best cheap/free scores 1.1

[brethin]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Went to a foreclosure sale, managed to snag 100 or so sticks of various memory. 14 sticks 4 gig ddr2 800 sodimm, 40 sticks 4 gig ddr2 800 sdram, and 60 or sticks of other various all for $100. I have tested the ddr2 stuff and its good so it was a good $100 spent.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored these:

Delta DPS-350AB-4A 350W PSU
Gigabyte G41M-Combo
3GB Kingmax DDR3-1333
"Godspeed" Computer Corp. 11 in 1 USB2.0 Card Reader
160GB Seagate ST3160815A PATA
Hitachi-LG GSA-H12N DVD-RW
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 2.50GHz
slim stock Intel cooler with seized fan
"iRadio" VCR (made in Korea but assembled in Italy?)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

ah well, if i ever visit the US, i'd be sure to stop by topcat's place in missouri to "collect some souvenirs" to bring home and curious george's place as well... hehehe!

If you ever do, let me know..... I'm sure I could send you home with some goodies.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I guess not as good as some of the scores you guys get, but still worthwhile to me

1x EVGA GeForce GTX 560 1GB (GDDR5) for $10
1x nVidia Quadro 2000 1GB (GDDR5) also for $10

Both were bought locally from the same person. Just tested the Quadro 2000 today, and I like it quite a bit. It's essentially a slower-clocked GTS 450. That's not very powerful by today's means, but it's more than enough for me. On the positive side, this card does not require any external power - it sources all the power it needs from the PCI-E connector on the motherboard, being only a ~60W TDP card (vs. close to 105W for the GTS 450.) Runs fairly cool too and it's not very loud.

Haven't tested the GTX 560 yet, but I'm sure it works fine.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Haven't tested the GTX 560 yet, but I'm sure it works fine.

Let me know if you don't have plans for it....I bet I could find it a home.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A pair of these that might make good STBs (I'll have to dig into their specs)

https://www.bitsinc.com/P5U78UTABA_2

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Let me know if you don't have plans for it....I bet I could find it a home.

Will do if I don't.

I also still need to send you some SCA HDDs that I promised you a while back (I have not forgotten! ... but you might as well have, given how long it's been. ) On that front, I finally dusted them a few weeks back and tested/formatted them. Only reason I didn't send them is because I'm still trying to revive that silly NetServer E800 PC (one of my data storage/backup PCs that has failed) - or more precisely just pull the data off of it. If all fails, I'm just going to format all my SCSI/SCA crap and sling it your way, then call it quits on that technology forever.

As soon as I'm done with my night shifts / mandatory on-call, I'll get back on this stuff when time allows.

[RukyCon]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Picked up a few computers a few months ago, most of which, were scrapped for parts, except for two.

The first one is this dell, something is wrong with it because of it powering up (fans & hard drives spinning up) the moment i plug it in but not booting up at all, and i could not shut it off without unplugging it.

I'll post more info when i start taking it apart.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Picked up a few computers a few months ago, most of which, were scrapped for parts, except for two.

The first one is this dell, something is wrong with it because of it powering up (fans & hard drives spinning up) the moment i plug it in but not booting up at all, and i could not shut it off without unplugging it.

I'll post more info when i start taking it apart.

Looks like either a bad CPU, missing CPU or RAM, or the 12V CPU power connector is unplugged. Failing that, check PSU and/or motherboard.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

you didnt strip it first?
that's dangerous, most stuff i find has bits removed and bits that were in the way floating loose.

i'v said it before, never power something up until you know whats in it!

[RukyCon]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

you didnt strip it first?
that's dangerous, most stuff i find has bits removed and bits that were in the way floating loose.

i'v said it before, never power something up until you know whats in it!

I opened it up and cleaned it out before testing it (something i do with a lot of stuff before testing).

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

or the 12V CPU power connector is unplugged.

Not on these old Pentium II/3 Dell PCs!
Anything from the Pentium II/3 era will NOT have a 12V CPU connector. Also, these particular Dell PCs, like the one posted above, typically came with proprietary-wired ATX PSUs. I believe there are 3rd party adapters available online still for converting a standard ATX PSU to use with these older machines. But that shouldn't really be needed, as the PSUs that came stock with these old machines were generally quite bullet-proof, typically with Japanese capacitors too.

I'd say just clean the mobo, re-seat the RAM several times, re-seat the CPU, and make sure to put a good CR2032 CMOS battery in there. IIRC, some of these Dell PCs won't actually boot properly without a good CMOS battery. A bad HDD or hung IDE device can also make the entire system hang. So do a minimal hardware boot (i.e. mobo, CPU, RAM, and known good video card only.) Other than this, there isn't much else that can go wrong with these machines. They use i440 BX/LX chipset and also tend to be pretty bullet-proof. If it's not flaky RAM, wrong jumper settings, or the items listed above... it must have gotten zapped by something.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Will do if I don't.

I also still need to send you some SCA HDDs that I promised you a while back (I have not forgotten! ... but you might as well have, given how long it's been. ) On that front, I finally dusted them a few weeks back and tested/formatted them. Only reason I didn't send them is because I'm still trying to revive that silly NetServer E800 PC (one of my data storage/backup PCs that has failed) - or more precisely just pull the data off of it. If all fails, I'm just going to format all my SCSI/SCA crap and sling it your way, then call it quits on that technology forever.

As soon as I'm done with my night shifts / mandatory on-call, I'll get back on this stuff when time allows.

I didn't forget....just figured you were busy.... No worries.

[RukyCon]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I was testing it again today and got an error message after powering it up.

So i juggled the RAM a bit and almost got it to boot to OS (Win XP)
But then i got another error.

I'm going to try reseating the hard drive connectors and see if that does anything.

The computer still powers up the moment i plug it in for some reason and the only way to turn it off is by unplugging it.

edit: After reseating the hard drive connectors, i was booted into a BIOs screen.

Not sure why i'm going through all of this considering the main reason i picked up this PC was for the case :|.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not sure why i'm going through all of this considering the main reason i picked up this PC was for the case :|.

lol, there are those of us who love this retro p2 and p3 stuff so thank you for testing the stuff out for some of us so it makes it easier to unload the stuff on one of us. if it was totally dead and broken, we would have told u to just junk it in the landfill so once again, thank you.

since its working and has some signs of life, the symptoms seem to indicate multiple bad components. looks like the hard drive could be dying with bad sectors and that memory error u are getting could indicate bad/dirty power going to the cpu and/or ram so the psu could also be suspect unless u can confirm the caps in the psu are jap caps. the mobo could also have bad caps unless the caps are jap caps so post some pics of the mobo.

[RukyCon]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The Mobo caps are all NCC and the power supply caps are all NCC & Rubycon. So i think they should be good, the only issue i know about is the odd auto power on issue (though that could be a flaky power button for all i know).
Inside the PC........

Attached below are some photos of the 2nd PC i found (an Antec 'Gaming Rig') that i still need to test.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^


I'd hate to see what the rest of their house looks like!

[RukyCon]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^


I'd hate to see what the rest of their house looks like!

Yeah, i'm guessing it came from a pretty messy household.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Another MD3000i yesterday. I'll replace the controllers and tether it to one of the NASs. Tossed the 15 300G SAS drives (too damn heavy to carry, otherwise!) So, I can now spin 133 drives simultaneously without powering up even ONE computer!

[Though I suspect that branch circuit might be overstressed at that point...]

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

... So i juggled the RAM a bit and almost got it to boot to OS (Win XP)
But then i got another error.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...9&d=1570744535
I'm going to try reseating the hard drive connectors and see if that does anything.

Yup, seems likely to be a RAM issue.
I would do a full removal and re-insertion of the RAM. If you have any known good SDRAM of your own, try that instead. The RAM that came with this computer could just be flaky, for all we know. I don't trust RAM from junk PCs until I've tested it (typically on a known good system of my own.) This helps minimize problem guessing quite a bit.

As for the HDD... oh, I wouldn't trust a junk-picked HDD either. Same as the RAM - I typically connect it to a good PC and test there (pull SMART log and do a full surface read test with HDTune or a low-level format.) In fact, last week I was trying to re-use a 500 GB Seagate HDD that I suspected was flaky. Guess what? Half of the PCs I tried it in would not boot or hang at POST. Only a select few POSTed with it. When I tried to use it in a laptop at first, I thought that laptop was faulty. It wasn't, and it was just the HDD being goony. The weird part is that neither SMART nor a surface scan showed any errors when it worked.

The computer still powers up the moment i plug it in for some reason and the only way to turn it off is by unplugging it.

These older Dell PCs have a BIOS option that by default powers up the PC into "LAST STATE". Not sure why, but on a system that has lost its CMOS settings (either due to weak CMOS battery or reset CMOS settings), the default behavior is that the PC always powers up by itself. And if there are issues, like yours there with likely the RAM, then the system will hang, and the only way to turn it off is to unplug it. So when the PC is plugged in again, it will try to go back into that "Last State" (i.e. PC powered up).

So again, check the CMOS reset jumpers, checks CMOS battery voltage, and if you go into BIOS, look for an option in the power section that allows you to turn "Last State" to "Power OFF".

Not sure why i'm going through all of this considering the main reason i picked up this PC was for the case :|.

I don't know either, but I would have done just the same as you did, nevertheless. I guess it's just curiosity among many of us techs.

Attached below are some photos of the 2nd PC i found (an Antec 'Gaming Rig') that i still need to test.

Hey, that looks familiar!
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...postcount=3174

^


I'd hate to see what the rest of their house looks like!

Oh, it's just a tad bit dusty.
I've seen much worse, though! (and sure you have too.)

A high-school friend of mine had so much dust in their house that you could see whole fluffs hanging from the ceiling fans. And they had a smoke detector with bad battery that kept beeping every 10-20 seconds and they never changed that battery for the 5 years they rented that place. I don't know how they slept with that thing beeping all the time and it didn't bother them. If it was me, I'd have changed the batteries on it instantly - regardless if it was or wasn't my responsibility as a renter. Either that, or shot the thing with a shotgun already.