My daughter who has schizophrenia and some paranoia bought an old and beat up Dell 960 desktop computer without a hard drive on eBay. She wants a legacy computer because she thinks it is more secure than a newer computer and it is pointless to try convincing her otherwise. After reseating the two loose memory cards, I was able to successfully boot up Linux Mint Cinnamon from a USB drive as shown in the attached image. I can access the Linux Mint menu using the Windows key, but for some reason a USB mouse is not working. I am going to try using a dedicated mouse port instead to see if that works.
I have attached a photo of two unused cables that I assume are for the missing hard drive. Am I wrong? One of the cables is damaged and I may have to replace it. I am obviously not a hardware guy and am just stumbling my way through this. If I buy a 3.5 Dell SATA hard drive, can I expect it to plug and play (if I replace the damaged cable)? Or, is it more complicated than that?
@JosephMeyer those cables are sata power and data, assuming replacement cable yeah any sata drive will work
