best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

2) 2x Socket-A era PC's (only one shown in the pic below)

The hidden treasure in one of these was a GeForce4 MX4000 128mb PCI graphics card. It had a bunch of g-luxon crapcaps on it....they *appeared* ok, but I polymodded it anyway.

The system had an AGP, but they used a PCI in it.... This GPU will go wonderful in a more retro-ish build.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

What kind of processor do(es) the Socket A PC(s) have?

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

athlon 32bit

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
One is a Duron 800/100, the other is an althon 1400/100. The 1400/100 is a bit of an oddball, and apparently kind of rare.

FWIW, this post created from a Dual Pentium classic 233MMX, testing out the PCI GeForce4 MX4000. OS is Win2k on firefox 3.6.27. Very nice GPU for the era, considering its on such a slowass machine.

[brethin]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Picked up a Xbox 360 4 Gb, no hard drive, 2 controllers and had a game Mortal Combat inside, fully working, for $1 at a garage sale.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

nice

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

An even dozen WD 1TB Caviar Black drives with low hours (5,000). Probably from a small office (that cycled power every night instead of letting machines run 24/7/365).

Probably add them to the media tank.

[brethin]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I take in Hardrives for safe recycling, 126 Harddrives last month, for free. I do a DOD wipe and mail them certificate wthin 30 days. Time consuming but the drives do sell for a bit when sold in lots so it covers the costs.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got these:

Lucky Star 6VA694+ S370 - abysmal cap install done by someone else and blown MOSFET near the CPU socket - fixed using 2007 datecode OST caps (they barely even get hot, which is good) and a new MOSFET

ASUS K8V-X SE - had two bad KZGs (smaller ones tho, not the big CPU ones), replaced and works fine

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I take in Hardrives for safe recycling, 126 Harddrives last month, for free. I do a DOD wipe and mail them certificate wthin 30 days. Time consuming but the drives do sell for a bit when sold in lots so it covers the costs.

We see probably tenfold that quantity (e.g., I unloaded 8 gaylords of machines Monday, each having at least one drive inside). None of the origins of the equipment can be identifiable after "processing" (e.g., inventory labels affixed to devices must be removed or obliterated; ownership information present in the BIOS erased; etc.). Think: hospitals; doctors' offices; commercial businesses; city/county/state governments; etc.

DoD "secure erase" is a colossal waste of time with no additional benefit after the first overwrite. If you think overwritten data can be recovered from an arbitrary drive without foreknowlege of its previous contents, I've a bridge to sell you -- cheap! If you think its been DONE with a modern drive, I'd love to see a reference to that accomplishment -- as would many other folks! (It would be a headline-making event!)

I use a two pass process to wipe and verify the functionality of a "foreign" drive:

• capture state of SMART variables
• initialize LFSR PRNG (ensure period is relatively prime wrt powers of 2)
• generate next sector worth of data in sequence
• write data
• if write error, destroy drive
• repeat until all sectors written
• reinitialize LFSR PRNG (same seed as before)
• generate next sector worth of data in sequence
• read sector from drive
• if read error, destroy drive
• compare data sequence to read data
• if compare error, destroy drive
• repeat until all sectors read/verified
• if state of SMART variables changed, destroy drive

When done, you have a drive that is known to work and no longer contain any recoverable data.

I can do about 1TB/hr using this approach (inexpensive COTS hardware).

I've designed a custom little board with a "push to start" and red/yellow/green LED that reports status (destroy/testing/accept). It's limited by the access speed of the drive but you can build 30 (or 50!) of them and do 30 drives simultaneously (not useful if you only have a few drives but REALLY useful when you're doing hundreds each week!)

A drive that is marked for destruction must be PHYSICALLY destroyed as the electronic interface has been proven to be unreliable in those cases. Either:

• drill holes through platters
• remove platters and shred them
• "snap" drives in half

Never "peek" at a drive's contents as that's unethical and also opens you up to legal and moral consequences (what if you stumble on evidence of a crime?).

I trust even my data to this form of erasure.

[jiroy]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Free scores for last week :


1 - Two Keyboards Genius PS2 . Working ..

2 - One monitor D-Star BM15V . Working ..

3 - One monitor Orion 7u7 . Not working .lol ..

4 - One laptop Satellite P305 . This one has probably went swimming at some moment in its life , lol . Cleaning and rinsing reveal more damage and corrosion ..And yet , sometimes it manage to start for some minutes ..

5 - A compilation of 30 CD-Rom , Combos and DVD-writers , of all types , for desktops . Scrapping them are a must as some of them contain rare inductors, like for a hint , PL1 and PL2 for laptops (Don't say i told you ... )

6 - One Belkin USB Port Hub F5U221 ..

7 - One Laptop Lenovo G555 , always turn off after some minutes . I'm working on it right now .

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A cheap ebay score on 2 very rare CPU's.... Coppermine 1100/100 (SL5QW) FCPGA processors. They usually sell for ~$100-ish per CPU, I got the pair for a BIN under $30 shipped, new listing, the seller didn't know what he had. With a couple slot-1 adapters, these will roar a retro rig in an Asus P2B-D!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
One is a Duron 800/100, the other is an althon 1400/100. The 1400/100 is a bit of an oddball, and apparently kind of rare.

FWIW, this post created from a Dual Pentium classic 233MMX, testing out the PCI GeForce4 MX4000. OS is Win2k on firefox 3.6.27. Very nice GPU for the era, considering its on such a slowass machine.

Because I was poor, I briefly in 2002, from July 5 to October 13, had a T-bird 1300/100. I was in a rush to put it in to my other motherboard, because the Chaintech CT-7AJA2E was acting odd, but usually only with Need For Speed III, LOL

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

4) The pick of the litter, a Brother HL3170CDW color laser printer, complete. Fuser is bad, but cheap to replace.

This one was a success, despite the fact that United Package Smashers (UPS) tried to kill the new fuser..... I knew it wasn't going to be good when the box arrived smashed...but I was able to repair the latch they managed to break....

Prints very nice!! Total pagecount is 6299, its not even broken in yet! The even cooler part, the owner mis-diagnosed it before taking it to the shop that gave it to me.....and they bought all new OEM toner cartridges for it, they're FULL!!



The complete OEM fuser cost me $80. There were cheaper options, chinese fuser rollers (roller only) available for $15, but researching those yielded some negative reviews and bad results....so I just anted up for the complete OEM fuser.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This one was a success, despite the fact that United Package Smashers (UPS) tried to kill the new fuser..... I knew it wasn't going to be good when the box arrived smashed...but I was able to repair the latch they managed to break....

Prints very nice!! Total pagecount is 6299, its not even broken in yet! The even cooler part, the owner mis-diagnosed it before taking it to the shop that gave it to me.....and they bought all new OEM toner cartridges for it, they're FULL!!



The complete OEM fuser cost me $80. There were cheaper options, chinese fuser rollers (roller only) available for $15, but researching those yielded some negative reviews and bad results....so I just anted up for the complete OEM fuser.

Gee, and I thought my $6 Brother HL-2270DW was a good score. Needs toner, runs otherwise. Faster than my LaserJet Pro Color 200, which is slow as dog nuts (and has a duplexer and manual feed try, things the Laserjet oddly lacks...). Page count was in the 7000's... still has original drum, been through 3 toner cartridges. I love how awesome brother lasers are...

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This one was a success, despite the fact that United Package Smashers (UPS) tried to kill the new fuser..... I knew it wasn't going to be good when the box arrived smashed...but I was able to repair the latch they managed to break....

LOL @ "United Package Smashers"...

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

if state of SMART variables changed, destroy drive

I don't even know if you can avoid that with regular HDD use!

Unless you mean ones, like "CRC Error Rate", "End to End Error Rate",(or similar) the one for uncorrectable errors or the like...

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Gee, and I thought my $6 Brother HL-2270DW was a good score. Needs toner, runs otherwise. Faster than my LaserJet Pro Color 200, which is slow as dog nuts (and has a duplexer and manual feed try, things the Laserjet oddly lacks...). Page count was in the 7000's... still has original drum, been through 3 toner cartridges. I love how awesome brother lasers are...

I too am impressed with this one. It prints fast and very crisp. My E260DN is fast, but its black only. my HP 2600 is slow as snot, but color laser. The thing I loved, the standalone driver is a whopping 7meg (HP 2600 driver was well over a hundred meg) for each platform (x64 or x86). The full software suite with drivers was 46mb, but I don't use any of that for network printers, just the standalone driver. S2K12 had an embedded driver. I didn't look into Linux, but I've read scuttlebutt that CUPS has no issues with these printers. I print a lot, so another good printer is always welcome. The HP 2600 will be demoted to the back workroom, and this one will take its place in the office. All my printers are ethernet, so no strange print servers...just plug it into the RJ45 wall jacks, and they work.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^Brother has CUPS support (closed source) for linux and Mac. It's a bit overengineered and somewhat bloated, but it does work (or did with a wired LAN inkjet all-in-one years ago). On par with HPLIP in my opinion... For linux compatibility on lasers, from my experience Brother and HP are the ways to go. Hence why I now use this:



Top: HP Laserjet Pro 200 Color MFP M276NW; Bottom Brother HL-2270DW

...and kicked my Dell (lexmark) 1600n to the curb (or at least the back of the office, once I get it recapped I'll have to find a use for it, I literally just put toner in the ****!). Printer works on linux by using a lexmark driver, network scan is windows only (not like the HP which does scan to email or save to a network folder, no scan software required). Good hardware, but the software bites.

Yeah, it kinda sucks using two printers to the work of 1... but the color laser AIW was $15, and the brother B&W workhorse below it was $6... even after toner for both (color was out of cyan only) I'll probably be less than you (but not by much)...

(Yes, you still won this one... you don't seem to be one to fax/scan things)

[jiroy]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Free scores for last week :

1 - 2 laptops Hp dv5 with different damages .. Great to repair one third missing some components .

2 - 1 laptop Acer Aspire 5100 bl15 . After doing some checks , mosfets behind the power inlet were found guilty . Cpu also seems unstable and it will be replaced .

3 - One box of laptop batteries , some 40 ones .. No way to test them efficiently , so we'll see next ..

4 - One TV-DVD player Sony with broken screen ..

5 - One laptop Toshiba Satellite P200 . No power , no leds , nothing , i suspect the LSxxxx ...