[rescue] Dell XPS 400 rescue

[Steve Sandau]

I continue to be amazed at the things people throw away. I finally made 
it to the dump to get rid of the water pump I replaced on Memorial Day 
weekend, two dead SSA 100 power supplies, an old propane tank and some 
other odd assorted junk that has been cluttering up the basement for a 
while.

While dumping the power supplies into the "electronics" box, I saw a 
new-looking Dell in there. Always on the lookout for parts (even if they 
are PeeCee ones) I figured I'd grab it, remove what worked, and take it 
back in a couple of days.

After getting this home, looking it over, and booting it I discovered 
that I had a working dual-core 3.2GHz box with a gig of RAM, an 80G SATA 
drive, and a broken video card. $100 later, I have a working video card 
and 2 gigs of RAM.

It doesn't appear to be a 64-bit CPU, and it doesn't seem to have 
whatever is required to do hardware virtualization, but with a PCI 
express video card and a nice soundcard, this beats the hell out of my 
current "desktop" built around a quad-core server motherboard.

This is now the fastest box in the house, and it was basically free.

Amazing.

Steve