Help me Frankenstein my old computers!

Factual Questions
1

Hello all,

I’ve got a computer problem/project that I need help with. I had intended to handle this myself, but small children, outdated skills and general inertia has made it…less than appealing.

Basically, I have a closet full of semi-broken computers (both PC and laptop); I’d like to clean it out. I’m pretty sure I could cobble together two decent working PCs from the junk if I were sufficiently motivated–I also have quite a bit of “new” spare parts that I accumulated while procrastinating on this, gathering dust. It is also pretty important to me that I retrieve files (mostly photos, but some random writings, music and such) from the hard drives that aren’t fried. The last time I had a laptop repaired (a broken screen, btw), I thought I made it abundantly clear to the tech that I needed files backed up, and that they were in my own created folders, but he went ahead and only backed up my user file/libraries, then wiped the drive. (He also wiped out the OEM Windows 7 Ultimate and proprietary sound card software, etc., and then proudly told me that he installed a cracked version of Windows 7 Home for free. Yep. $@#%&*!! So I’m a bit wary of shops.)

Note: I’m pretty sure that most of the PC issues that led to me closeting them were due to overheating (they do put crappy fans in, these days) and/or issues due to the very old house we lived in with cruddy ungrounded wiring. :smack:

What’s the best way of going about this? I really don’t have time anymore to otaku this on my own, nor have I kept up to date with installing PC hardware and such. Should I just send a version of this query to local PC guys or post a Craigslist ad, see who bites? What would you do?

TLDR summary:

  1. Need somebody to make a working PC or two, if possible, out of bunch of not-quite-junk.
  2. Need to preserve reasonable amount of personal files (~6 hard drives, probably not fried)
  3. Need to spend less than, I dunno, $1000 on it. If that isn’t possible, I guess I’ll just rip out the drives and have a PC tech mirror them on a big external drive and start anew.

Thanks!

2

drachillix runs a computer repair shop.

3

It seems like you are asking the wrong questions but I think you gave enough details to let us know what you really want.

Let’s cut to the chase. You want a working computer or two and be able to recover some files off of old hard drives for less than $1000. That is simple enough as long as you ditch the idea of Frankensteining a bunch of old parts together to achieve those goals.

First of all, forget about the computers themselves except for the hard drives. They are worthless. You can buy two brand new desktops for less than $1000 from any wholesale club or some place like www.newegg.com that will surpass them in every way. Just throw the old ones away or give them to a teenage nerd who like to experiment. If you only really need one, $500 is more than enough for a decent desktop or laptop computer these days.

Now to the files. That is an easy project too as long as the drives still work. All you need is an external USB external hard drive adapter. You just take the drive out and plug it into any computer with a USB cable and it can read and copy the files from it. They cost $20 - $30 online and they work quite well.

Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5" & 3.5" USB 2.0 - Newegg.com or

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=3770

4

How old are the machines? I’m going to guess and say more than 3 or 4 years, in which case they aren’t necessarily junk but if they’re pushing 7 or 8 then they probably are.

The easiest thing to do is pull out the drives and give us a list of the makes and models. They will be either IDE or SATA drives. You’ll be able to tell by the cables. Older IDE drives will use ribbon cables that look like a flat ribbon. Newer SATA drives will use thinner cables. Also the power cables are different. IDE power cables will probably be 4 wires (black and yellow I think). SATA power cables will look like a flat narrow cable similar to the data cable.

If you have some of both, you can get an external adapter that will handle both. Here’s an example, but you can also find one’s with a rubber case for the drive to prevent shorts and other nice features for under $40 or so.

Once you’ve rescued all of your data, then I would take some time to inventory the main components in the old rigs. So we’re talking motherboards, psu’s (power supplies), memory sticks, any video and other add-in cards and CPU - oh, and the HDD’s if you haven’t done that already.

Once you have a nice list of components, it will be a helluva a lot easier to get people to look that over and help you out.

5

Thanks, runner pat. I’ll send him a message.

Shagnasty, yeah, I know. Believe me, I know. I’m typing on a generic “media PC” I bought just to have something that works for the time being. It’s in the living room, hooked up to the TV mostly for Netflix and the like, old PC games, and surfing with the family. It’s just that, I’ve spent a great deal of $$$ on PCs in the last 5 years, some of which were not bottom-of-the-barrel, by any means (including two for my husband’s office). A couple of those conked out fairly quickly. My husband, who is even much less of a techie than I am, is frustrated at the expenditure and the PC junkyard. :stuck_out_tongue: It would make better peace at home if I “had something to show for” all of that. Make sense?

I guess I’m just thinking, gee, I’ve got a 3 y.o. Lenovo ThinkPad, 12GB RAM (at a premium!) that worked fine except toddler ripped all the keys off and the power cord got wet (oh, and the pirated Windows 7 deal)…a custom PC with mucho RAM and other upgrades and a TON of tweaked software for my digital art and music projects that I’m forgetting how to use–not to mention the projects–that I’d love if it “just worked” again, another PC with a bunch of patient files and databases from me creating a test psychiatric EMR system for husband’s office, an all-in-one PC I got for son’s birthday last year that worked for 3 months then the fan conked and it permanently blue screened…plus some older stuff, including one I custom built when I still remembered how to do those things and took MANY lickings…surely I can fix some of this! :smiley:

As for what I need, I like the generic media PC I just bought for living room use ok. Another $500 there. Son needs a computer for Minecraft homework. Husband could use something so he isn’t bugging me for “my” computer. I’d like my digital art and softsynth, etc. machine back.

So, your suggestion is *definitely *on the forefront of my mind. I was just hoping to creatively recycle some of this since I really don’t need the absolute latest stuff, I don’t care for Windows 8, and much of this was set up nicely over many hours and/or not used much before it died. Again, if I didn’t have Destructor toddler hovering about, I’d be messing with it all myself again. (My old custom PC was the bomb for playing DOS games and emulators, for example.)

Deltasigma, most of them are less than 5 years old. Thanks for your post. I should make a list of the components. I do have some HDD cables for doing what you described, just not sure what to do re: the one PC that is working that I could use to transfer stuff. Also, the last time I opened a laptop I made a huge mess given everything was GLUED together (wtf?!). But, if the Destructor gets sufficiently entertained in the next couple days, I may just do all that.

6

I can’t help you much with lappies but I can tell you pretty much anything you need to know about desktop or Intel server hardware.

Those cables by the way are more than just cables. They have embedded chips that do the translation from IDE or SATA to USB 2, depending the type of drive you need to read. Make sure to get the bidirectional kind. Some are made only for reading from optical drives and that may be what I pointed you to. You need the kind that can read and write - hence bidirectional.

If you need a repository for the backups, I would recommend an external USB 3 dock and 4 terabyte drive. The drive you can get for $200 or less (example) on Amazon and the dock for $30-50 (example)

edit: Here’s one of the IDE/SATA to USB converters I use that is bidirectional. It’s pretty bare bones but it works.

7

Ignore that last edit - that’s just a straight SATA to IDE converter - no USB. Sorry. That’s for internal use only.

The ones for external use should all be bidirectional. It’s the internal SATA to IDE adapters that you have to be careful with.