What is best way to check out used computers?

[Rodney]

About every 3 months, there is a county auction (highest closed bid bet item) where there are often many computers. Most of them have the hard drives removed of course but you are allowed to put power on them and check them out using a display and keyboard and mouse at the facility. Is there a simple way (perhaps a thumb drive or CD) of checking for amount of memory and whether or not the BIOS is a useable one? Can a program such as ADVARK be run from a CD or thumb drive when there is no hard drive on the system? It would be nice to know how adaptable the item might be after you add a hard drive to it.

[CeaSaR]

Since they have no hard drives, you would need to have something with you that
the computer could read. Most would probably have the CD/DVD set as the first
drive to check for an OP System. I would have both a CD and DVD with me to choose
from. I'm not very sure, but most computers aren't setup to check for USB storage
right off the bat, and depending on the age of the machine, it might not recognize
your USB version (1.1 or 2.0).

Once you get the machine powered, then you could check the BIOS with the old F1
(F2, F8, or whatever the manufacturer specifies) key.

Don't forget your pad of paper and pencil(s). And don't forget your discs when you
are done checking out the machines.

Hope it helps.

CeaSaR

[philba]

You could try a "live CD" if they have an optical drive in it. Ubuntu would be a good one. Download the live CD image and burn it onto a CDR. Then stick the disc in a drive and reboot. it will take time but ubuntu will boot up. If it runs, the machine is probably ok.

[reloadron]

I can share this much. Newer machines generally have a BIOS that does allow booting from a USB device. The oldest system I have now used as a test box uses an Intel D955XBK motherboard which is about 4 years old. USB boot is enabled in the BIOS and I have a 2 GB thumb drive which has a Linux distribution of Unbuntu on it. It works just fine. Long as the BIOS supports booting from USB I would guess other systems would work as well without any HDD being installed. Note that as CeaSaR points out, your first step would be to get into the BIOS to enable USB booting if the BIOS supports it.

Another option would be to create a bootable CD and place a bootable Linux distribution like Unbuntu on it. The merit here is obviously that there is no concern if the BIOS supports USB booting. Generally most BIOSs are setup to boot from the optical device before the HDD.

The merit in either case is that using a bootable media with some form of OS on it will allow you to at least get a look at the system.

Ron

[CeaSaR]

How about this,

Carry all 3 types with you, that way when you look at a system with an optical drive
you can be 99.9% sure to be able to boot from there. If there isn't an optical drive
present, or it fails to read the disk, use the USB stick. Of course there are those
systems out there with 3-1/2" floppies, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to
carry them around, let alone look at such old legacy systems. I might be wrong on
that last point....

CeaSaR

[Rodney]

Thanks for all your replys, you have been very helpful. Rodney