Spare parts - John C. Kirk

12:37 am - Spare parts

I recently upgraded my computer, so I now have various spare parts left over. In an attempt to declutter my flat, these are all up for grabs, i.e. free to anyone who wants them. (If nobody claims items by Friday evening then I'll offer them on Freecycle or eBay.) In most cases I don't have the original boxes, and some of these are too heavy to post, so we'd need to transfer them in person.

* APC Biopod (USB fingerprint sensor). This works with Windows XP, but not Vista/7.

* HP Deskjet 870cxi (colour printer). I bought this in 1996, and it's worked with every version of Windows since (including Windows 7), but it's parallel rather than USB. It's starting to show its age a bit: I have to feed pages through manually, because the rollers can't grab them, although cleaning them might solve that. The colour ink cartridge has run out, but there's some black ink left.

* Creative Audigy 2 Platinum Ex. This is a PCI soundcard, which optionally connects to a MIDI backplate (i.e. you need two rear sockets but only one expansion port). The main card also connects to an external box, but it always complained that I didn't have the cable connected properly, so there might be a loose connection somewhere.

* Hercules 3D Prophet Radeon 9800XT 256 Mb (AGP 8x). This has VGA and DVI sockets, and I think it's a pretty decent graphics card even by modern standards. However, it will only work in an AGP socket, and most modern motherboards seem to use PCI Express. It's definitely compatible with Vista; I'm not sure about Windows 7.

* Pioneer DVD-ROM DVD-104. Read-only drive, and it's IDE rather than SATA.

* Supermicro P6DGE motherboard, with dual CPUs (Pentium III 850 MHz) and 2 GiB of RAM (max capacity for the board). Also, a 300W PSU, the appropriate metal plate to fit into the chassis (for all the sockets to poke through), and a spare Pentium III heatsink/fan. I'd like to get rid of this lot as a unit, rather than dividing it up.

* Scaleo EVI 2535. This is just the shell: the motherboard doesn't work, and I've swiped the CPU/RAM for my desktop. That leaves the actual chassis, the hard drive/DVD, the wireless keyboard, the remote control, and the OEM copy of Windows Vista Media Centre. So, there's probably something that would be useful if you want to build your own box. Again, I want to get rid of this as a unit. (I described the problems with it here.)

* Palm Vx and accessories. I haven't actually turned this on in a while; the last time I tried, I had trouble with the stylus. Basically, it would work properly after a complete reset, but when I synched it up to the latest PalmOS software (v4?), it would think that I'd pressed the wrong part of the screen. This comes with a metal case (a bit like a book sleeve) and the docking station (uses a serial port). I also have a modem (for a landline), which I've never actually used, but I assume it works ok. You can use it with WAP on a mobile phone (as I described here), but it doesn't support wireless, BlueTooth, etc.

* The Windows 2000 Professional Resource Kit (book with CD). It's over 1700 pages long, so it will double up as a doorstop.