Revitalizing a Zombie PC

30Jun/090

Revitalizing a Zombie PC

For one and another reason, I finally make a decision to push my PC technical experience to a higher level. Actually it is nothing about skills or intellectual thing but more on the determination side. Haha.

A friend has a NEC Valuestar PIII 667MHz with an intermittently malfunctioning hard disk drive on it and some other irritating compulsive error behavior. He is not interested to replace the hard disk drive (or at least not yet interested) regarding to the value of the whole unit. So he just ask me to keep it for an undefined period of time, at least until he needed it. I also has another 40GB WD Caviar which is formerly failing, but after I removed the controller board and clean the contacts points, it is back on duty - at least till now.

So I just apply a re-assembly works and some heavy cleanup to the whole unit with some additional SDRAM and USB PCI card and here I go with a functional desktop PC. I just need to replace the ATA hard disk cable when I find out that the IDE device (hard disk and CD ROM drive) is intermittently detected.

Here I want to share the cleaning method that I've done.

I disassembled the whole unit to a modular level possible for DIY level and cleaned all the dust and spydey web using a "crew-cut" brush.

and for some stubborn small animals stain regarding to how long this unit has been kept in a "mouse and mosquito" room, I use a bent unused toothbrush. You can make your own bent tooth brush by properly heating the tooth brush neck using a stove or heat gun. For cleaning solution, I use eucalyptus oil or "Minyak Kayu Putih" and a bicycle hand pump for blowing any leftover solutions. Then sun dried the board until it seemed no liquid on it. Later, I bought a can of paint thinner / reducer to completely "soak - wash" the motherboard and blow - sun dried combination. Both crew cut brush and bent tooth brush are still involved. But careful with the toothbrush, I think it can melt on paint thinner.

I remove the RAM and clean the goldfinger contact with a rubber pencil eraser. I also did this on all of the PCI goldfingers.

Then re-assemble and after some patience and a lot of coffee, "Frankie" is on duty once more.

When I'm confident enough that Frankie is alright, I begin to seek for a lightweight yet functional Operating System. Windows XP is not an option since I have "converted" to a GNU/Free/OSS/whatever as long it is not a pirated Windows person. It has something to do with my peace of mind.

I don't know but finally I find that Ubuntu Jaunty is the most suitable OS for this old PC. I've tried FC9, 10, Ubuntu Hardy, but Jaunty is seemed make more senses. Even Xubuntu Jaunty desktop is not performing well so I switch back to Gnome Ubuntu.

I add Inkscape, Google Picasa and FileZilla along with standard Ubuntu apps packages (Open Office, GIMP, etc) for my everyday activity. Oh and a Virtual Box for emergency only. I don't install the multimedia function since I think the system won't be adequate for current multimedia codecs.

One thing I found discouraging at first, it is the cursor misalignment issue. It happens when I need to draw rectangle or circle on inkscape. The rectangle / circle will appear on far right side (around 30% screen width) of the cursor. After some times googling around and found no answer, Thank GOD that I figured out that changing display resolution one step down will fix this issue. So I just adjust the display resolution from 1280X960 to 1152x864 and I can do my everyday activity with confident on this 1999 issued Frankie. Hopefully I can be productive on it and make some money.

BTW, what has happened to my notebook PC? I finally have to let it go. I needed the money to support my family. It is quite a tough times lately. Nothing last forever - only the merit and not the object itself.