[Other] For the techs out there - computer left on 3.5 yrs... here's a look inside.

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Gared

Gared

So, as discussed over on the "Whine like a baby" thread, I discovered last night that my 8.5 year old eMachine had been plugged in and running for 3 or 4 years, even though it didn't have a connection to anything except the power. No keyboard, no mouse, no monitor, nothing. At one point in time it was our print server, but the printer died over a year ago. When we turned the computer off, the silence was deafening. It was like someone had just switched off a jet engine.

Original specs of the computer (this was touted as an Awesome Gaming Experience PC when I bought it):
- eMachineT6212
- WinXP Home Edition pre-installed, I think I upgraded it to 64bit Vista at some point in time.
- AMD Athlon 64, 3200 processor (2.0GHz)
- 512 MB DDR 400 RAM. That's right... DDR. Not DDR2, or DDR3; DDR. Upgraded to 1.5GB DDR 400 RAM.
- 160GB HDD. Added second 160GB HDD at some point.
- ATI Radeon X200, eventually upgraded to ATI Radeon 1300X with 256MB of video RAM.
- 56K Modem

And here are the pics.

Getting started, here's the outside of the case. Note the case sticker proclaiming Awesome Gaming Experience... from eMachines.
The outside of the case, from the side with the fan port. Cooling was just as important in the good ol' days as it is now.
The back of the case. Notice that there's an empty slot with no back plate... this is probably not a good sign of things to come.
The side panel of the case by itself. Mmm... furry...
The back of the power supply. Not so bad, maybe this won't be as terrifying as it could be.
The front of the power supply. On the inside of the case. Might've spoken too soon.
Yep. Definitely too soon.
This is what the motherboard looked like when I got the CPU unstuck.
And this is what the heat sink looked like. It's a little hard to see, but suffice to say that the darker line along the upper curve of the heat sink shouldn't be there.


So, yeah. It was technically "on" but I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd attempted to actually play a game, or open a large spreadsheet.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
So for 3 or 4 years it had been doing nothing but wasting electricity and running up your power bills?
 
Gared

Gared

PatrThom said:
I know, right? I'm surprised the power didn't go out at some point in that time period.

--Patrick
Click to expand...
Our power grid is miraculously stable, but I'm sure at some point the power went out, and it's just been sitting at the Windows login screen.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
You put Vista 64... on a machine with 512 megs of ram (and DDR1 at that)? That's more horrifying than any dust buildup could ever be.
 
Gared

Gared

GasBandit said:
You put Vista 64... on a machine with 512 megs of ram (and DDR1 at that)? That's more horrifying than any dust buildup could ever be.
Click to expand...
I'd upgraded it to 1.5GB of RAM by that time. This was after I'd originally attempted (unsuccessfully, because support for the OS was shit) to install XP Pro 64bit enough times that I kept having to call Microsoft to get them to unlock the CD key. Sadly, Vista was the more stable of the two choices.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Gared said:
I'd upgraded it to 1.5GB of RAM by that time. This was after I'd originally attempted (unsuccessfully, because support for the OS was shit) to install XP Pro 64bit enough times that I kept having to call Microsoft to get them to unlock the CD key. Sadly, Vista was the more stable of the two choices.
Click to expand...
Ick. Even at 1.5gb, that's... suboptimal to be sure. Why didn't you just stick with XP pro 32 bit?
 
Gared

Gared

sixpackshaker said:
Man, that actually looks really clean...
Click to expand...
Yeah... I was actually pretty surprised. I expected armageddon, but the outside of the case took most of the brunt of the damage. Now I just have to recycle the thing, now that I've disabled the hard drives on that old beast.
 
Gared

Gared

Pretty much back then I was living in that world where I knew just enough about computers to be really dangerous. Not quite as dangerous as a friend of mine, who slagged a $3k gaming rig by keeping it in an enclosed space in the attic after botching his save v. liquid cooling system setup roll (he failed to appropriately seal the system), but dangerous enough. Now I know that the only things I should touch on the inside of my computer are the RAM (after carefully researching to ensure that the RAM I'm adding matches the speed of the RAM I already have, or that I replace all of it outright) and the video card (after carefully researching to make sure that my motherboard supports the card and that there's enough cooling and wattage on the power supply to power the new card). Beside, I dabble much more in software these days than I do in hardware, and there are nice, neat little design environments that I can run software tests in to ensure I don't completely corrupt my system.
 
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