Lenovo 3000 J series - Another Torn Mind scrapheap special.

[Torn Mind]

Last spring, it was the last bulk trash pickup for the neighborhood of Fairmount Heights and I found this desktop.

Sat for a few months until yesterday. I decided to finally inspect it. Well, the PSU was borked; the LED indicate has crackling and intermittently "pulse" flashing. The computer did not start up; which is a sign the protection circuitry on the PSU worked. The PSU is a Hipro, and failed caps are Teapo(from around 2006?). PSU passed the weight test and looks rather well-endowed with filtering, so I have not doubts about its durability once it is "restored" if I can actually get around to it.

I must rant that some (very idiotic, imo) people who care so much about "safety" that they are unable to understand the nuance between garbage vs performs well but not for the long term. A PSU that fails in the above mode is not a long-lasting PSU, athough ten years before rendering the computer suitable for the trash heap is still not bad. But anyway, the point is that it IS NOT a DANGEROUS PSU because it doesn't turn on and subject the motherboard to dangerous voltages.

Put in a used PSU I bought three years ago and it fired up without pushing the start button. It actually booted up into XP...and seemed functional

The case is clogged with a thick dust "filler" nearly everywhere there is an intake hole, and upon opening the case, I see that quite a few caps on the mobo have actually bulged, and was able to pick out Teapo and Luxon as a couple of the manufacturers.

It has an AMD Athlon X2 3800+.

Looks I like I finally have the motivation to really practice soldering.
Pics forthcoming.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It has an AMD Athlon X2 3800+.

Congrats, you've officially gone lower-end than me.

Love to see pics of it working again, after you fix it up though. Sounds like an interesting project. Although I know how to solder, I don't really work on mobos, too afraid of screwing them up.

 

[Torn Mind]

I have basically lived the lower end of Celeron my entire life. The only top-of-the-line CPU I got was a PIII DoD computer that was already a dust collector in the basement in 2002 from my piano teacher.

I still have the Dell Dimension 2400 that my mom bought way back then. It had a Celeron 2.0 GHz Northwood and has collected dust for years. The hand-me-down freebie that supplanted it and let that collect dust was a 2.67 GHz Celeron from the P4 era; that computer gave me the "itch" and I put a 3.2 GHz Prescott in there. I realized that a Northwood would have been better but I was shopping based on the numbers back then. After using that and a hand-me-down freebie Latitude D810, I went to a Celeron G550, which is my "primary" CPU, and will return to that state when I hopefully sell off this 3770K. The i7-3770K was bought to flip, and I have no intention of keeping it as my own.

I also have a PIII rig from my piano teacher that also is collecting dust. Her son must have been in the military, because the notification on the login screen mentions that it is a DoD computer. The most memorable thing about that was the game Saddam. LOL It sat for 8 years after my mom bought the Dimension 2400, then I fired it up in maybe 2013, and it was still alive. It then has sat unused again since.

The Dimension 2400 was bought at some computer fair even that no longer runs at that particular fairground. They had AMD CPUs there but I would be clueless about their superior performance in that time period until 2012-2013 when I upgraded to the Prescott and then built that G550 box(sig is not up-to-date AT ALL) that AMD was the way to go in 2003-2004 when looking around the computer fair event.

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The computer technically still works, and I am dreadfully tempted to run Intel Burn Test and Memtest before I get around to cap swapping. From an ethical point of view, I just don't have to heart to list it on craigslist in that sort of condition. I'll probably deal with the PSU first. If I break it, oh well. It was free to begin with.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Congrats, you've officially gone lower-end than me.

Depends. If we compare it to your Atom rigs, ST is actually faster.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/search?q=X2+3800+