On 6 Oct 2004 09:01:35 -0400,
lid (Martyr) wrote:

I found a 5660 Presario pentium 2 processor in the trash the other day
with a rewritable drive. I currently do not have one. The main
boards and hard drives are missing, we took it from a big companys
trash dumpsters.....What would be your guys suggestions on what i
should do? Take the double rewritable drives, or should i buy new
boards and hard drive for it and fix it up?

Depends on whether you need a spare old system. They can
come in handy for misc uses or as an emergency backup to
primary system, but spending a lot on rebuilding a P2 box is
hard to justify... depends a bit on what your present
computer army looks like, old soldiers are better than no
soldiers, but do show their age.

You won't be able to buy a replacement motherboard from
HP/Compaq for any reasonable price if at all, but perhaps
elsewhere it'd be cheap or you might stumble across more
parts, later, if continuing to scavenge the trash. You
might ask the IT manager about retiring systems, some would
rather give away such boxes than have to throw them out, if
you can pick it up in a timely manner.

One issue with a box that had the motherboard taken out
(which is unusual) is why it was taken out. "Usually" the
motherboard is still in a box and one might wonder if the
power supply is toast. It may be fine but you might want to
open it (leaving unplugged from AC for a few mintues prior
to) inspect the inside and clean out the dust with a
leafblower, dry paint brust or compressed air, then closer
it up and test it, apply load and take voltages of the
outputs with a multimeter before hooking it up to any
motherboard of value. Odds are the old power supply is of
minimal capacity and couldn't run parts newer than Pentium 3
or Celeron Tualatin era with basic video card.