Found old comps, needs drives... help please!
 

Hey all. I may still be a newbie but I've been lurking for awhile now.

Anyways, a week ago my neighbor tossed out 4 computers, 3 keyboards, and 2 monitors. Naturally, I picked them up. My friend and I looked over everything, and everything works except: 1) one internal 3.5" floppy doesn't work, and 2) to protect data *cough pornsite cough* they physically took a drill to all the hard disk drives.

Reviewing the systems, they're all DOS-Win95 machines, with the fastest machine being a 433 Celeron, and the slowest being a freakin IBM 486! I figure I could install 2000 or XP/Pro on the fastest one, provided I find hard drives. The thing is that in my search for hard drives I'm only finding super-high capacity drives. On my PIII 650 I have a 40GB and I've barely used half of that.

So I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for correct size hard drives, and where to get them. Any help, tips, etc would be appreciated!

(BTW I've got vague plans of turning one of the older machines into an aquarium ;) )

Recycle.

This might be one case where not buying online would be better. You might try your local computer shops, see if they've got any older drives on the clearance table.

eBay. I know NewEgg sells a couple of 40 gig drives, but I dont think they go lower than that.

Look at linux for some of those older machines--that 486 would work fine for a firewall, or small web or email server.

check out http://www.softwareandstuff.com.

they have smaller drives for sale, but I'm afraid most of the cheap ones are SCSI :(

I'd still search around though

Try compgeeks http://www.compgeeks.com/products.asp?cat=HDD
They have some used/refurbed 20 gig drives that might work.

or you could try to find something on craigslist ( http://www.craigslist.org ) ... if there's a city listing for where you're at.

sometimes you can find people selling computer hardware for cheap. there's even a barter/trade/free section. give it a shot.

your nieghbor doesnt care you took them?

anyways i wouldnt even bother with those... recycle give em away toss em... other then the 433 but that still would be unbearable at current standards

as far as i know, the law says that once you put something on the street for garbage pickup it's public domain. you can add things or take things out and it's legal.

Yeah, people in my hometown get out the station wagons and go along the rich people's streets on weekend mornings. They stop at every house and get the shit that the rich people are throwing away. Laugh, but you'd be surprised what rich people throw out! My sister's computer desk and most of my mom's furniture have been supplied that way, as well as the two couch things in my dormroom.

I'd go apeshit if I found computers laying on the side of the road...that'd be the best day ever!

-Lasereth

I would recommend going to a local computer repair shop. When I was growing up, I got all this great stuff from them for really cheap (including a 2$ monitor) :D

Thanks everyone for the heads-ups! Doing some research, there's a local flea-market type, err, market that has a computer show once a month, I'll probably stop in there for the next show.

On a separate note, my friend is getting about 20 120MHz compys for, get this, $35!!! I'll have to buy a few of them off of him and scrap parts that way :)

I would have very limited space to actually use them currently* but would love to acquire even four or five of those kind of systems.

*already have three towers, two monitors, a component stero system, and various speakers occupying my apartment as it is. Not to mention the server sitting in the closet with the old POS 17" screen.