$5 goodwill tower

[ratdude747]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

The cards:



The GPU is an Nvidia Riva TNT2 32MB. Don't be fooled by the caps, those are Swcon, not Rubycon

The ethernet card is an old realtek. IIRC those were junk... right?

The Modem claims to be intel based, which is pure BS:



I have no f***ing idea why the Manufacturerer slapped an "Intel" sticker there... Proves that a sucker is indeed born every minute

The single RAM module was a PC133 128 Module, labeled with a holographic maple leaf (Canada brand?). The chips are NEC SyncMax which appear to be made in the UK.

The mobo:



No brand was listed on the board, all I found was this:



My research tells me that it is a Shuttle AV18. The only info on it was from Shuttle's EU site (in german)... perhaps an imported model?

I was expecting a Coppermine CPU underneath that cooler... but I found something else:



That is a 1.1GHz Tulatin based Celeron. I guess the board is Tualie compatible (contrary to what shuttle said my revision/chipset was able to do )

The caps were either 2700uf 6.3V OSTs or 1200uf 6.3V I.Q.'s.

I recapped it:





Given what I had in stock, I chose to beef up the caps a bit. I replaced the 2700uf caps with 3300uf 6.3V ones, one Rubycon MBZ, the rest Sanyo WG. I replaced the 1200uf caps with 1500uf 6.3V Samxoon GDs.

I swapped the 1.1GHz celeron for a 1.3GHz celeron... The board posted just fine (other than complaining about the dead CMOS battery).

I am not sure exactly what I am going to do with the Board... It's a pretty rare design in that it can run Tualies but it also has an ISA slot and is a pretty compact board. If I somehow added a HS to the northbridge, given the beefy caps I added, it might be a good retro OC board.

Suggestions? Comments?

[ratdude747]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

I didn't have high hopes for the PSU, since when I tested it before I bought it (checking for abnormal HDD noises) the PSU fan was full blast as soon as I powered it on.

The label doesn't improve my hopes:



An overview of the guts:



The primary side doesn't look too shabby (other than thin 120/240 switch wires):



It uses a weird double choke :



While I am glad to see imput protection, this isn't how it should be done:



The secondary side could use some help:



Those are nasty fuk-you caps, one bloated .

One of my pet peeves is y-splices:



I didn't shoot a pic of it, but the fan was a globe fan, sleeve bearin still surprisingly good (not dried/gunked up).

Not sure what I will do with it... the output wires are thick and the 120/240V switch has 3 sets of contacts (good for projects)... Worth a recap?

Next: the cards/mobo/CPU/RAM

[ratdude747]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

The main reason I bought the thing was for the HDD:



The floppy drive was a sony... Not bad I guess.

The "52x" Cdrom drive is a genric brand:



Not sure how good of a drive it is... Doesn't look too promising though.

Also in a 5.25" bay was this powered speaker module:



It is one of those units where the speaker cable goes through a hole in an empty card bracket and connects to the external speaker jack. It is also powered off the 5V half of a Molex pass-though.

To my surprise, it is actually has a subwoofer installed:



...But the other guts are lacking:



I think one or two caps in there is slightly bloated... Maybe I'll recap it... although it looks so cheesy that it may not be worth the effort.

Next: The PSU

[ratdude747]

I went to goodwill tosay and they had a couple $5 computers.

One was a Compaq Deskpro pII desktop (modified LPX, had an electric lock as well). Meh. Well built but I don't have a use for somthing that old.

But box #2 was a different story. I ended up buying it mostly for parts... Which means... Teardown time!

This will take 4 posts:

1. Case

2. Drives/front speaker thingy

3. PSU

4. Mobo/cards

First, some basic overview shots:







The system is obviously ans old socket 370 system. Focusing on the case, it appears to be a flimsy POS although I have seen far worse. There were no sharp edges and it didn't seem too awful bad. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 4.

One odd thing is that box at the bottom front. Upon closer inspection it has 5.25" mounts:



It also has a bay cover on the front bezel:



The back of the bay only has a tiny hole to run cables through... Maybe it was for an expansion module with front sound/usb/firewire/etc?

EDIT- the case appears to be a Wintech WTCC-168... and the nearly solid back of the lower 5.25" bay is actually just a cover. Talk about oddball case layouts.

Next up: drives.