It's crazy the good stuff people throw away! Computer finds!

[Temetka]

I disagree with you about Dell Latitude's. I own many of them and they are rock solid machines. Heck this post is being brought to you by my E6500 which I love very, very much. Probably the best laptop I have ever owned.

[Medessec]

I don't have enough experience with the newer ones, but I was talking about the PP09Ls, and D610s.

Fair enough if the newer ones are nice.

[pianowizard]

I don't have enough experience with the newer ones, but I was talking about the PP09Ls, and D610s. Fair enough if the newer ones are nice.

The PP09L is an Inspiron/XPS, not a Latitude! I've never owned a D610 but did play with one that belonged to a friend. I can attest that virtually all newer Latitudes have better construction than the D610, which had a shoddy feel to it. That being said, many users found it reliable, perhaps more reliable than IBM's counterpart i.e. the T43. Also, the D610 may be the last 14" laptop to have both parallel and serial ports, and I was once tempted to buy one because of that (though I settled for a Thinkpad X31 plus dock to save space).

The early Latitudes were just clones of the Inspirons, which as you may know are Dell's cheapest consumer-grade craptops, and the D610 was virtually identical to the Inspiron 600m. I had a 600m briefly and its crappiness was spectacular. Beginning with the D420/620/820, Dell made an effort to improve the quality of the Latitudes to set them apart from the Inspiron and XPS lines, while introducing the Vostro line for people who wanted cheap but professional-looking "business-class" laptops, though the Vostros were never very popular and so they didn't last long. Initially, the Precisions were merely clones of the Latitudes, but starting with the M4500 and M6500, Dell redesigned all the Precisions and they became Dell's premium business laptops, while the Latitudes became second-class business laptops. The Latitudes are further divided into an "upper class" and a "lower class", which used to be easy to tell apart because the latter's model numbers began with a "5", i.e. D5** and E5***. But now, the Latitudes' naming system has become much more complicated.

I explained all this to try to get people to understand that all Dell laptops aren't the same, just like we all know that all Thinkpads aren't the same. The D610 that Medessec despises was made at a time when the Latitudes were essentially the same as the Inspirons. The Latitude line has gotten much better since then, and the Precisions are now even better than the Latitudes. The Precisions are Dell's flagship, just like The T-Series Thinkpad is Lenovo's flagship.

[Medessec]

I... am not saying for one second that all Dells are unreliable, horrible rot-boxes that deserve a destructive death. I was simply vague in my first statement, which may have thrown you off. For that very slight, negligible mistake, I apologize.

I've had very little experience with the new Dells, except for a PP25L that had a hot-pink lid, and was dead from the NVIDIA issue. And I really liked the design of it, especially how one hatch gives you access to the CPU and heatsink. I also liked the cool illuminate effect it does when you power it on. I also really like the E6400, and a lot of the newer Dells that have that same aesthetic. That brushed stainless-steel, and angular, artsy finish, it's very eye-pleasing. I would not mind at all having one.

I've owned three D610s, and seen numerous other friends who have had them(usually, a trashy one handed down to them, that they bring to me so I can repair it so they can use it). So I'm sorry if I have an unwanted bias towards Dell. I love Thinkpads to death, because they have a character and visual appeal that is consistent, even across the cruddy Thinkpads, and they were constantly and always trying something new. This may not be the same for the new Thinkpads, but over the entire spectrum of Dell, there's never been anything about Dell laptops to me that have been... likable. A lot of Dells are fantastic, and they work well, but...nothing has ever reached out to me about them. They're just... a laptop make.

In short, I wouldn't hesitate to take a power drill to a non-working, problematic D610, but please keep in mind I wouldn't hesitate to take a power drill to a similarly non-working G40, or R31. I have my own sentiments about certain laptops, but please don't take them the wrong way.

[dogbarber]

I disagree with you about Dell Latitude's. I own many of them and they are rock solid machines. Heck this post is being brought to you by my E6500 which I love very, very much. Probably the best laptop I have ever owned.

Agree.

I have a Dell latitude E5500 that is solid as a tank. Great little machine.

[Medessec]

E5500, E6400/6500 and XPS M1330 all were made at around the same time-I've seen and experienced these machines and I have generally positive experiences with these machines, especially in their design.

[pianowizard]

I... am not saying for one second that all Dells are unreliable, horrible rot-boxes that deserve a destructive death. I was simply vague in my first statement, which may have thrown you off. For that very slight, negligible mistake, I apologize.

I've had very little experience with the new Dells, except for a PP25L that had a hot-pink lid, and was dead from the NVIDIA issue.

And even the PP25L (i.s. XPS M1330) is nearly 7 years old!

Thanks for clarifying what you meant by "some laptops are okay to destroy...any HP DV...any Acer-made Thinkpads(R-series, G-series, i-series), Dell Latitude, Acer Aspire, etc." You basically meant you didn't find them appealing, not that you considered all of them garbage. Nevertheless, are you certain that you don't find ANY of these laptops interesting? Have you seen all i Series Thinkpads, for example? Like I said, among the nearly 50 Thinkpads I've owned, I cherish the i Series 1124 the most (see this thread for my for-sale ad: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91264). Another Thinkpad that I adored greatly was a mint-condition 15" 1400x1050 G41, an incredibly solid monstrosity that could actually look quite attractive from certain angles. Have you seen one in person? For the R Series, I have owned two R51p's and an R32, all of them clearly not as "premium" as the T Series. However, I have played with two R61's and was quite impressed with both. More recently, I saw two R500's and was absolutely horrified by their awful screens. In other words, not all R Series models are the same. If you have actually seen all R Series ever made and decide that they aren't to your liking, then go ahead generalize. But if you haven't, please don't.

I reacted strongly to your statement, not just because I do like some Dell Latitudes, but also because I dislike generalizing any laptop brand, which lots of know-it-alls on these forums do frequently. Had someone said "all Latitudes are fantastic", I would have been the first to point out the fallacy of this claim, probably using the junky D610 as my main illustrative example, and the gross-looking D800 as an additional example.

I have a Dell latitude E5500 that is solid as a tank. Great little machine.

Despite the fact that it's supposed to be a "lower-class" Latitude. I haven't actually seen any of the D5** or E5***, but Dell specifically designed them to be more affordable than the "upper-class" Latitudes. Also, the default warranty is just 1 year instead of 3 years.

E5500, E6400/6500 and XPS M1330 all were made at around the same time-I've seen and experienced these machines and I have generally positive experiences with these machines, especially in their design.

The M1330 was a lovely laptop, and one of the most popular Dells ever. Too bad they were plagued by faulty Nvidia GPUs. Many of these M1330 owners vowed to never buy another Dell.

[Medessec]

Many of these M1330 owners vowed to never buy another Dell.

This... is beyond sad, because I know a case personally. The M1330 I had that was dead was from my dad's friend. He enjoyed the laptop a ton before it happened, but when it started glitching up, they took it to me, and at the time I was nearly touching on Thinkpads and mobile computing(2009, I was 15) so I couldn't do anything.

I cherish the i Series 1124 the most

I've been seeing your posts about this particular i-series, and I actually have done some googling around... but nothing pops up. ThinkWiki is also pretty scarce on info-but from what I can tell, it's a 240X that's slightly better. Which has to be pretty cool... but I just can't find any good pictures of it. And sometimes... that's the best kind of rare. It would be nice to know more about the I1124... I'm kinda interested.

Another Thinkpad that I adored greatly was a mint-condition 15" 1400x1050 G41

I have a near-mint 2881-D2U in my personal collection, with that particular panel, the 3.46 GHz P4 and the abysmal Go5200 GeForce. Little details aside, I absolutely love the G-series, they're just so weird looking and misshapen, and an absolutely extreme solution to the problem of needed mobile desktop power. I went through a phase when I first started tinkering with Thinkpads, where I was just enveloped by the G-series. And the G41 I have is a final result of that phase.

R-series that I've experienced are the R31, R40, R52, and an R61 widescreen. I can probably agree with the R61, they were strange... because they actually held their own very nicely. My friend had the R52, just brought it to me to see what it was, and that was very interesting as well. He had a nice one- with an SXGA+ and ATI graphics.

I reacted strongly to your statement, not just because I do like some Dell Latitudes, but also because I dislike generalizing any laptop brand, which lots of know-it-alls on these forums do frequently.

Yes, I completely understand, sorry I put you on high alert. Generalizing is a little bit my brand of humor, but I do know about the stuffy know-it-alls that buy a Toshiba A305 secondhand that's falling apart, then complain on the internet out of arrogance like they know everything about Toshibas, just because they have feelings swelled up from one laptop that gave them a hard time. I really like how this forum has a huge absence of these sort of people, and I'd like to help keep it that way.

[pianowizard]

He enjoyed the laptop a ton before it happened, but when it started glitching up, they took it to me, and at the time I was nearly touching on Thinkpads and mobile computing(2009, I was 15) so I couldn't do anything.

But no one could have done much anyway. The most that you could have done was to let him know that Dell had extended everyone's warranty by one year, and that he should stop watching videos or gaming on that M1330.

I've been seeing your posts about this particular i-series, and I actually have done some googling around... but nothing pops up. ThinkWiki is also pretty scarce on info-but from what I can tell, it's a 240X that's slightly better. Which has to be pretty cool... but I just can't find any good pictures of it. And sometimes... that's the best kind of rare. It would be nice to know more about the I1124... I'm kinda interested.

I took some photos when I was advertising the i1124 for sale: http://s198.photobucket.com/user/piano_ ... t=4&page=1

I first learned about the i1124 on this Japanese collector's site, which has a side-by-side photo of an i1124 and a 240Z: http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~ayase/tp/tp240z.htm . He took quite a few photos of his two i1124's: http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~ayase/tp/tpi1124.htm and http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~ayase/tp/tpi1124_93j.htm . The biggest advantage of the i1124 over the 240X is that it has 1024x768 resolution. The i1124 also has 4MB of video RAM instead of the 240X's 2MB, and I prefer the i1124's sparkling silver exterior, which looks sexy and obviously extremely unique among Thinkpads. It is basically 240Z's cousin, except for these differences: 1) many if not most 240Z models only have 800x600; 2) the 240Z is all black, just like the 240X and 240; 3) the i1124's Ethernet port is disabled, whereas the one in the 240Z actually works; and 4) the most powerful configurations of the 240Z have 600MHz PIII, whereas the i1124 goes up to only 500MHz PIII. The reason I believe the i1124 is the rarest Thinkpad of all time is that I have seen only one on eBay, i.e. the one that I bought. It's harder to find than the 240Z, which is in turn harder to find than the S30 or S31. BTW, speaking of the S30/31, I had an S30 at one point and it was a super disappointment. I say forget about the S30/31; the 240Z and the i1124 are the ultimate Thinkpads to collect.

[Medessec]

I took some photos when I was advertising the i1124 for sale: http://s198.photobucket.com/user/piano_ ... t=4&page=1

Ho... wow. That is really not what comes to mind when thinking of an i-series.

That thing is actually very pretty... I've never seen a 240 either close up, and it's like a half-sized A22p. But the i-series... with a more stark, softer but still very eye-pleasing Ti-texture of the Ti-lidded Z-series. If I had known they made anything like this in the era of the 600/A2x/T2x, I probably would've been hunting for it... that is beyond cool. Thanks for sharing the pictures!

I've always had having a 240 of some sort in the back of my mind, but my collection is at a peak and my budget really isn't allowing for it, so I'm kind of laying off hoarding Thinkpads for some time... but I guess I know now how absolutely fantastic it would be to have one. It's kinda like when I got that A31p... and it wasn't until I mentioned it on here that everyone told me just how fantastic these machines can be.

Also pretty interesting to hear your opinion on the S30, especially since you actually owned one. The only things about it I found in taste was the overhanging keyboard and gloss piano-black lid, but I'll take your word for it since I wasn't sure about the rest.

[sir_synthsalot]

It depends on your needs, as to what machine you can use. I do agree with you that most people would not use a Pentium 4 or Thinkpad R40. But, I can think of many uses for such machines, like simple Web browsing, word processing, playing music/DVDs or as a server. I was using a custom P4 system for SD video editing up until recently (need to get it fixed, and the salvaged box I recently got looks like it's got the same ASUS MB that I need).

It depends what you consider fast enough for web browsing, word processing, etc. Web sites these days are a lot more demanding on a system than web sites were when the R40 or P4 was brand new. There is more and more junk on web sites that puts a strain on the system. Even though those machines worked perfectly fine on the web in their day, I find that the bar is steadily being increased.

[Temetka]

The i1124 looks like a nice machine, I really love the extended battery that lifts up the machine on the back. Why was it's ethernet port disabled?

[wisdomkeeper]

Maybe it's not crazy at all. If you have money, but not even a bit knowledge, and cannot appreciate something in it's full glory - this happens. Specially, I will never throw away something that could prove useful. It's because I am keen on electronics, and not in the last place - repair computer stuff, sometimes a bit a little vintage, so I always could use more spare parts. Unfortunately, I am away from you guys...

[Adda]

Where would I begin? my home is like a warehouse full of discarded hardware.

Let's see, most of my ThinkPads came falling down from above, businesses that didn't need them anymore, or broken ones.

I have tons of old mobos, CPU's ram, I think I could build 3-4 desktops out of it, and have plenty of video cards and memory to spare.

But good finds include:

An ASUS mobo, can't recall the model number, with i820 chipset, 512MB RD ram and Slot1 incl. a slot converter for S370!!!
Perfect system for retro gaming, I can put pretty much any S370 or Slot1 CPU in there, and I have P2 233MHz and Pentium 3 1GHz, the old Celerons with 128MB internal cache, a 366 and a 433 I think.
Geforce DDR, Voodoo's, Voodoo2's, but my favorites must be the Matrox Millennium G400 and the Voodoo3 3500 (w/o tuner).
SoundBlaster AWE32/64, SB PCI 128 (four five of them I think), even IBM Deskstar drives that still work.

My IBM POWERdisplay 20 monitor, must be the gem of my salvage, 20" of Trinitron monitor that has barely been used, all for free.
I participated in discarding CRT's, loads of perfectly functional monitors, thrown away, the POWERdisplay was the best of all those monitors, so least I could save the best of them (by far).

Sure they use a lot of power, but how much power does it take to manufacture a new TFT and send it to your doorstep? many times the amount of energy a CRT consumes in a year.
Response times, color resolution and viewing angles are irrelevant for good CRT's, and they are not hard on the eyes unless low refresh rates are used (flickering).
They show every resolution equally well, as long as it can do high enough refresh rates.

Think about it, a CRT monitor, first introduced in 1994, but it still makes sense to use it today, it does things TFT's can only dream of.

The best ThinkPad "garbage" I got must be the ThinkPad A30, my T41's and T43p's, the defective T510 and T61p might prove useful sometime as well.

But there is so much more...

Edit: I forgot to mention the near mint ThinkPad 570.

[A31]

Grabbed myself an old HP Pro desktop with an Athlon 64 X2 4450e and 2GB of RAM the other week. Came with XP Pro and has a COA for Vista Business but I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on it and tried to dual-boot it with Ubuntu 14.04 x64, but for some reason the Ubuntu install failed and Ubuntu wouldn't boot...

Besides having a slow BIOS (might just need resetting), it's a decent machine. Makes a good enough spare machine to have around in case something happens to our other ones, I guess. Performance isn't quite as good as the little ASUS machine with the E5300 and 4GB of RAM that I got for free, but it's not too bad at all.

[Adda]

Besides having a slow BIOS (might just need resetting)

Look for a feature in the CMOS setup called "quick boot" witch you want to enable, or something like "extended memory test", which you want to disable.

[A31]

Yeah it might not be enabled, I don't know. Not had a look.

[DaKKS]

I recently found a near mint condition C64 with what I estimated to be around 200-ish games. In its original box too. Unfortunately i left the moving box everything was in on the flatbed of my service car and ducked into the building again. Less than two minutes later I come back and its gone.

[Medessec]

Oh god!

That's just the worst, when theft is executed like that. What kind of thief would be cultured and smart enough to know the value of a Commodore 64, but then have poor enough judgement and be stupid enough to snatch it out of someone's flatbed truck?

[DaKKS]

Oh god!

That's just the worst, when theft is executed like that. What kind of thief would be cultured and smart enough to know the value of a Commodore 64, but then have poor enough judgement and be stupid enough to snatch it out of someone's flatbed truck?

I dont think he/she knew what it was. Just that it looked like a computer and could maybe fence it for some money.

Tbh, i'd rather have them steal something i just found, then steal the wheels of my service car for the fourth freaking time.

This wasnt in a particularly good neighborhood. Its a free for all basically. Probably just some druggie that needed money for a quick fix. Hell, it could've even been one of "my" kids. Sometimes i wonder why i freaking bother with this $hit. Should just let the cops beat some sense into them. Worked for me after all.

[sir_synthsalot]

Think about it, a CRT monitor, first introduced in 1994, but it still makes sense to use it today, it does things TFT's can only dream of.

To each his own. Those things hurt my eyes.

[A31]

To each his own. Those things hurt my eyes.

Not used one or even seen one for years and I certainly have no desire to use one ever again.

[Temetka]

I agree with A31.

Good riddance.

[Adda]

As I said, CRTs are only hard on the eyes, if low refresh rates are used.

Sure CRT are not perfect, but their shortcomings has nothing to do with picture quality.
A lot of people have never even seen a Trinitron or DiamondTron "aperture grille" monitor, they are much much better then the regular "shadow mask" kind (think IPS vs. TN).

With TFT's people worry about color gamut, this is irrelevant for CRT's, they have unlimited color resolution many CRT are still used for special applications to this day, as TFT's can't deliver the same color accuracy as a CRT.
Response times are also irrelevant for a CRT, and so are viewing angles.

On the other hand, TFT's have pixel perfect geometry, and very good sharpness at native resolution, CRT's don't do too well there, but some of the last high end CRT's made, come very very close (at any resolution).

[Norway Pad]

I can't say that my find is in the "Crazy the good stuff people throw away"-category, as my finds are so old they are totally useless for anything. So I really can't blame anyone for throwing them away.

Anyway. A nearby branch of the milk processing company I work at has been shut down, and is now in the process of being cleared out. So I went there last week to gather some process equipment, but I also happened to notice the recycling bin outside the computer storage room. Always interesting, particularly as my company has used IBMs/Lenovos for decades. No cool IBM stuff there, but instead two ancient Zenith (ZFL-181-93) laptop units. I was told by the remaining staff there they were garbage, and that I could just take them home with me.

Back home it turns out that at least one unit is functional. Both of them turn on, but one of them doesn't output anything to the screen. I imagine these are from the late 80's, and according to online resources they have a 4.77MHz 8oc88 processor and 640K of RAM. They have no hard drive, so they boot from a 3.5" floppy. A cool find, and nice collectibles. If you wonder what this is, see a picture them here: http://i.imgur.com/jcW1e03.jpg

I will start a new thread to ask some questions about these later. I would like to know more about them, and what OS I can load, but don't want to hijack this thread.

[Dos3.1]

Norway Pad - nice finds! Thanks for the pics. It's always nice when a place shuts down and leaves some goodies behind

[Dos3.1]

re: CRTs..I have very good LCD monitors, and still my old IBM CRT displays richer colour and depth in many web pages. They are just different technologies, with their own strengths and weaknesses.

[Temetka]

Nice find on those old Zenith's.

Whatcha plannin' on doing anything with them?

[Norway Pad]

Nice find on those old Zenith's.

Whatcha plannin' on doing anything with them?

My goal is to find an OS it can boot to, and simply explore and play a little bit from there. Except from text editing, I doubt there is much these really can be used for these days. But they are nice collectibles, and I am exited to own a part of the computing history from before Thinkpads even existed. I will probably run into issues when I try to use them, so I will start another thread here in the off-topic section when I have the questions ready. But in the mean while: if anyone knows where to find DOS3.2, meant to fit on a 720KB Low Density floppy, I am happy to hear from you.

[RealBlackStuff]

The oldest I have is a museum-worthy(?) original IBM floppy, 3.5"/720KB version with IBM DOS 3.30 Startup/Operating, P/N 80X0939.