the HP with more RAM(up to 2Gb), video card and larger drive in the future. Now I just got to reconfigure my work area to accommodate it. It made my weekend.

References: HP Pavilion a705w
eMachine 15" Monitor e15T (Specs, Manual)