2009-02-08 Dell Computers

We found three Dell Pentium 4 GX270 PC machines, all three were missing their memory and hard drives. We took two, a 3 Ghz and a 2.4Ghz model. We have access to some memory with which to resurrect these, and random hard drives are easy to come by. The pics show them baring their guts with new drives and an OS installed but awaiting their longer term memory (borrowed sticks were used for the install process). These will be sold or traded.

2009-02-02 Computers

A bumper crop of computing machinary all in more or less the same state, missing HD but complete with RAM. This seems to indicate that somebody just closed down an office and was wise enough to secure their data before tossing out a whole bunch of perfectly good machines.

First up a Dell dual 3Ghz PC machine with no HD, 1G RAM and a super fancy graphics card. A test with knoppix indicate two happy little penguins and everything seems to work.

Next in line is a HP Pavillion dual 2.8Ghz, again plenty of RAM but missing the HD. Again tests fine but needs a quick clean out before it settles into what ever use we find for it.

Also present were 2 1.4Ghz Dell Pentium 4 machines, obviously less fancy and such but still pretty functional machines. The missing cover is out of shot, not actually missing. Pic is fuzzy but you get the idea:

Last an not least were two Dell Pentium 3 laptops, presumably from the same source but they both still had their hard drives but were missing the power supplies. Both booted XP and ran slowly due to all the anti-virus junk. We investigated the yellow trimmed one and once all the anti-virus stuff was taken off it ran surprisingly well for a 500Mhz with XP on it. Fortunately we sold them both off before we could play with them any more.

2009-01-31 Macally Keyboard

A random Macally USB keyboard, these are always handy to have if only to give away to friends in need.

2009-01-31 Kitchenaid Proline Mixer

This KitchenAid mixer was unfortunately missing the stainless steel bowl, we suspect that the scummy scrapmetal guys took that. On the plus side it works fine and even looks very fine now that is cleaned up, the pic shows it still all covered in special previous owner dust.

Update: Snapped up by a friend, they call him "the Donald.". Well, we do anyway.

2009-01-31 Cast Iron Steam Radiator

A somewhat ornate cast iron radiator in nice condition. We have no need for this and none of our steam powerred friends are in needs of units so this will be sent to heat another home via the list of craig.

Update: Sold to a nice chap who introduced himself to us via the list of craig.

2009-01-12 Ross Gran Tour Bike Reborn

This Ross started out a while ago as a silver 10 speed Gran Tour II and ended up being converted to a painfully hip flip-flop singlespeed. Various parts were purchased in the process but the frame and some other stuff came from the original discarded Ross. The paint job is the tar-like bumpy undercoating for cars, probably this one.

2009-01-12 Refurbished Dell

This Dell was picked up a while ago but we only really got to grips with it today. It is a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 PC, so plenty useful enough for most people.

After some parts shuffling (cdrom was working but slow) we attempted a clean OS install but it failed with a big fat bluescreen. It seemed like a memory failure so we used knoppix to conduct a memtest. That failed hugely so we pulled one memory card out and tried again, hence success! After the install we threw in a new piece of memory into the empty slot and failure again, oh no! Maybe the slot was bad? A few false starts and then close inspection revealed dust bunnies in the RAM slot. Shopvac action and all is fine. This presumably explains the reason for discard, previous owner put extra memory in some time after original purchase, in doing so crushed accumulated clumps of dust into the slot rendering the machine nebulously useless, hence to discard.

Update: Sold on the list of craig.