best cheap/free scores 1.1

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Just picked up my first super cheap score.

https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-proliant-dl360-g7-4-sff-configure-to-order


I've had my eye on one of these for a minecraft server for a while, configured one last week and it glitched out at checkout when quoting shipping to Hungary. I paid £14.47 including shipping, fully spec'd and kept quiet and it arrived in Budapest this afternoon.

LOL, that is awesome!

Yes, there have been small IT places here (locally) offering those and similar other older HP servers for free or nearly for free. I'm not much into servers, though, so I never bothered. But some of the stuff I saw looked quite good.

I opened it and found four goofy looking NiCAD's in it, which were nothing more than AA cells. These worked great as replacements. Nagger gone!

At least they were Ni-Cd batteries. The cheapo Ni-MH are even more terrible. And no-name "Heavy Duty" AA batteries? - those are the worst, IMO. When they leak, they corrode everything metal in there.

Unfortunately the PowerPC servers were pretty limited once Apple switched to Intel, but it is crazy to think that someone spend around $25,000 on that hardware to only use it for a few hours before tossing it away 5 years later.

Unfortunately, most companies around here are like that. Same with universities too. And all of that money comes from the folks who use the services of those businesses. Talk about wasteful and inefficient. :\

Most of the time, I find that stems from silly workplace policies. At least the place I work at right now is somewhat more lax about taking stuff that is getting dumped - for certain things anyways. We have one guy who will be picking up two 5.5 KW gas (petrol) generators soon that our company is discarding. Only reason they are getting rid of them is because both have slightly leaky fuel tanks and one doesn't start, AFAIK. Nothing major wrong with them, though, from what I've heard.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A colleague of mine found two Apple Xserve G5's and a fully loaded Apple Xserve RAID by a dumpster on campus! All of it worked and upon further inspection we discovered that the servers had only ever been turned on for 2.5 hours since they were purchased.

Unfortunately the PowerPC servers were pretty limited once Apple switched to Intel, but it is crazy to think that someone spend around $25,000 on that hardware to only use it for a few hours before tossing it away 5 years later.

That's pretty common in business and academia -- it's not THEIR money so the decision makers don't place any "value" on the acquisition. I've rescued too many NIB pieces of kit where the packing tape hadn't even been sliced open! <frown>

The budget process in many places works on the principle of "always ask for AT LEAST as much as you asked for last year" -- else you'll take a cut in appropriations. Never any incentive to save the organization money as that won't be recognized nor rewarded.

When I was a buyer (college years), the order would come down at the end of each fiscal year to "spend whatever's left" (in the current budget). I'd get requisitions for $200 office garbage cans (how the hell much trash can you hide under your desk??), new furniture (regardless of the age of the current furnishings), all sorts of exotic equipment that you KNEW was never going to be used, etc.

Monthly, there are auctions here (local university, county government, large businesses, etc.) where you just shake your head at the stuff that's being scrapped "for no reason". NIB medical supplies are especially sinful...

[paladine]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

That's pretty common in business and academia -- it's not THEIR money so the decision makers don't place any "value" on the acquisition. I've rescued too many NIB pieces of kit where the packing tape hadn't even been sliced open! <frown>

The budget process in many places works on the principle of "always ask for AT LEAST as much as you asked for last year" -- else you'll take a cut in appropriations. Never any incentive to save the organization money as that won't be recognized nor rewarded.

When I was a buyer (college years), the order would come down at the end of each fiscal year to "spend whatever's left" (in the current budget). I'd get requisitions for $200 office garbage cans (how the hell much trash can you hide under your desk??), new furniture (regardless of the age of the current furnishings), all sorts of exotic equipment that you KNEW was never going to be used, etc.

Monthly, there are auctions here (local university, county government, large businesses, etc.) where you just shake your head at the stuff that's being scrapped "for no reason". NIB medical supplies are especially sinful...

Yeah, it is the same here when it comes to financial year end - spend it all to get the same amount back next year. The wasteful nature of public budgets

We assumed that it was either a budget like that at fiscal year-end, or a big research grant where they were just wasting money.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Went and helped a friend clean some of his stuff and scored some MOAR laptops:

-Acer Aspire 7220 - needs reflow on MCP, has MXM slot
-Aspire 7520 - needed reflow on MCP, now works fine
-Aspire 5520 - had a reflowed Intel board (965 chipset strangely) that didn't work
-Asus X59SL that doesn't POST - will need to reflow either the HD 3470 GPU or the chipset itself
-HP NX7300 - unknown state due to me not having a HP AC adapter

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Three SpacePilots. But, obviously came from a "dirty" shop as they are caked with skin oil/dirt. <frown>

On a hunch, opted to try the electric toothbrush on them (brush head was due to be changed, anyway). That seems to do the trick -- with a minimum of "hand work".

I think this will net me a SpacePilot for each machine (the 4 workstations already had them)

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yeah, it is the same here when it comes to financial year end - spend it all to get the same amount back next year. The wasteful nature of public budgets

I see it here in business, as well -- just SLIGHTLY less so egregious.

I attribute it to folks not having "ownership" of the funds involved. I wonder how they'd react if they were told, at year end, that the money that WOULD have been allocated for pay raises went, instead, to "equipment purchases" (letting each of them contemplate the number of foolish purchases they'd been aware of!)

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

i guess waste from businesses and the public sector are some of the biggest offenders when it comes to generating waste that is not ecological and environmental.

this is looking to be a vicious cycle. businesses dont generate enough profit due to wastage; govs need more taxes from the people due to wastage. businesses cant pay their employees as much due to insufficient profit from wastage so govs cant collect as much taxes from the people. everyone else is poorer from it.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

i guess waste from businesses and the public sector are some of the biggest offenders when it comes to generating waste that is not ecological and environmental.

this is looking to be a vicious cycle. businesses dont generate enough profit due to wastage; govs need more taxes from the people due to wastage. businesses cant pay their employees as much due to insufficient profit from wastage so govs cant collect as much taxes from the people. everyone else is poorer from it.

It's just an externality -- like so many other things.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Someone dropped off an old AT case/system on me. I was pleased to discover it had an Asus P5A-B, a rare & hotroddable super socket 7 motherboard....in working order with a K6-2 550 in it.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Someone dropped off an old AT case/system on me. I was pleased to discover it had an Asus P5A-B, a rare & hotroddable super socket 7 motherboard....in working order with a K6-2 550 in it.

Sounds like it was a better K6-2 setup than I had!

It shan't ever had acted like I was overclocking too much, just because it got warm inside the case. It was at the rated frequency, when it was about as stable as Charles Manson when the room was warm at house #1 on Fox Meadow Lane at Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center.
Even with the same Deer DR 250 ATX power supply, my socket 462 system with an Athlon T-bird 900 Mhz, acted a megaton better!

My super socket 7 motherboard was the Soyo SY-5EMA+ and my first socket 462 motherboard was the Soyo SY-K7VTA-B. (Via KT133)

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

my k6-2 server ran solid 24/7 for years, i still have the board.
the trick is you MUST use 7ns or faster ram - those cpu's dont push waitstates like intel chips.

btw, i could overclock it to 112Mhz but the scsi card wasnt happy.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd like to find a K6-3 550 for it, but those seem to be non-existent... K6-3 450's can be had cheap....but I can't find anything faster.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

that's because when they where on sale the cost was similar to a T-bird!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

that's because when they where on sale the cost was similar to a T-bird!

LOL!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Update on the Acers:

- the 7220 was actually a 7520 as well.

Anyways - as I said, a reflow on the non-MXM 7520 brought it back to life. I can see why it died though - fan was dusty as hell, heatsinks had literal gray crust, which in turn made the chipset go bad.

Reflowed it at 350*C, replaced the crust with MX2, cleaned the fan thoroughly, and it works fine now. The chipset does run pretty hot, in the 70-80 range, but that's nVidia for you. At least the fan does know when to ramp up and when to settle down.

Anyways, I replaced the DVD drive (H-L GSA-T10N) with a HP branded Hitachi-LG drive, a GMA-4032N (which I'll also replace with something a bit newer, hopefully, since it seems it has troubles reading certain disks), and for storage I went with a 80GB Fujitsu drive from a PS3 (with literally ONE weak sector, it tested okay with HD Sentinel otherwise) and a 320GB WD Scorpio Blue I bought today.

I gutted most of the other 7520 (the one w/MXM), tried a reflow without much success. It does power up, but I get no display. I moved all of it inside the 5520 casing (15.4), along with another TK-57, a 8600M GT on MXM slot, and about 2GB RAM. I'll eventually try another reflow at a much higher temperature in hopes of getting it to work.

The ASUS X59SL came back to life after reflowing the HD3470 GPU, and works fine. Has a T5450 @ 1.66GHz, 2x2GB DDR2, no HDD currently. I might get a beaten up (hinges+LCD intact) F5RL that I can use the screen from.

In the end, the HP nx7300 turned out to be dead as a brick (and so was another nx7400 I got) and wouldn't even light up any leds so far.

Finally, some specs on the working 7520:

17" WXGA 1440x900 LCD panel (it's BIG in comparision to anything else I have)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-57 1.9GHz
2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM
Geforce 7000M/nF610M iGPU w/256MB shared
320GB WD Scorpio Blue + 80GB Fujitsu
Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (on 80GB Fujitsu)


Also upgraded my other Acer, an Aspire 5738, from a T6670 + 4GB to a T9400 + 6GB DDR2 (one of the sticks is literally a 4GB DDR2-800 Hynix stick) and it runs real smooth.

Back to the thread, I got a free Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H, the above mentioned 320GB WD Scorpio Blue, a Logitech ergonomic keyboard that won't light up (PS/2 btw) and a clone of a Zippo lighter that I'll restore.

[linuxguru]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd like to find a K6-3 550 for it, but those seem to be non-existent... K6-3 450's can be had cheap....but I can't find anything faster.

There were K6-III 500 and also some mysterious K6-II+ 450 or 500 near the EOL for Socket 7, for not much money new at Fry's c.2000. The II+ had on-die cache, but smaller in size than III - I think 128 kB. Both probably came from the NexGen acquisition.

The K6-III was damn fast clock-for-clock, but needed specific BIOS support on most mobos, or they would run with on-die cache disabled, if they POSTed at all.

Fast forward 19 years later, and we have 24- and 32-core desktop processors announced by AMD yesterday, and a 64-core with 288 MB cache due by CES 2020. The more interesting proccy announcement is the 14 nm Athlon 300GE on AM4 with integrated VEGA graphics and 35W TDP for $49. That should be great for a lot of appliance/embedded x86 applications, including retro-gaming consoles.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not really "computer related"... but, a very nice external frame backpack into which I can move some of my BoB (easier to "wear" the stuff than carry it in a handled tote!).

Unfortunately, that means reevaluating what's in the BoB -- yet again!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Another laptop fixed from the recent pile of laptops I got. It's a HP-Compaq NX7300. Core Duo T2250 (the crappiest dualcore you can get), 80GB Fujitsu HDD, GMA-4082W DVD-ROM. I installed 2x1GB DDR2 sticks, and may replace the CPU with a C2D from the T5xxx range on Merom core.

Also I need to find a charger. HP, in their infinite stupidity, installed a different DC jack that uses a center pin.

So far, getting about 3 laptops from 5 to work is kinda nice! All work as intended, though the Aspire 7520 required some ghetto fixes (bending the copper pipe slightly to make FULL contact on the nForce chipset) but otherwise it runs fairly okay - temps range somewhere in the 50-65*C, with 76 being the worst on 1080p HD Youtube videos.

[Hondaman]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

...14 nm Athlon 300GE on AM4 with integrated VEGA graphics and 35W TDP for $49.

Do you think anyone will revive the mini-ITX form factor using this updated low-power chip?

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

temps range somewhere in the 50-65*C, with 76 being the worst on 1080p HD Youtube videos.

well that wont be helpful in making it last as bumpgated chipsets have to be kept below 60°C if u want them to last. just have to use it for basic office work and basic web surfing. no video watching for the novideo chipset! hahaha!