Post by Admin on Nov 6, 2022 18:45:31 GMT 10
~ @ ~
This was another computer that I picked up from the street, about 6 months ago, during my daily walking exercise. Unlike other discarded machines, this one was so clean and in such good condition that I could hardly believe it was dumped. The case was of rather poor quality, but it had a good ASUS (P7P55-LX) motherboard with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, as well as a nVidia GeForce 8400-GS 512 MB graphic card, and a DVD drive. The power supply looked as new but its cables had been completely severed from the motherboard.
I used an old ATX power supply from my storage to test the machine. It came to life, but kept resetting itself after about every 10 seconds or so. I had a spare nVidia 7600GS graphic card, so decided to install it as a replacement, just something to try and see. It actually worked, allowing me to add a 160-GB SATA hard disk which already had LXLE-Linux pre-installed. That worked fine as well. The CPU turned out to be a Dual-core Intel i3-530, running at 2.933 G-Hz . (Not bad at all for a free tossed-out machine) .
- Pushed my luck a little further by re-connecting the DVD drive that was in the machine. Could boot up from a Puppy-Linux 5.2 CD, and ran for a few minutes, then kept rebooting itself again. Perhaps the power supply could not handle the load ?
- Disconnected the DVD drive, Installed Win 7 Pro from a USB flash drive . Used KMS-pico to activate Win 7, then used WSUS-offline to perform Windows offline update (this took 3 hours)
- It's worth noting here that the GeForce 8400GS card, which was removed from this eXtreme-680 computer, was later on installed in the Dell Inspiron 530 and worked just fine there. So it was inconclusive as to what was the real problem that originally existed in this extreme-680 machine. The earlier symptom of repeated spontaneous re-bootings could very well be caused by the poor performance of my old ATX power supply, (it having been in storage for so long).
- Replaced the slow 5400 rpm 160 GB hard drive with an MX500 SSD (250 GB). Restored Win-7 by using Macrium Reflect.
- Tried to install several Linux OS's (MX21, Manjaro Budgie, PepperMint 11) on the MX500 SSD as well, but all failed because they had no suitable Linux video driver for the nVidia 7600GS graphic card . Although this card worked fine with Win 7, it was perhaps too old for the Linux OS's.
- Replaced the 7600GS with the nVidia FX580 taken from the Dell Inspiron 530 . This in fact solved the problem with Linux OS's .
- TimeShift-restored MX21-Linux from the HP8300USDT , Worked fine.
- TimeShift-restored PepperMint-11 from the Dell Inspiron 530. Worked fine as well.
- Added a second SATA disk (2.5" 320-GB Seagate hard drive) as a backup device.
- The motherboard on this machine provides both IDE and SATA interfaces, which is what I really like. (This makes it easy for me to test and experiment with many of the IDE hard drives in my hobby collection).
- Added another hard disk, which is a 80GB IDE WDC device (in a white caddy to allow easy removal/replacement). Worked fine as well . The old ATX power supply (rated at 400 W) seemed to work OK so far. Although it's possible to install the DVD drive as a slave device to the IDE hard disk, I decided to leave it disconnected for now. Best not to overload the old PSU.
- Installed Linux Lite 6.0 on the SSD (sda5) to triple boot with MX21 and Peppermint-11 . Had to use the option "Install alongside other OS'es" , otherwise installation failed . Installed PureBasic 5.73 (64-bit) on Linux-Lite . (The 32-bit version 5.72 of PureBasic would not work on this Linux-Lite 64-bit OS, version 6.0 ).
- Installed LMDE 5.0 Linux on the 320GB Seagate hard disk (sdb1). LMDE5 booted up rather slowly (because installation was done with Ventoy USB. After the installation, LMDE was still looking for the Ventoy USB during boot time !)
- Replaced LMDE5.0 with Bodhi Linux version 6 . Bodhi Linux looks good, although a little clunky and sparse. Could not add any desktop icon . Downloaded TimeShift ok . Installed and compiled QB64 ok .
- Installed Zorin-15 (32 bit) on the 80 GB IDE hard disk. Zorin-15 looks good, works well, and provides a very nice grub-boot menu.
-
Screen shot of Windows 7 Pro OS:
Hardware info details:
This was another computer that I picked up from the street, about 6 months ago, during my daily walking exercise. Unlike other discarded machines, this one was so clean and in such good condition that I could hardly believe it was dumped. The case was of rather poor quality, but it had a good ASUS (P7P55-LX) motherboard with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, as well as a nVidia GeForce 8400-GS 512 MB graphic card, and a DVD drive. The power supply looked as new but its cables had been completely severed from the motherboard.
I used an old ATX power supply from my storage to test the machine. It came to life, but kept resetting itself after about every 10 seconds or so. I had a spare nVidia 7600GS graphic card, so decided to install it as a replacement, just something to try and see. It actually worked, allowing me to add a 160-GB SATA hard disk which already had LXLE-Linux pre-installed. That worked fine as well. The CPU turned out to be a Dual-core Intel i3-530, running at 2.933 G-Hz . (Not bad at all for a free tossed-out machine) .
- Pushed my luck a little further by re-connecting the DVD drive that was in the machine. Could boot up from a Puppy-Linux 5.2 CD, and ran for a few minutes, then kept rebooting itself again. Perhaps the power supply could not handle the load ?
- Disconnected the DVD drive, Installed Win 7 Pro from a USB flash drive . Used KMS-pico to activate Win 7, then used WSUS-offline to perform Windows offline update (this took 3 hours)
- It's worth noting here that the GeForce 8400GS card, which was removed from this eXtreme-680 computer, was later on installed in the Dell Inspiron 530 and worked just fine there. So it was inconclusive as to what was the real problem that originally existed in this extreme-680 machine. The earlier symptom of repeated spontaneous re-bootings could very well be caused by the poor performance of my old ATX power supply, (it having been in storage for so long).
- Replaced the slow 5400 rpm 160 GB hard drive with an MX500 SSD (250 GB). Restored Win-7 by using Macrium Reflect.
- Tried to install several Linux OS's (MX21, Manjaro Budgie, PepperMint 11) on the MX500 SSD as well, but all failed because they had no suitable Linux video driver for the nVidia 7600GS graphic card . Although this card worked fine with Win 7, it was perhaps too old for the Linux OS's.
- Replaced the 7600GS with the nVidia FX580 taken from the Dell Inspiron 530 . This in fact solved the problem with Linux OS's .
- TimeShift-restored MX21-Linux from the HP8300USDT , Worked fine.
- TimeShift-restored PepperMint-11 from the Dell Inspiron 530. Worked fine as well.
- Added a second SATA disk (2.5" 320-GB Seagate hard drive) as a backup device.
- The motherboard on this machine provides both IDE and SATA interfaces, which is what I really like. (This makes it easy for me to test and experiment with many of the IDE hard drives in my hobby collection).
- Added another hard disk, which is a 80GB IDE WDC device (in a white caddy to allow easy removal/replacement). Worked fine as well . The old ATX power supply (rated at 400 W) seemed to work OK so far. Although it's possible to install the DVD drive as a slave device to the IDE hard disk, I decided to leave it disconnected for now. Best not to overload the old PSU.
- Installed Linux Lite 6.0 on the SSD (sda5) to triple boot with MX21 and Peppermint-11 . Had to use the option "Install alongside other OS'es" , otherwise installation failed . Installed PureBasic 5.73 (64-bit) on Linux-Lite . (The 32-bit version 5.72 of PureBasic would not work on this Linux-Lite 64-bit OS, version 6.0 ).
- Installed LMDE 5.0 Linux on the 320GB Seagate hard disk (sdb1). LMDE5 booted up rather slowly (because installation was done with Ventoy USB. After the installation, LMDE was still looking for the Ventoy USB during boot time !)
- Replaced LMDE5.0 with Bodhi Linux version 6 . Bodhi Linux looks good, although a little clunky and sparse. Could not add any desktop icon . Downloaded TimeShift ok . Installed and compiled QB64 ok .
- Installed Zorin-15 (32 bit) on the 80 GB IDE hard disk. Zorin-15 looks good, works well, and provides a very nice grub-boot menu.
-
Screen shot of Windows 7 Pro OS:
Hardware info details:
