best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Hondaman]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'm sorry, the discs from that TV series are region 1, and I bought all 3 seasons brand new. A true Region 2 DVD disc (Studio Ghibli's "Only Yesterday") gave a different message.

("Only Yesterday" is the only Region 2 I have where I did not find a Region 1 copy later on. It has since been released as a Region 1 and I can buy it for $10, so for me it isn't worth going into the secret menus.)

The Blu-Ray works well for now, and if it fails, I have two more (non Blu-Ray) players my mother can use.

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got some really good scores at carboot today even though it was fairly quiet due to weather.

• Sony UDP-X800 4k Ultra HD HDR bluray player with remote - £5

All working too, couldnt believe it. Seller must have just thought it was your regular bog standard blueray player.

• 2 x Xbox 360 E Slims (1 PSU & 1 with 250GB HDD) - £5 each
  
• 5 x Humax Freeview boxes with 500GB HDDS - £20 for the lot
  
• PS4 - No HDD - £5

My favourite of the day as was all smashed up in pieces. Looked to have been dropped, bottom cover ripped off with screws still in there holes, hdd missing, covers all separate. Only went for it as, well was a fiver, but the seals were intact so no one had messed with it just took a fall. Anyhow didn't display a pic, blue light of death but at least we had power. Did the washer trick with 2 sets doing to trick and got display. New HDD and viola all working connect online too. Its still a mess, but super glued case were it was cracked, manage to get all but 1 screw back in so is all in one piece but ugly. Managed to break the eject button clip thing and cant seem to find a cheap replacement so not going to bother as can eject from menu, but perfect for kids to play when they come over as saves me having to bring mine down.

• Logitech Z5500 - Missing a single speaker - Untested as of yet - £15
  
• A few ps1 games, nothing special but some solid games £1 each

DS - £5 - Top screen has pixel so not so good a buy here.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored these:

- Thermaltake clone w/ Athlon 64 Skt754 machine inside and Delux PSU - cleaned up and looks totally awesome, will take up some pics. Dunno who the OEM behind it is though, but it's surely some respectable brand as the steel on it is thick and heavy enough to nearly break my spine - $24
- Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2 - AMD 690V chipset - does post but intermittently, maybe X1200 is the culprit? No artefacts tho, and it doesn't run scorching hot either. BIOS F8, gotta update it and check if my X2 220 will work in it. - $3
- dead Hama USB drive - nothing of value was lost

The case is really awesome - digital temperature LCD (that even displays the time! Though it might have a dead CMOS battery inside which I should replace I guess, gotta check it thoroughly and see what is it made of.), a interesting windowed sidepanel and a nice 4 color LED fan. Currently, my C2D E6750 machine is inside it, powered by a recapped Allied AL-8400BTX.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Tomorrow's going to be quite the big day - I'm taking the FX5900 Ultra with me so I can fix it - narrowed the problem down to the first pair of BGA RAM chips next to the DVI port.

I seriously doubt it's the RAM (even if it is BGA type), but feel free to try it anyways (if you do, be careful with how much heat you apply - RAM is rather sensitive). More than likely, it's the GPU that's dead/dying. If it's the RAM, you can try overvolting it a bit to see if the artifacts disappear. Old tired RAM may sometimes need more voltage to stay stable... but usually when it gets to that, the overvolt fix will not work long term.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I seriously doubt it's the RAM (even if it is BGA type), but feel free to try it anyways (if you do, be careful with how much heat you apply - RAM is rather sensitive). More than likely, it's the GPU that's dead/dying. If it's the RAM, you can try overvolting it a bit to see if the artifacts disappear. Old tired RAM may sometimes need more voltage to stay stable... but usually when it gets to that, the overvolt fix will not work long term.

It is the RAM, and pressing on it makes the artefacts go away. GPU already went through a reflow and is still kicking.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It is the RAM, and pressing on it makes the artefacts go away. GPU already went through a reflow and is still kicking.

Or you pressing on the board makes the PCB flex ever so slightly and thus temporarily restore the GPU-RAM connections?
I suppose we shall see. I have a TI 4600 that does this funny business with the RAM. However, as I found out, playing with the GPU cooler screws will also affect the problem.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Or you pressing on the board makes the PCB flex ever so slightly and thus temporarily restore the GPU-RAM connections?

That was my thought as well....

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Despite all the electronic goodies, the REAL prize in today's haul was this paper cutter -- a genuine "dumpster dive"!

It differs from conventional paper cutters in that it is capable of cutting stacks of ~100 sheets at a time. The stack of paper is fed through the slot in the "upright". The wheel is cranked to lower the aluminum plate (seen at the top of the slot, presently) down to compress the stack -- so the paper won't "squirm" to avoid the descending knife blade. Then, the lever arm pulled down (as shown) to drive the blade through the stack in a slicing motion (NOT a chopping motion as with a typical cutter).

[If you try to do more than a few sheets with a conventional paper cutter, you'll find they all end up slightly different sizes as thee sheets are pulled into or squeezed away from the blade's motion]

I use this to cut reams of paper into 3x3" square "slips" for little notes to myself (sort of like Post-It notes but considerably less expensive and without the stickum).

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored some free PSUs!

2x Thermaltake TR2-420NP - both based on CWT's ISO-P450L - haven't powered any of them yet, one has bulging caps on the secondary (Fuhjyyu) and the other doesn't have any bad caps (Teapo, much to my surprise)

Gembird 500W - dunno who the OEM is - might be SunPro/Leadman (I see KY markings on transformers) but afaik SunPro doesn't use 2TF designs (I might be wrong) - have also took HEC into consideration (although cap choice strongly seems against it - METACON primaries and SC/JEE secondaries) Blown fuse, gotta check out what the problem is.

Hiper HPU-4S525 - blown fuse, blown primaries - cause? APFC board went nuclear - charred IRPF460 MOSFET and also a blown resistor next to it. Not sure if I'm fixing this unless I can source both a IRPF460 and a resistor from a PS3 PSU and fuse.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Further update on testing the other TR2-420NP yielded no power. I have a hunch one of the D209L switchers is dead, as it looks suspect (weird marks on it, the neighboring one is clean). There is 5vSB though, but nothing else.

On the Gembird, I've found out there's a short, and as well, I'm looking at the 9A mosfets, because of the blown fuse.

The Hiper HPU-4S525 will probably be the next candidate after I fix the 2nd TR2-420NP (I have a Linkworld ""460W" unit that I saved for parts that I can scavenge some 13009s from - same specs as D209L, so it's good.

The other TR2-420NP I managed to fix - it just needed some new caps - I replaced most Fuhjyyu caps with Rubycons (and 2 1800uF 6.3v Pannies for the 5vSB) except a lone and tall 3300uF 16v Fuhjyyu for the 12v as I don't have any fitting replacement for that at the moment. It now replaces my recapped Allied AL-8400BTX, powering a Core 2 Duo E6750/Geforce 7600GS machine running XP SP3.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The SM Tree dropped an X6DAL-TB2 v3.0 on me....which was the final revision of this board...and DDR2. This will be worthy of a Paxville test!

I was also given a Pegatron IPMTB-TK motherboard out of a smashed case of some HP workstation. It's a mATX single LGA1366 DDR3 board, which works.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Big haul!

HDD:

Seagate ST31000528AS 1TB 7200RPM 32MB cache
Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB 7200RPM 32MB
Samsung HD502IJ 500GB 7200RPM 16MB
Seagate ST500DM002 500GB 7200RPM 16MB (SATA III)
Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB 72000RPM 16MB - dead, burnt component near SATA power plug
Hitachi Deskstar HTS721616PLA380 160GB 7200RPM 8MB
Hitachi Deskstar HDT722516DLAT80 164GB 7200RPM IDE

Other:
Raidmax Sagitta case w/ fans
generic P4 machine w/ AGP

LE: Managed to fix the ST31000528AS 1TB drive - showed 33MB on the BIOS - ran Seatools and set its capacity to be the full 1000GB.
The ST31000340 has BSY, and very fortunately for me, it's one of the .11 models, the easiest to fix, with just a Nokia cable (got one of 'em in my drawer, already built!) and patience. And a laptop

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

If I were you, I'd run SpinRite v6 on Level 4 against all of the drives and check SMART on them.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Made a potential pawn shop score. While poking around a pawn shop in TN today (on a solo business trip), found a 3.5" hdd buried in one of the display cases... it's a 4TB Seagate Ironwolf. Has been there for over a year (drive was made in February 2017)... the shop offered $20, and of course I took the offer.

Bozo here didnt bring his SATA adapter this time, so I won't be able to test it until I get home... but even for a "small" 4TB drive (they go up to 14TB per drive) $20 is nothing. Cheap enough to be worth the gamble.

I needed a drive about this size to upgrade my server's internal backup drive (so I can store more than just 1 week of images at a time)... not to mention that the server's main RAID array is 1.75TB but the current backup drive is only 500GB... not too good

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

If I were you, I'd run SpinRite v6 on Level 4 against all of the drives and check SMART on them.

I did run CrystalDiskInfo on the ST31000528AS, SMART came up really clean.

The Samsung drive won't let me boot into Windows, the ST500DM002 also has BSY, amd the other two 160GBs I haven't run yet to see what's on them.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I did run CrystalDiskInfo on the ST31000528AS, SMART came up really clean.

The Samsung drive won't let me boot into Windows, the ST500DM002 also has BSY, amd the other two 160GBs I haven't run yet to see what's on them.

Drop the Samsung into a dock and try to see what's on it. If that won't work, SpinRite v6 on Level 2 should get you where you can do so.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I was also given a Pegatron IPMTB-TK motherboard out of a smashed case of some HP workstation. It's a mATX single LGA1366 DDR3 board, which works.

Neat.
Those LGA1366 boards had tripple channel RAM, didn't they?

Gembird 500W - dunno who the OEM is - might be SunPro/Leadman (I see KY markings on transformers) but afaik SunPro doesn't use 2TF designs (I might be wrong) - have also took HEC into consideration (although cap choice strongly seems against it - METACON primaries and SC/JEE secondaries) Blown fuse, gotta check out what the problem is.

Yeah, that's a SunPro/Leadman indeed. My cheapo SunPro used those same Metacon caps, along with SC/JEE. Probably not worth fixing, and more than probably it's not a 500W PSU.

Hiper HPU-4S525 - blown fuse, blown primaries - cause? APFC board went nuclear - charred IRPF460 MOSFET and also a blown resistor next to it. Not sure if I'm fixing this unless I can source both a IRPF460 and a resistor from a PS3 PSU and fuse.

If it's a half-bridge PSU or uses CM6800 chip, just remove/disable APFC circuit and carry on.

BTW, good score with the HDDs. The Seagate ST3500418AS with the burned component on the SATA power plug might be an easy fix too, depending on what's blown. If it's a TVS diode - super easy fix then.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Neat.
Those LGA1366 boards had tripple channel RAM, didn't they?

Yes, it is 3-channel (6 slots). No onboard GPU. Good candidate for a functional sleeper build. I tested it with a 3.46ghz 6-core Xeon, it functions well.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

BTW, good score with the HDDs. The Seagate ST3500418AS with the burned component on the SATA power plug might be an easy fix too, depending on what's blown. If it's a TVS diode - super easy fix then.

Two ceramic SMD ferrite beads. I removed them, will just clean the area in there and power it up. I wouldn't care too much since I have a ST500DM002 to fix anyways, which is SATA III (6Gbps)

On the other hand, brought the ST31000340AS 1TB back to life and kicking well! Used Hyperterminal to reset the PCB out of its BUSY state, then updated the firmware to SD1A (originally on SD15) and so far it's all been good, even SMART passes with green lights!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I asked the guy that gave me the Pegatron IPMTB-TK what he did with the rest of it....I saw the smashed case sitting out in his garage.... He bilked the 2x SSD's for some laptops he had, but he said the rest was junk, and I was welcome to it.... I love what some consider 'junk'...so let's see:

1x Xeon W3690 CPU (3.46GHz hex-core)
6x 2gb sticks of PC3-10600E
...and the pick of the litter: a PNY Quadro M4000 8gb GPU!