I try and make it a habit to fire up an old machine before dismantling. You can in a matter of minutes determine if the hard drive, the RAM, the motherboard, and the CPU as well as cards are all good or not.
I have an old one right now that I fired up and it stated there was no keyboard to it. I finished digging through the load and I do indeed have the old keyboard with the right plug to fire it up again. Have not sone it yet, but once I do, I will know what all works. This particular brand and model have no resale value, but I think the parts will have some value broken down.
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