October 12th, 2024

One Man's EWaste is Another Man's Treasure.

I have an IDEa as to what to do with these...

I got more ewaste!

The next door neighbor here has given me stuff before. Last time she gave me anything, it was a few old PCs (including the Oversized Tower and the new NAS I have on my shelf) along with a box with assorted PC junk including cables, and some super old graphics card. This time, she gave me a box with around eight old Maxtor hard drives (save one that was a Quantum drive), along with two power supplies of presumably dubious quality, and some Pantone color gadget thing that’s practically useless to me.

Well, I didn’t test the power supplies. I don’t have a board somewhere that I’m willing to risk with them, though I presume they work just fine. One is quite light, and the other is heavy, so I get the feeling at least one of those has a much higher chance of blowing up. I also didn’t test the Pantone thing since I don’t have anything to test it with. But I did test the hard drives. And they all worked.

These drives were literally perfect. I have been in need of some working IDE hard drives, and all of these, with the exception of one, are IDE. I have a SATA to IDE adapter so I can put a SSD in a older machine, but it’s quite inconvenient when I want to work on multiple projects at a time since I am stuck with one SSD and adapter.

One of the drives looks very similar to the one I had to extract from the Dimension. I ended up putting that one into the Dimension, and am currently trying to dual-boot Windows ME and Windows 2000 together, though it seems like WinME and Win2k don’t want to coexist.

I also ended up with another IDE DVD drive. Those are always useful. I ended up putting it in the iDEQ 210P. That machine is also from the same neighbor, but I’ve had it for far longer, and it does take SATA, though I am using the IDE on it right now.

Power supplies.

Weight of the CompUSA power supply.

Weight of the Turbolink power supply. I get the feeling this one isn't great quality. Just look at the weight compared to the CompUSA one.

Hard drives. I did notice the Maxtor one at the bottom looks very similar to the Quantum. I assume it's a rebranded Quantum, probably from when Maxtor bought them out.

This is the drive inside the Dimension.

Inside the Dimension.

The drive I put in the iDeq. I get the hunch this drive was used in the iDeq at one point. It has the words "XP 64" written on a different side of the drive.

Side view of the iDeq. The iDeq is missing the hard drive holder, so I just stuck it in there in the hopes it will hang in there.

Front of the iDeq, showing the DVD drive I stuck in it.

Cold Outside

It’s gotten quite cold over here. Last week I ended up having to put the free range chooks back in the coop since it was too cold to sit and keep a eye on them with the door open. Today, the weather seems just fine, but I don’t think it’s going to last forever. Time change also occurred and this causes some disruption to my normal routines, including my sunset bike rides, which got bumped from 5PM to 4PM due to the time change.

Felicitas the Cream Legbar.

Pet Doves.

These are my sister’s pet doves. They are quite intelligent, but very dumb at times as well. Thankfully they remain silent most of the time, and only destroy stuff occasionally.

Pichon. Tolerates people most of the time. Most active and handle-able out of all of the two doves.

Alexander, previously Alexandra. He was thought to be female but has since shown signs of being a male. Very unfriendly with anybody but my sister, absolutely despises me, and is Pichon's enemy.

Puffy Pichon. He likes to get in the way of the air conditioner or ceiling fan, and puffs up when the cold air gets on him.

Pichon on a Perch. He is looking down at me, and thinks he is above me, and not just in perching-spot.