Project: eMachines T-3256 restoration (4)

I let the alcohol dry overnight and now the cpu is ready to have the thermal paste applied.

The paste should only be applied to the cpu (the pink part) and should be no more than the thickness of a piece of paper. I applied it from the syringe and used the included wooden spreader to move it around, covering the cpu.

 

The heat sink only goes on one way (there is a notch on one side). I positioned it and clipped it into place. Just to be safe I removed the power supply so I could make sure the clips on both sides of the heat sink were correctly engaged.

I plugged in the fan connector to the power plug on the motherboard. I then hooked up the video connector (VGA) for the monitor to the connector on the video card as usually installing a video card in a machine with an on board video chip will override the on board chip. Finally I hooked up a USB keyboard and a USB mouse.

Next I connected the power cord to the power supply and then to the power strip.

There is no switch on the power supply so the only way to power up the machine is to use the power button on the front of the case. I pressed the button, it lit up, the cpu fan started running and the monitor came up with the 'e' but no indication of the key to press to access the bios. I tried the F2 (Dell's solution) but it failed.

A quick visit to Google (Tech Law #1: Google is your friend.) told me to try F2, Escape, Tab or Delete.
I tried Tab which failed and then Delete, which didn't.

Finally for today I hooked up the machine to my kill-a-watt EZ to measure the power being consumed and burn in the new paste on the cpu. After a couple of hours if was registering usage of $.28-.29 per day, but this is without a hard drive.

Project eMachines T-3256 restoration (3)

The heat sink was loose when I opened the case upon delivery. I am hoping that it came loose during transit, but the only way to find out is to test by booting. Before I do that I have to clean off the old thermal paste from the cpu and the bottom of the heat sink and clean out 10 years of dust from the fan and heat sink.

This is the cpu with the heat sink off. The old thermal paste is the "gunk" on top of the pink surface of the cpu.

This is the underside of the heat sink. There is a thin "pad" that covers around the cpu. I have to clean off the old paste from this surface also.

I removed the fan from the heat sink to expose 10 years of ultrafine dust/dirt that has been collected by the fan action inside the case. There is no easy or clean way to do this.

This is the cleaned cpu. I used q-tips saturated in isopropyl alcohol.

This is the cleaned heat sink and fan ready for reassembly.

Project: eMachines T-3256 restoration (2)

The unit arrived in a few days and I happened to see the USPS guy stop the truck. I went out to get the box and as he handed it to me he said; "It's heavy". It wasn't, but it was in rough shape and I could tell the PC was loose in the box.When I opened it I my fears were confirmed. It had been packed poorly and in transit the paper packing had become compressed and the unit started to bang around inside the box. There was damage.

The side of the front panel had shattered and the panel had come loose, breaking all the connector pins in the process.It could not be reconnected.

And, from the dirt and dust on the outside of the case it was safe to assume this unit was "rough".
I knew from the condition of the outside that the inside would be pretty dirty and I wasn't wrong. I opened it up and yes, it was filthy with years of dust build up. While I know there was no HD, I was distressed to find out that the fan and heat sink had come off the CPU - either during shipment or some other time - and now I had real questions about the ability of this unit to start up and run.

I cleaned up the dirt and dust, being careful to not touch the exposed CPU and set everything aside for a couple of days to decide whether or not to continue with the project. I also sent the seller a message about the poor packaging job. He sent back a reply apologizing and saying he wasn't too careful because he thought all I wanted it for was "parts".

Project: eMachines T-3256 restoration (1)

I wanted to find a desktop PC that I could restore back to working condition as practice for some major upgrading and restoration projects I will be working on in the future. I looked on eBay and found this eMachines T-3256.

The seller claimed that the unit had no HD but was working before it was removed. It also was listed as having an AMD Athlon 3200+ XP Processor, DVD+/RW CD-ROM, NVIDIA G-Force 4 graphics driver, and 5 USB ports. Although it was sold as "for parts or repair", it looked clean so I put in a bid and won it for $29.99 plus $18.00 shipping ($47.99). I liked this unit because it has both a DVD and CD drive and a built in media card reader.