best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Neighborhood collection is the 27th so if anyone wants literally everything I have bring $500 and you take it all. I'd guess it's $5000 worth of stuff based on eBay prices at half of what it sells for. Most all working, some new in box lots of rare things. It might all fit in a long bed pickup truck, maybe. Ailing Mother in Law taking my computer room and I closed all my storage units. Time to let it all go. The reason I say $500 is I can get that just taking it to scrapyard. Let me know soon.

Is it all sitting outside? It'd be pilfered & devoured by the time I could get there.....

[brethin]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Is it all sitting outside? It'd be pilfered & devoured by the time I could get there.....

Nothing is outside.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Given a 55" Sharp TV a couple weeks ago, aug 2017 manufacture date. Dead set. No clue what the cause of the failure was for as new as it is (they thought it was lightning), but 2 FET's in the power supply primary were popped along with a fuse. I also spotted some crapxon caps (not bulging), and replaced them as a precautionary measure. I had to order the FET's, they came today.

The bad stuff:


It works!


I still absolutely love troubleshooting....its just too bad there's not much money to be made fixing these...

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nothing is outside.

If you just want to get rid of it, I'd come for it....it's a 10hr drive in a rough riding 1-ton pickup..... It does have an 8ft bed and a crew cab though.

[Hondaman]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd love to buy individual pieces, but I cannot buy much -- I'm trying to free up more space in my house, not less....

...also, this is quite short notice for me. And I would have trouble driving 3 hours each direction and showing up at your place at a reasonable time (3 AM is *_perfectly_* reasonable for a night owl like me, but few other people operate the way I do).

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

(3 AM is *_perfectly_* reasonable for a night owl like me, but few other people operate the way I do).

I used to be like that...I wish I still could.....but when midnight rolls around, I'm all done.

[brethin]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'm fine with anytime, and to be honest I need a bit of cash, but I'm willing to let you pick through and donate what you feel it's worth to you. The mother in law thing hit us hard, she dropped fast and care for her took a toll on our cash flow.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

...and to be honest I need a bit of cash...

I put a pencil to it, it'd cost me 2 tanks of diesel, ~$160 round trip in fuel (plus food and possibly a hotel room) + $500 +10hrs on the road....uhgg, that's a little stiff. I wish you were closer, it'd be all together different.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd love to buy individual pieces, but I cannot buy much -- I'm trying to free up more space in my house, not less....

Tee hee hee... join the club! I've been trying to haul a "car load" of shit^H^H^H^H stuff out of here each week. My other half asking "can't you sell it on eBay?" to which I reply, "You want it sitting around for another week/month??" "Oh. Would you like some help loading it...?"

I swear the stuff must be reproducing itself when I'm not looking!

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The mother in law thing hit us hard, she dropped fast and care for her took a toll on our cash flow.

Brace for this to get worse (possibly considerably!). A neighbor has been spending $14K/month just on round-the-clock caregivers for his brother.

It's hard to know what to "wish for" in these situations! :< And, to try to balance "guilt" and "obligation" with the practical aspects of the situation.

Good luck!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I swear the stuff must be reproducing itself when I'm not looking!

Ohh it does, especially cables.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Ohh it does, especially cables.

My garage walls are lined with industrial shelving, 42" wide units and 18" deep, floor to ceiling. I have a few gazillion 10x5x18" boxes on the shelves (which I've adjusted to 7" spacing). So, it looks like an old-fashioned shoe store -- except the "shoeboxes" are considerably larger.

MANY of these boxes are labeled for cables (SCSI-1, 2, 3, VHD, VGA, DP, DVI, COAX, CAT5, etc.)

[I tend to USE a sh*tload of cables so having "many" isn't an issue]

One of the boxes is labeled "Printer". I opened it, the other day, to find it overflowing with all sorts of printer cables of varying lengths, connectors, etc. Then, reminded myself that all of my printers are "network printers" so I don't need ANY "spare" printer cables -- let alone a whole box full of them!

I think there is a downside to keeping things "organized" and "tidy" (for some definition of "tidy"); you don't SEE all the sh*t and lose track of just how much of it you've got stock-piled! <frown>

OTOH, try throwing any of it out and you suddenly discover some OTHER use for those -- now discarded -- items!

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got a Xbox One S 500GB for £3

Completely smashed, no outside shell just metal cage on inside. No power at all, HDD good.

Managed to get it working, PSU had a transformer completely ripped off and rattling around inside. Not really fixable so ordered a new one. Viola turned on and into home screen. Blu ray drive worked and had a game inside, nice bonus. Only issue from here is the sync button, which does not work. Guessing the metal dome is crushed so just removed it and got it to sync by shorting the contacts.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Traded my old Xeon in for a GTX 750Ti 2GB GDDR5 Twinfrozr.

Works fine and looks rad Will look even more nice once I'm getting a Gigabye G1 Sniper 3 to fix for myself

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yet another Tennessee pawn shop score: HP Stream 8 Tablet ($35). No charger, but uses a standard 2A micro USB. Similar to a Insignia tablet I bought and used to use a handful of years ago... only better built and has parts avialable from places besides alibaba.

Yeah it's the older bay trail that uses 32 bit UEFI (and thus can only run 32 bit windows despite being a 64 bit CPU) and like all bay trail tablets has little linux support outside of android. But it is a good unit and this is the most portable x86 platform I can get my hands on for cheap (I know sony made smaller atom based things, but I can't get my hands on those for cheap).

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

6x SCSI HDD's showed up here today....

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yet another Tennessee pawn shop score: HP Stream 8 Tablet ($35). No charger, but uses a standard 2A micro USB. Similar to a Insignia tablet I bought and used to use a handful of years ago... only better built and has parts avialable from places besides alibaba.

Yeah it's the older bay trail that uses 32 bit UEFI (and thus can only run 32 bit windows despite being a 64 bit CPU) and like all bay trail tablets has little linux support outside of android. But it is a good unit and this is the most portable x86 platform I can get my hands on for cheap (I know sony made smaller atom based things, but I can't get my hands on those for cheap).

As always, we have a minor setback:

Turns out this thing was not reset when it was pawned... and while I can (in a round-a-bout way) get to the factory reset (in windows 10) screen, I cannot get past the bitlocker check that such prompts.

I have been able to get into the BIOS (which unlike the prior insignia tablet, can be tweaked with an on-screen keyboard) and disable secure boot to allow booting from an OTG drive... however, the install environment used by both windows 8.1 and 10 doesn't support touchscreens (even after injecting the drivers into the .wim files), so until I'm home and have access to an OTG hub (for a USB mouse and keyboard), I'm SOL it seems.

Why can't we have nice things

On the plus side, this thing does have a cell modem in it... supposedly it was for T-mobile as per windows login network status. Edit- Popped the back cover to view the micro SD slot and yup, there's a T-mobile SIM card in there.

I also was able to nab a NOS Genuine HP case for it for cheap ($8.50 shipped). Now I need to decide whether to keep 10 on it or go back to 8.1 and do what I usually do (probably the latter, 8.1 can be slimmed/trimmed more w/o constantly fighting windows update, and my 1GB RAM and 32GB storage ain't much).

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got a Xbox One S 500GB for £3

Completely smashed, no outside shell just metal cage on inside. No power at all, HDD good.

Managed to get it working, PSU had a transformer completely ripped off and rattling around inside. Not really fixable so ordered a new one. Viola turned on and into home screen.

WOW!

More monkey technicians at work, looks like. I'm surprised the thing still works. Definitely a good score there! ... Well, better for you than me, anyways, as I'm no console fan. Considering that an Xbox One is just a mediocre PC these days (but with much more locked down interface and limitations), I don't see why I'd use one. Only redeeming quality it has is that games are much more optimized for it than their PC ports. And it's a decent Blu-ray player, if you like watching the latest "action-packed" movies on it.

Traded my old Xeon in for a GTX 750Ti 2GB GDDR5 Twinfrozr.

Nice score!
Keep it cool, though. GTX 7xx line is quite sensitive to heat. Shouldn't be a problem with that TwinFrozR cooler, though.

As always, we have a minor setback:

It's a tablet. What else need you say more?

I personally wouldn't spend even a dime (or a penny) on one. Heck, I've had family friends offer me their old iPads and Samsung tablets for free. Couldn't care to take them even then. Sure you might suggest I take them and then flip them... but that would mean I would have to reset the device fully and delete all personal data on there... and knowing how these things never work right for me, I don't want to even try.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

not a bad week for ebay scores. Picked up several vintage pieces of test equipment cheap for my collection. I also scored an Epox EP-D3VA motherboard, which is basically Epox's version of the VP6 but with an ISA slot...this was a cheap one, it has bad caps. I also picked up a new-in-box VP6. Perhaps another polymod, although it will never be as awesome as the 3 originals, and won't be numbered as such.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I personally wouldn't spend even a dime (or a penny) on one. Heck, I've had family friends offer me their old iPads and Samsung tablets for free. Couldn't care to take them even then. Sure you might suggest I take them and then flip them... but that would mean I would have to reset the device fully and delete all personal data on there... and knowing how these things never work right for me, I don't want to even try.

Do know that it's x86 running a full version of x32 windows. Not windows RT or android. Quite powerful for what they are.

Got her running on Windows 8.1 ("with bing" version, like all bay trail tablets with 2gb or less RAM)... although it took several hours to get the goodix touchscreen happy. HP has two driver versions listed for 8.1, and as I discovered my particular tablet will accept either but only one actually makes the center of the screen usable . also there is a .gt file that must be manually copied to c:\windows\inf... and that file is version specific. Otherwise all is well. Posting from it.