$5 goodwill tower

[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.

[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]

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 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?

[larrymoencurly]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

The closest thing I found at a local Goodwill was a barebones box with no CPU heatsink, no cards, and maybe no RAM. It had a Socket 462 motherboard that had been recapped with Sanyos, and Goodwill wanted $35 for it.

[mockingbird]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

That's a Young Year PSU. You got a good one with the full input protection circuitry populated. I tried to re-cap one that like that once, thing blew a fuse when I plugged it in. If the speaker outputs on the back panel are horizontal, then it's pre Pentium 4. Not worth even $5. Too fast for a vintage gaming system, too slow for modern use. Also, that VRM looks too puny to put a serious Tualattin chip in there like a PIII-S and the chipset is a VIA.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

and the chipset is a VIA.

I have dual Tualatins on a VIA chipset and there's nothing wrong with that. I even have a VIA-based PCI SATA card on it, because it didn't play well with the Silicon Image one i had.

[ratdude747]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

That's a Young Year PSU. You got a good one with the full input protection circuitry populated. I tried to re-cap one that like that once, thing blew a fuse when I plugged it in. If the speaker outputs on the back panel are horizontal, then it's pre Pentium 4. Not worth even $5. Too fast for a vintage gaming system, too slow for modern use. Also, that VRM looks too puny to put a serious Tualattin chip in there like a PIII-S and the chipset is a VIA.

According to shuttle no revision could do the 512k tualies. Yeah, its pre pentium 4 but I did intentionally beef up the vrm caps.

I personally prefer the via chipsets anyway. The damn intel ones are capped at 512mb, ali AFAIK didn't make a tualie chip, and SiS chips just suck.

Keep in mind that I mainly bought this for the HDD. Anything I get from the other parts is icing on the cake to me.

[ben7]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

That is quite an interesting compy find!

And LOL, is the stacked-choke in the psu a first!?

That is soo cheap too, my goodwill store here will sell amplifiers and things like that for about $30! And you are not guaranteed a working amp either!

[mariushm]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

You got it right with the board, it's a Shuttle.

The modem IS an Intel solution .. they made quite some modem chipsets back then. But, I think it's somewhat of a software modem design.

Anyway, intel's site is a pain and as they reached end of life you'll have a hard time finding anything about them. Apparently they may have been sold by intel as Xircom:

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-007689.htm
http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-007689.htm

Anyway. For 5$, you have quite a catch there. Very nice. The video card is usable.. could even sell it on eBay for about 10$, psu can be reused (seems good with all the filtering)... hdd is never a bad thing to have..

[JohnLWG]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

Great post! I love parting out older systems when the owner decides to sell rather than pay for repair. Theres parts that sell that surprise me. I/O panel covers and floppy drives for one. I don't go further back than Pentium 4 though. and the towers are definitely a "back burner" project that sit until I have nothing else to do.

I just parted out and listed 6 different towers over the weekend. The hard drives and fans went first (which covered my initial investment). We'll see how the rest does.

I hate to see working electronics end up in the trash when someone may be willing to pay for a just a piece of it. That's my version of being "green!"

[Uranium-235]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

something like that at the goodwill computer works in DFW would go for $50

[ben7]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

something like that at the goodwill computer works in DFW would go for $50

[stevo1210]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

I used to buy goodwill computers for $10 or so back in the day, a long, long time ago. Basically just ended up sitting in a corner of the house doing nothing... so I threw them all out or gave them away as I moved house. Nowadays, I'll pop into good will but I'll never ever pick up a computer. No joke when I say this but my "junk" now bellows in my wardrobe... and they are all Pentium 4's/PentiumD's or Core 2 Duo based computers... just waiting to be scrapped. I guess my iMac does everything I need... for now.

[rilski]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

@ratdude

That is a good buy for $5. It can still run Linux for the heck of it.

Nice find!

[ratdude747]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

Remind me to take some pics of one of the caps I pulled from the speakers. I think it is the absolute worst Rubycon fake job I have EVER seen.

And yes, the two other larger caps were pretty bloated... When I recapped them I used a taller can size and in order to make it fit those two caps were soldered to a daughter board that I wired to the existing Cap locations.

I won't use the speakers in a case but I may replace the 5V molex passthough with a 5V brick and use them as a powered set of mini-speakers (the sound quality isn't too awful bad).

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

I won't use the speakers in a case but I may replace the 5V molex passthough with a 5V brick and use them as a powered set of mini-speakers (the sound quality isn't too awful bad).

What chips does it use? I saw a DIP-8 package on there and that just screams TDA2822. Look up the datasheets, i'm betting you can feed them 12v no problem and give them more oomph.

I can't see a 5v-only class D chip being used in a cheap attempt at a powered speaker like that is, so it's most likely using the good ole TDA2822/TEA2025 combo, both of which can be run at up to 14v.

[kc8adu]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

the only parts i would keep is the mobo,cpu,ram.the isa slot gives it a reprieve from the recycling box.
had one of those drive bay speakers in the shop pos.
it was rf sensitive.buzzed when my 220 repeater would transmit and hf ssb would come through loud.unintelligable of course but LOUD!!!
bookkeeper was at it one day and she about jumped through the roof!dammed computer snarling at me!

[ratdude747]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

I know the speakers are POS's... I just wanted to see what effect qualitycaps had on the circuit.

I can't do 12V w/o changing more caps... a few little ones IIRC were 6.3V

[lti]

Re: $5 goodwill tower

I would like to find an old computer like that, but the best old computer I can find locally is a low-end Pentium II system for $100. It seems like everyone in my area keeps computers until they are 13 years old and too slow to use for anything except DOS games and expects to get a lot of money for them.

What chips does it use? I saw a DIP-8 package on there and that just screams TDA2822. Look up the datasheets, i'm betting you can feed them 12v no problem and give them more oomph.

I can't see a 5v-only class D chip being used in a cheap attempt at a powered speaker like that is, so it's most likely using the good ole TDA2822/TEA2025 combo, both of which can be run at up to 14v.

It looks like it uses two TDA2822Ms. At least one of them is bridged, based on what I can see of the circuit.

had one of those drive bay speakers in the shop pos.
it was rf sensitive.buzzed when my 220 repeater would transmit and hf ssb would come through loud.unintelligable of course but LOUD!!!
bookkeeper was at it one day and she about jumped through the roof!dammed computer snarling at me!

TDA2822Ms pick up a lot of external noise. I have a set of cheap computer speakers based on the TDA2822M that picked up noise from my computer's CPU fan.

I know the speakers are POS's... I just wanted to see what effect qualitycaps had on the circuit.

I can't do 12V w/o changing more caps... a few little ones IIRC were 6.3V

Those small caps might be in the signal path where the voltage won't exceed 6.3V, even at the absolute maximum supply voltage.