I'm trying to salvage parts from my parents old gateway for my emachine!?

Question

I'm trying to salvage parts from my parents old gateway desktop for my emachine. What could I take off of it that would benefit my e-machine? Both are running XP and theres no limits to what I can and can't take off. Also a brief description of how to do it would be nice. No sautering please!

Answer 1

It all depends on hardware capability.

Most common parts are RAM, Hard Drive, DVD-RW (?). You need to make sure the RAM will work before you do it though. Hard drive you could install and make that as a 'slave' drive and just use it for storage.

Answer 2

Unless the machines are of similar bus speeds, none of the internal components are likely to do you any good. The chip set for the two machines will not be compatible if the speeds of the old and new CPU differ by more than about 50%.

The fans and power supply might be useful, though.

An exception would be if you have some sort of SCSI devices because SCSI buses are so asynchronous that clock differences on the backplane bus won't be QUITE as bad.

As to soldering, I doubt you would need that for the fans and any SCSI cards and devices. Not sure about the power supply. Check its rating. If it is lower than your e-machine then scrap it. If it is within, say, 20 or 30 watts of the same rating, it might make a decent spare.

Answer 3

Depending on the age of the other computer I would keep the hard drive, the ram and the cd drive. You may not need any of it now depending on your emachine but you never know when parts come in handy.
The ram may not work in your system - you need to check which type you have.

Answer 4

Well, gateway and emachine use integrated parts anyway. Even if you don't use them now, you could keep them just in case something of yours doesn't work then you can swap them out.
Umm, maybe the hard drive, memory. Maybe any cards that are in it.

Answer 5

the two things that you should salvage are the memory and the hard drive.

other things that you might want to salvage would be the graphics card if you know that it's better, and maybe the processor if you, again, know that it's better and you know it works with the emachine.

Answer 6

1.Processor
2.Ram
3.Harddrive
4.Cd/Dvd-rom drives
5.Graphics card,(if applicable, may have On-board graphics)
6.power supply
7.USB front port connectors.
8.Case fan
9.Screws (ALL)
10.Monitor
11.Keyboard
12.Mouse
Keep it together for a system to install Ubuntu 7.10 as a dual boot, to learn Ubuntu on.
All of it, for a friend who can't afford one, or single parent who has kid's. Give it to 'em for Christmas.