I was working on a job(settin' fence post) and this guy had a Compaq on his back deck. It seams it has been rained on because there is a little rust and a few webs in it. But on a good note it turns on but it just beeps at me. I need to clean the piss out of it, but I think its salvageable. There reason why I want to save it because 1, its a Compaq Presario SR5223WM and it has way better specs then the dinosaur I'm using. 2, If all else fails I may beable to save it's litescribe DVD drive and maybe the 150GB Seagate in it. I can't really use either one because my computer currently uses PATA and those are SATA. But eventually I'm going to buy a new mother board and it would be cool to save on some things. Its got a Sempron 3600+ in it. It also has 1 PCI-E 1x and 1 PCI-E 16x. My current computer I use only has AGP 4x/8x. So moving to this machine will be a huge upgrade. I wish I could pose pictures. The fans and lights comes on but it just beeps at me with a long evenly spaced beep. Man its such a shame, but I wanna save it... its got good parts in it....

I was working on a job(settin' fence post) and this guy had a Compaq on his back deck. It seams it has been rained on because there is a little rust and a few webs in it. But on a good note it turns on but it just beeps at me. I need to clean the piss out of it, but I think its salvageable. There reason why I want to save it because 1, its a Compaq Presario SR5223WM and it has way better specs then the dinosaur I'm using. 2, If all else fails I may beable to save it's litescribe DVD drive and maybe the 150GB Seagate in it. I can't really use either one because my computer currently uses PATA and those are SATA. But eventually I'm going to buy a new mother board and it would be cool to save on some things. Its got a Sempron 3600+ in it. It also has 1 PCI-E 1x and 1 PCI-E 16x. My current computer I use only has AGP 4x/8x. So moving to this machine will be a huge upgrade. I wish I could pose pictures. The fans and lights comes on but it just beeps at me with a long evenly spaced beep. Man its such a shame, but I wanna save it... its got good parts in it....

The MB in that computer should use an AMI bios, count the number of beeps and look here:
http://www.diy-computers.com/repairs/postbeepcodes.html

Did you ask WHY they tossed it out there?

You could try to simply disassemble it, and then clean everything with alcohol, then let it air dry for awhile. Chances are if it has been left to the elements long enough to build up visible rust then the system is toast.

The hard drive likely isn't worth it, and the DVD drive is only $20 or so new but would be nice if it worked. Power supply is likely shot, and a good chance all the fan bearings are toast or nearly there.

Good luck getting things going on it.

You're probably better off trying to salvage the components in it than trying to actually getting it to work again. Wouldn't hurt to try what Luckless said though.


For what it's worth, you can waste an awful lot of time trying to clean it off and get it working again to no avail. My brother had a friend break a crystal ball or something next to his computer once, and the liquid contents that got into the computer actually burst into flames somehow(!). Funny thing is, it would actually beep when you tried to boot it, but I spent a lot of time trying to clean the motherboard off and get it working again, which never did help. I later discovered a few ICs had their contacts damaged by the fire, and I suspect that even if I did get it booted again it would never be stable. On a similar note, I've saved parts from a computer that was in a house fire and had partially melted.

I'd just snag the HD, DVD drive and maybe the RAM if it's compatible with something you have. The video card might be worth saving if it's not integrated. The processor might still work, considering that it's pretty well protected, but finding another motherboard to use it in will be tricky.