Removing the drive from a DiskGo.

I had some pictures stored on an old 120 GB DiskGo. I wanted to look at them and move the good ones to somewhere in the cloud.

It was old school so besides the USB connection to the computer, it needed a wall connection and a transformer.

I set it all up and switched it on and... it's dead, Jim. So, I decided to see if I could take it apart and get the drive out so I could hook it up to another computer to test it. You can see the itsy bitsy screws holding the cover on so I need some special tools.

You do have a set like this, right? I removed the top cover.

You can see the drive and the custom board it is attached to. It is just a standard drive so I will attempt to remove it from the case. I flipped it over and removed the other two screws.

The drive is held in the case with 4 more screws. I removed them, turned the case over, disconnected the yellow custom cable and, with a small set of vice grips, removed the power connector.

I then put the case back together and added it to my electronics recycling box.

I will test the bare drive later in one of my PCs on the bench.

Project: eMachines T-3256 restoration (5)

This eMachines model came with an onboard video chip - the NVIDIA nForce2, but the previous owner had upgraded to a nvidia GeForce 4 card. Here's a pic of the onboard chip and nearby the AGP slot for the add on card.

I removed the card to clean the fan (an artist's brush is perfect for the task).

After cleaning I reinstalled the card. This card is only slightly better than the onboard chip. Since the AGP slot is long since obsolete it is widely know the best cards for it are the HD 4670, the 9600 or the GeForce 4Ti. If I had to buy one the 4670 is still expensive but there are quite a few 9600 units around for good prices. Next step was on to the hard drive. Here's is a pic of the cage. It is held in place by a single thumbscrew.

Remove the thumbscrew and pull the cage up and out of the case.

 I picked up a used Western Digital 160 GB drive (2009) on eBay for $15.74 with shipping.

The cage is built to hold two hard drives (the Primary and the Slave). There is a jumper to set the drive(s) but since I am only using one I just verified that it was set as the default master. I installed the drive in the cage with the connections up so when it is in place I can easily attach the cables. Note how the holes on the drive line up to the hole in the cage.

I placed the cage back into its position and prepared to attach the thumbscrew.

And then I attached the data ribbon cable and then the power cable.

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.

I am starting to play around with steganography - a way of "hiding" a text file or document within another non-text file (like a jpeg or wav).

There is a good "starter" article at http://m.tech.uh.edu/faculty/conklin/IS7033Web/7033/Week7/steganalysis.pdf.

Check it out.