One thing leads to another.....
May. 10th, 2007 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1Last night, I worked on the PC that M used to use to play computer games. It's a trash-picked (or as I like to say, "vulched") Packard Bell Legend. It as a 486/DX2 processor, some memory, and a hard drive. It was fully functional.....until a few months ago, when the internal battery died.
I opened the case, blew away the dust (*cough* *cough*), and after some time searching for it, found the battery. It looks like it's soldered in. Yecch. This was Packard Bell engineering for you.And it's probably why they're no longer in business. [Updated 10:35] Strike that. Packard Bell has a current website.
Now I need to find my soldering iron. But after a few days of looking, I can't. So I'll have to buy another one, or borrow from someone, in order for me to continue. That's the problem with being a disorganized packrat. If I can't find something, I end up buying a replacement, and after I buy the replacement, I then find the original item. I'd have a heck of a garage sale.
I can do one of two things now. Do all this work to replace the battery and have a functioning 486 system again, which almost nobody wants. Or I can rip out the reusable parts of the computer -- hard drive, CD-ROM, floppy drive, memory, maybe the CPU chip -- and take the carcass to the local dump for recycling. (This is one of the machines that's too old for the local refurbisher; the oldest they're taking are Pentium IIIs.) As for the monitor -- I can put it up on the local freecycle list; it'll probably go fast.
At this point I'm inclined to do the latter. Some things just aren't worth the time.
(BTW, M has a newer computer. R just doesn't have a place to put it yet.)
I opened the case, blew away the dust (*cough* *cough*), and after some time searching for it, found the battery. It looks like it's soldered in. Yecch. This was Packard Bell engineering for you.
Now I need to find my soldering iron. But after a few days of looking, I can't. So I'll have to buy another one, or borrow from someone, in order for me to continue. That's the problem with being a disorganized packrat. If I can't find something, I end up buying a replacement, and after I buy the replacement, I then find the original item. I'd have a heck of a garage sale.
I can do one of two things now. Do all this work to replace the battery and have a functioning 486 system again, which almost nobody wants. Or I can rip out the reusable parts of the computer -- hard drive, CD-ROM, floppy drive, memory, maybe the CPU chip -- and take the carcass to the local dump for recycling. (This is one of the machines that's too old for the local refurbisher; the oldest they're taking are Pentium IIIs.) As for the monitor -- I can put it up on the local freecycle list; it'll probably go fast.
At this point I'm inclined to do the latter. Some things just aren't worth the time.
(BTW, M has a newer computer. R just doesn't have a place to put it yet.)
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Date: 2007-05-10 03:43 pm (UTC)For example, my Apple Lisa not only had batteries soldered to the board - but they also leak acid after 10-20 years - destroying the board. (I just removed the batteries for that reason last trip home.)
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Date: 2007-05-10 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 04:22 pm (UTC)