Chapter Six

Resurrecting the Digital Phoenix

- the thrift-store computer buyer's guide -

by Robert English

(© 2003 - 2005 by Robert English - obtain permission before using elsewhere)

Computers of various kinds have been showing up in thrift stores (and garbage bins) for several years now, but recently the usability of these "throwaways" has been steadily rising. It's not unusual to find a first-generation Pentium system on the shelf at Goodwill, usually from 75MHz to 133MHz speed, and gradually the Pentium II chipsets with ATX form-factors are becoming available there. As I explained in chapter one, the thrift-store computer is starting to become quite serviceable as a Windows95 box. In this article, a work in progress (as always), I will cover the basic points that one should look for before one buys a donated computer.

Scrounging

Where does one find such a system? Usually, there is some area within a City's limits that is considered a "Silicon Alley" - it's where the larger companies live that use these computers for their employees, as well as Universities which have increasingly complex computer labs. It's not necessarily where these computers are made, mind you, but where they're used. During an upgrade, these institutions can get in the habit of donating their older systems to a thrift store chain and taking a tax write-off for it. It's more likely to happen toward the end of the year, though it could happen anytime when the decision is made to upgrade the computer systems. This does not guarantee that you'll find a system there, nor does it mean you won't find one elsewhere, but the odds of finding one definitely go up in such an area.

On the shelves, you'll usually find a fairly large quantity of used keyboards, mice, power cords, an old 12-inch monitor or two, but no computers. Mark that store as a possibility and keep looking in other stores. When one is shopping for donated goods, you cannot expect to find what you're looking for immediately - merely keep a watch on likely areas and check them at every opportunity. The best analogy is a hunter who sets traps and keeps coming back to check them every day.

Specific Items

The peripheral devices, mice and keyboards particularly, are going to be much more abundant than the systems themselves. You can find some very good ones if you shop carefully. You have a choice here - whether to buy them now & squirrel them away until you find a system, or find a system first and then go shopping for the peripherals. Here's what to look for in either case:

Mice - this little guy takes a lot of wear, and usually never gets cleaned by its first owner. By the time you find it, the buttons take a five-pound weight to activate and the travel is lumpy due to dirt buildup on the inside rollers.

The dirt can be cleaned, and smooth operation restored, using a Q-tip moistened with rubbing alcohol. Usually there is a plastic ring holding the mouse ball in place - there will be an arrow on it to indicate which way to turn the ring to remove it. Undo that, take the rubber ball out, and the rollers will be exposed well enough to clean. Wipe these thoroughly (some of them you'll have to scrape with your fingernail to get the dirt dislodged), and you'll have a smooth mouse once again - in some cases, as good as new.

The buttons are a more complex problem - no amount of cleaning will fix the buttons once they start to go bad - and it's usually dependent on the amount of use the mouse has had. Hold the top surface of the mouse buttons up to a good light and check the plastic where the fingers normally rest. If the surface on the buttons is much shinier than anywhere else on the mouse, it might be worn out - put it back and keep looking. If the surface is only slightly shinier, or ideally the same as the surrounding plastic, then you probably have one that has had very little use - this will last a while. You can also click the buttons yourself and judge by the "feel" whether the action is sloppy or good.

Check the end of the cord as well - an older serial port connection isn't going to be as potentially useful as the more recent PS-2 barrel-type connection. If you have two mice you're trying to make a decision about, and one has a PS-2 connection, choose that one.

Keyboards - in this "point-and-click" age, the keyboard doesn't get as much use as it once did, but a thrift-store keyboard should always be scrutinized carefully. Hold the surface up to a good light and look at the tops of the keys. A well-used keyboard will have lots of wear on the tops of frequently-typed letters (A,S,E,I,O,L,N, and the spacebar on the right side). You can also judge for yourself by typing on the board and judging by "feel" whether you'll get good use out of the board.

The end of the cord needs to be checked, as with the mouse - the PS-2 style connection will probably be of more use than the 5-pin DIN connector that the older units used. It also indicates more recent manufacture. Occasionally you'll find a USB keyboard, which means it was made even more recently, but if you pick up a computer without USB connections then you'll have to scrounge for an adapter.

Cords - the need for these won't be evident until you get the computer and the monitor. There's three types that you might need:

Power Cord - these things are everywhere, and usually unused.

"Piggyback" Power Cord - this is the one that goes between the computer's power supply and the monitor. These are less common, but they can be found.

Monitor Data Cord - usually the monitor has this permanently attached, but some don't. What you'll need will depend on the monitor you'll get. These can be very obscure, rarely found in a thrift store, and you may want to buy one retail to save time.

The Printer

These have been showing up at thrift stores with increasing frequency. People are realizing, more and more as time goes on, that the greatest expense of a printer is not the printer itself but rather the ink tanks. Buying a new printer is not much more than buying new ink for the old one. Some companies, such as Epson and HP, have printer recycling programs (though this option costs about $10.00 per printer), but the most frequent "recycling" that people do is to donate the old printer to a thrift store. Here's where you come in. Some very nice printers can be had for $15.00 or less. If you're a careful shopper, you can come home with a real functional bargain.

Most of the printers you will find will have been made between '95 to '98, meaning that they will have a parallel port but no USB port. You've probably worked with some of them before, either on the job or in a University (work in either case), and have had some experience with them. Once you know what kind of printer you might like to find, then you can go hunting on-line for a user's manual in PDF format. This is usually obtainable from the company that made it.

Some printers come with their own power supply built in; all you'll need to do is find the right cord and plug it in. Most, especially of the vintage we're discussing, have transformers that step the voltage down (Canon and HP are famous for this). If you cannot find the power supply on the same shelf with the printer, then odds are the printer was donated without its power supply (or that they were separated by mistake). Unless you've got lots of time to sort through the "orphaned" power supplies that invariably collect at thrift stores, then don't bother with these printers. Find one that has its power supply still attached and ready to go.

Testing the printer while it's still in the store is possible for some models: many of these older printers contain their own "self-test" capability as part of the on-board ROM chips, which really comes in handy. If you're in a thrift store trying to find a good printer among five or six that may or may not print properly, and you know how to make the printer work through its own "self-test" procedure, then you can rapidly weed out the problem ones and find one that will work well for you.

Rubber rollers that pick up the paper and transport it through the printer, which worked fine when the printer was new, get gummy or hard with age. The Canon BJ series printers are famous for this - when the rubber gets gummy, the wheels no longer grip the paper and the printer just sits there and beeps at you. I've had success by taking the top cover off and giving these rubber rollers a good scrub with Q-tips and alcohol. It removes the accumulated paper lint from the rollers and you can use the printer again.

Drivers are another issue: some "native" drivers that came with Windows95 will work fine with the designated printer, while in other cases a newer driver from the company is the only thing that will work (some NEC printers, such as the SuperScript laser units, are infamous for this). This is another reason to stick with a brand of printer that's still in business, as drivers are usually on-line for every model they've ever made, so keep this in mind while you hunt down a printer.

The Monitor

This can be the trickiest part of the purchase. Unless you've got a portable computer with a VGA output on the back, which makes it easy to test a monitor to see what kind of picture you're going to get, you're going to be "buying blind". I would urge everyone reading to not do that. Aside from the mouse preference, nothing is more personal or persistent than the quality of the picture you'll be looking at (some of you for hours at a time!).

Tolerance for monitor foibles is a very subjective thing, and can vary widely from person to person. With that in mind, I've made a list of general points of which to be aware, rather than specific recommendations. Here's some variables to keep in mind:

Display Modes Available - monitors made in the early 90's generally had one display mode - 640x480 with a refresh rate around 60Hz - and maybe 800x600 if you're lucky. Newer ones have more options, higher screen densities and refresh rates, and these are starting to show up in thrift stores more often. Knowing what you're willing to tolerate, and sticking to it, can keep you from buying a monitor that you won't be able to stand after a few months. (Kind of like dating, isn't it?)
Type of, and Response to, Controls - older monitors have analog knobs for brightness and contrast. These get "dirty" with time and don't adjust well after a decade of use. Newer ones have digital controls on the front allowing for more sure, and more varied, adjustment options. Frequently you'll find that, while the monitor itself displays a good picture, the pushbutton controls for brightness & contrast are dead (usually why it was donated in the first place). Unless you have a stomach for this, don't settle - keep looking for one you like.
Time Left To Live - generally, the older a monitor is, the less time is left before it dies. Most monitors made since the early 80's have a date stamp on the back, near the model and serial number, that states in plain English when it was made. If you've found two that both look pretty good, buy the younger one of the two.

Come to think of it, looking at each one of these points, it really IS kind of like dating. One should be as careful of choosing a monitor as one should be in choosing a mate. And I think I'm accurate in that assessment.

The Computer Itself

Thought you'd never get to this, didn't you?

The older boxes of 486 vintage, often with crippling limitations in the RAM and BIOS areas (these have been covered in chapter one), are actually starting to become rarer to find now. More often you will find a Pentium unit running somewhere in the neighborhood of 133MHz, that can handle 64Megs of RAM, and some early Pentium IIs. If you're looking for a Windows95 box, these merit attention.

Visual inspection will sometimes prevent some nasty surprises later. Here are some things to look for:

Missing components - It is not unusual for a donated computer to be missing some PC-cards, evidenced by an empty card slot in the back, and this can be different for every computer. The essential item is a video card, and if this unit is missing then replacing it can be very costly. Secondary items are the modem and the sound card, which are nice to have but aren't a matter of life and death (i.e. you can boot the machine without them). Besides, modems of this age are usually 28K speed, and you'll probably want to increase that.
Power supply problems - If the power supply is missing from the case altogether (which has been known to happen), or if there is a "burned" smell coming from it, the computer may be more work than it's worth to fix it back up again. The power supplies available over-the-counter at places like Fry's Electronics are usually for the modern ATX cases, and if you're looking at an early case with the AT form you may have to scrounge. Finding new power supplies for this type of machine is getting more difficult as time goes on. A good power supply is the backbone of a good PC. Don't compromise here.
CD and floppy drives - if these are present, then you can probably get by with them. Many computers of this vintage cannot boot from a CD, due largely to the limitations of the early-technology CD-ROM drive. Then there's the matter of speed; 2x and 4x were major advances in the technology at that time, but horrendously slow by today's standards. But if it reads the CD accurately, then it may be worth keeping for a while. Floppy drives haven't changed much by comparison, and unless there is something mechanically wrong with the drive you probably won't have to do much to it but vacuum the accumulated dust out of it.
The case in general - look for signs of abuse; anything from misalignment to missing screws to shoeprints on the side. If it's been kicked around, it may have been donated for a really good reason. Plus, straightening a case can be difficult work, since steel never bends back to its exact original shape (unless it's been heat-treated, and we're not going there).

Everyone has their own idea as to what is a good risk and what is not, and it's a decision you can only make for yourself. Keep your own limits of time and money in mind when you look these things over.

These stores usually have an all-volunteer workforce - sometimes the store will have someone working there who is smart enough to pair up a monitor and some speakers with the computer to make a complete system for sale. These will be priced a little higher than the components alone, but the time it could save you may be worth the extra expense. It will usually be up and running as well, in "demonstration mode", and it will be easy to check it out before you put your money on the counter.

Conclusion

In all cases, spend your money wisely. You can get stung on a $1.00 item just as you can on a $100.00 item - it just costs less to learn the same lesson. Keep a sense of adventure during this process, because it IS an adventure, and you'll be having fun as well as hunting down a usable computer system.

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