best cheap/free scores 1.1

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Erm, I think you mean a noVideo shitset. Had one of those die on me last month, RIP motherboard. There's a chance of it being completely nuked on mains tonight as a New Year's bonus feature.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yeah, probably.
It's the same thing internally as my Presario V6000, cooler-wise. However, the CPU and chipset are completely different. My DV6000 has Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and Intel chipset (forgot which one). NO nVidia shitset!
So I imagine it may actually run cooler... but we will see.

Gotta put an HDD in it one of these days and install Windows. Been too lazy, though. (And busy playing video games. )

At least the last Intel-based DV6700 (technically a DV6000 too) I worked on had a T7200 (or was it a 7250? idk exactly) and a 8600M GT 256MB. Ran pretty hot, but not that much - it was tolerable. Its issue was the GPU needed reflow (white screen with lines) and a new HDD (laptop sized Seagates aren't the brightest choice HP had HDD wise. HDD Sentinel reported 9% health btw, so you can easily guess how good was it.) I was amazed to find the original Vista Home Premium install on it. Rare sight these days, most of the laptops I've seen (from the Vista era, excluding the Vista Basic machines) usually had a generic 7 Ultimate install on them. (that was the case for a DV6500 I worked on)

AMD units on the other hand, they spit out flames (in Speedfan that is) unless you can source lower consumption parts. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons my DV6356EU runs that hot is the TL-56 rather than the GF Go7200. I wonder if the temps will reduce drastically if I drop a 65nm TL-60.

I had the choice to go with a DV5, but didn't take it as it was the AMD Turion Ultra version. These may have AMD HD3450 GPUs, but they also have the M780G chipset, which are notorious for dying. I'd gladly take a DV5 with a G9x based 9600M GT. These are absolute tanks - my Latitude E6400 has a G92 based Quadro NVS 165M (which equals to a 9600M, more or less), and it's a sweet lil' machine to use. Doesn't heat up to insane amounts, and that's with a P8700.

The one thing I liked though, is that the chargers on these DV6000 series laptops are pretty easy to replicate. Take any 65W/90W charger of your choice (I used an Acer one) and a PS2 slim plug. Drill the PS2 plug a bit, and check if it fits in the charger port of your DV6000. Finally, solder the two wires from the PS2 plug (it should be a exposed Aluminium wire + a white wire) to the charger you chose, but after cutting its original plug. Use some heatshrink, and you're done! It even charges fine, as these HPs don't check if the adapter is the original one. The ones I have a feeling they do check if it's a true HP charger, are all the models that use the bigger plug with the center pin (NX series and IIRC anything DV5 and up, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) though I've seen HP chargers used on Dells (one of my friends did this at his repair shop - he used a 4.74A HP charger on a Dell Studio 1555. Worked fine, aside from the BIOS complaining the charger isn't a Dell one.)

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

TLxx cpu's run cooler than intel, i have a TL58 in a laptop i run 24/7 and it hardly gets warm

they also run as intended, unlike the intel chips that now run slow because of the patches to fix the cpu security flaws.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

TLxx cpu's run cooler than intel, i have a TL58 in a laptop i run 24/7 and it hardly gets warm

they also run as intended, unlike the intel chips that now run slow because of the patches to fix the cpu security flaws.

Depends on the core. I have a TL60 in both 90 and 65nm variants. 65nm parts are cool, they don't heat up that much. But God forbid should anyone ever have to use the 90nm parts. The TL-56 I just replaced was 90nm, and the TL-60 I just used is a 60nm variant. With temps going down to just 40-50*C for the GPU and 45*C for the CPU from over 60*C on both, that should be quite an improvement.


As for the security flaws, I don't install the patches for Intel CPUs. Never have, never will, it's just the wild way I ride lol

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Apple TV -- first generation. I'll see if I can install XBMC/openelec on it for a cheap (free) STB.

[Also have a few Roku boxes but I don't think those are hackable (?) ]

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Been working with the HP DV6000.

It's been a real hell to get it up and running but in the end it pays off, it's running really nice. I had to reflow the chipset as well - that was one of the reasons WiFi first worked intermittently then cut out completely. I'm using tacflux btw - all my reflows have been like this (except an ASUS X59SL, where the GPU already had no-clean flux - in that case I just fired up the heatgun and did my job) and none have failed yet. My Acer 7520 has been working really well until now, and still does. So does my Acer 5520, running a 8400M G.

Anyways, I should get another DV6000 soon - it's a DV6611 (DV6500 series), and that one doesn't have an discrete GPU. Instead, the GF6150 (or is it a 7150? idk exactly) is used as the GPU. Oh joy.
momaka, any tips on this one? Anything to be on the lookout for? It's similar to your Compaq V6000 board wise.

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Been a while since posted on here! Picked up a couple of iMacs 21.5” for £5 and £15

£5 one broken glass and dead HDD. i5 2500s Mid 2011 / 6770 GPU

£15 one has a GPU problem artifacting.

Replaced hard drive and glass on the £5 one and seems to have cured it. Just a absolute ball ache now trying to get Mac OS X installed on it. Been at it for hours trying different versions on to a bootable USB drive. Tried El Capitan, snow leaped 10.6 which throws up a cpu error. Now trying snow leopard 10.6.7 as apparently the earlier version can't be installed as iMac shipped with a latter revision.

Honestly don't know why they make it so hard to install a OS.!!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored these nice stuff for free:

KFA/Galaxy GT210 512MB DDR2 - had to replace the active cooler (a crappy fan + HSF) with a BIG ASUS heatsink

Toshiba Satellite A210-1BH - 3GB DDR2, Turion X2 TL-60, 320GB HDD, TSSTCorp DVD-RW. Has battery, but discharges faster than I can think.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Been a while since posted on here! Picked up a couple of iMacs 21.5” for £5 and £15

£5 one broken glass and dead HDD. i5 2500s Mid 2011 / 6770 GPU

£15 one has a GPU problem artifacting.

Replaced hard drive and glass on the £5 one and seems to have cured it. Just a absolute ball ache now trying to get Mac OS X installed on it. Been at it for hours trying different versions on to a bootable USB drive. Tried El Capitan, snow leaped 10.6 which throws up a cpu error. Now trying snow leopard 10.6.7 as apparently the earlier version can't be installed as iMac shipped with a latter revision.

Honestly don't know why they make it so hard to install a OS.!!

change the system clock to the year on or after the osx release - the installer checks to see if it's "too old" - bastards.

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

change the system clock to the year on or after the osx release - the installer checks to see if it's "too old" - bastards.

System clock is set to the current year, correct date time so is after. Still no luck soo far. Going to Lion next.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

System clock is set to the current year, correct date time so is after. Still no luck soo far. Going to Lion next.

Throw a Linux distro on it. Chances are, that's easier than installing the intended OS.

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

High Sierra direct from App Store using an old Macbook has done the trick thankfully! After all that hair pulling, honestly spent hour and hours on it yesterday.


Now should i upgrade CPU from a i5 2500s to a i7 2600s? I need to replace the thermal compound so might be worth upgrading CPU whilst im in there.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Sorted out the Toshiba - apparently older ASUS from the Core 2 Duo/Turion 64 x2/ Turion Ultra era work just fine on these, even if it's a 3.42A charger. The laptop's rated for 4.74A, yet the charger is barely warm after about 2 hours of usage.

Funny thing, the only thing that runs hot is the CPU. GPU (Radeon HD2400) sits really calm at about 38-40*C.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got a bunch of computer stuff from Craigslist last week, all advertised as non-working / bad / for repair. All the stuff were free, but I wanted to make it a little more worthwhile for the guy, so I also decided to buy a broken Dell Latitude D-series laptop for $10. So this is what $10 got me in the box:

** Dell Latitude D620 with HDD and original battery (and maybe RAM too.)
Haven't tested it yet, and no idea what other hardware is in the laptop. But seller said the laptop "overheated and died"... so most of the hardware should still be in it. No telling as to what is good or bad, though. Though the seller said the HDD in there should definitely still be OK (which means I probably need to wipe/sanitize it for security reasons.) Laptop looks fairly clean, otherwise. Would be really nice if I got it going again.

** 1x 74 GB Western Digital VelociRaptor, 2.5" SATA HDD.
Marked as "Not Good". I connected it to one of my test PCs and couldn't find any issues with it. It spun up and tested all fine. Not a single SMART error, and no errors on a full read HDTune scan either. So I can't complain here.

** 1x 74 GB Western Digital Raptor, 3.5" SATA HDD.
Same deal as the drive above. Marked as bad, but tested fine with no errors.

** 1x 40 GB Maxtor 3.5" PATA HDD - one of those slim ones.
Haven't tested this one with a PC yet. Only power-cycled it and it seems to calibrate normally... so it may be another working HDD. We will see, though. I don't particularly care about this HDD, but at least it's nice and quiet. Might do fine for a retro PII/P3 build, especially if I build something quiet (have a few builds in mind.)

** Sapphire Radeon HD4850 x2.
Apparently, this is now a collectible video card (same goes for the other early ATI X2 video cards for whatever reason.) Sadly, this one does appear to be bad / non-working - couldn't get any video output from it. But I expected that before I even tested it - it has the sorriest-looking heatsink(s) on each GPU that can handle maybe 40 Watts TDP on a good day. For those not aware, the RV770 core used on the HD4850 is typically rated at ~100W TDP (and ~150W for the HD4870/4890). I guess another card on my pile awaiting for a reflow.

** Enermax Liberty ECO 400W PSU (model ELT400AWT) with cut output wires and missing fan.
Obviously non-working condition in the state I acquired it. But I do have a good theory as to why it was mutilated in such a way: after all, it has more than a dozen of bad caps on its output rails - including the 5VSB. No wonder it was marked as bad. Funny thing is, if anyone looks up that model number and goes to the Enermax website, it proudly boasts the PSU has a Japanese mains/input capacitor... which it does. But what good is that when the output caps are crap? Moreover, the mains cap is only rated for 400V. And PSU uses APFC... so I can tell you how this will end. :|
Anyways, nice PSU otherwise, though. I'm definitely planning to fix it and use it. Just need to find a 20/24-pin ATX wiring harness. I do have a bunch of crap PSUs I can take one from... but most of those have crappy thin wires and 20-pin connectors. If anyone has a 20+4 pin ATX wiring harness from a scrap PSU that is not needed (and the wires not super-thin and short crap), perhaps let me know. Otherwise, I'll just have to use what I have on hand.
The modular wires/connectors are also all missing. Might have to convert it to non-modular if I can't find cables for it. Bleh, it will be another ghetto-mod project, I highly suspect.

- A bunch of laptop power adapters (6 or 7??), all rated for 60-90W IIRC.
I think two are genuine Dell/HP, two are "Replacement" (no brand, so probably cheapo garbage), and two or three "universal" 2-pin ones that use snap-on adapters (which weren't included, of course.) I haven't tested any these yet. Some have cut/repaired plugs, so most likely I'll be using these for experiments and such.

And last but not least...

I don't have a P3 motherboard here that has OC capabilities, so it might be a while before I try this.

^ Not true anymore.

- A SOYO SY-TISU socket 370 motherboard.
It looked good and no bulging caps. Given the age and the brand of caps (Wendell), I expected at least some would be bad, so I started making a cap diagram for the motherboard. In the process of doing so, I discovered why this motherboard was likely marked as "not good":

^ That's a damaged SMD array resistor for you. :|
Looks like whoever was trying to install the CPU heatsink "slipped" they screwdriver and damaged that resistor. The CPU socket clip on the other side also has a good chunk missing from it. I imagine the clip wasn't placed all the way on it, so it gave out, letting go of the retention spring... which then caused the damage on the other side.

I looked through my scrap pile of boards and PCBs and found a similar SMD array resistor, rated for 33 Ohms per resistor. But I damaged it during removal. Moreover, as I wasn't sure if 33 Ohms would be too low (considering the original one was rated for 56 Ohms per resistor), I chose to do the repair a different way.

Yup... that's four individual SMD resistors to the rescue. I know... but it worked! They were more or less the right value too, measuring about 60 Ohms each (came from an Xbox 360 motherboard - these are usually found around the memory chips.) Moreover, it was easier to do this repair with the individual resistors, because I could use my soldering iron instead of hot air. I did initially try hot air with my KADA 852D+... and just ended up melting/burning the side of the CPU socket with no other results (did I ever mention I ffffuu... HATE using hot air? )
Anyways, after doing this ugly surgery, I tested the motherboard with a 800 MHz P3 CPU from my HP NetServer E800. It worked first try with no hiccups!
Not only that, but this motherboard has really good OC and voltage control options: unlocked multiplier, unlocked FSB, and choose any voltage from 1.1V to 2V!
Just as a test, I messed with the E800 MHz CPU in there, and the board POSTed fine with it overclocked to 844 MHz and under-volted to 1.575V.

Oh, and there was also a laptop motherboard of some sort in that box of stuff too, but I'm not sure what brand and model of laptop it is from. I see it has an nVidia dedicated GPU soldered on (possibly GeForce 7x00), so I'm guessing that's why it was tossed in this box. Not having any of the ribbon cables and not knowing how to test it / power it On means I'll probably end up using it for scrap parts.

Anyways, I should get another DV6000 soon - it's a DV6611 (DV6500 series), and that one doesn't have an discrete GPU. Instead, the GF6150 (or is it a 7150? idk exactly) is used as the GPU. Oh joy.
momaka, any tips on this one? Anything to be on the lookout for? It's similar to your Compaq V6000 board wise.

Aside from expecting to reflow the NB/GPU... that's about it.
Make sure it is running the latest BIOS too. HP mentioned that some of these laptops with an older BIOS tend to run the CPU/system fan too slow or too little, and that's another reason why so many overheated and died.
If you ask me, make your own fan controller circuit and drive the fan directly to whatever speed you please instead of relying on the BIOS to do that. At least that's what I'm planning to do for my V6000 eventually. Under Windows 7, the fan tends to throttle way too much and the GPU runs rather hot - even with my CPU V_core control through CrystalCPU.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yeah, didn't get the DV6611. Instead, I got the Toshiba Satellite A210-1BH mentioned above.

I will get a Intel board for my DV6356 tho. Here's hope it's the GM965 variant.

As for the Soyo, nice score. Be sure to recap it. With new caps, you have a nice OC board right there, Soyo's boards were quite known for that. I still have my 6BA+IV w/ HPT366, recapped with Rubies and sporting a 650MHz Coppermine (original Slot package, not Slotket)

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not exactly electronic, but still a good deal. I picked up a Simplicity Regent 12 Lawn Tractor for $60 (because what better time to buy lawn equipment than the middle of winter). It needed a new battery and carb (and I replaced the fuel line, fuel filter, air filter, spark plug, changed the oil, and added a fuel shut off while I was at it), but runs great now.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Dell 1704FP monitor from a neighbor, $0. Buggered power button (gotta get it in the right spot to press it, already done) but otherwise works perfectly fine.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

- A SOYO SY-TISU socket 370 motherboard.
It looked good and no bulging caps. Given the age and the brand of caps (Wendell), I expected at least some would be bad, so I started making a cap diagram for the motherboard. In the process of doing so, I discovered why this motherboard was likely marked as "not good":

^ That's a damaged SMD array resistor for you. :|
Looks like whoever was trying to install the CPU heatsink "slipped" they screwdriver and damaged that resistor.

I can't even begin to tell you how many boards I received for repair with stab wounds on them from this kind of mis-handling.....people are stupid.... I've never stabbed one in all my years and many hundreds of ZIF sockets used...

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Dell 1704FP monitor from a neighbor, $0. Buggered power button (gotta get it in the right spot to press it, already done) but otherwise works perfectly fine.

Common dell problem. I used to dismantle and "patch" the backside of the button (to keep it from rotating, thereafter). Now, I find a bit of cellophane tape on the front is quicker (and reasonably easy to ignore, cosmetically)!

[Considered 3D printing some replacements but that still means taking the damn things apart to retrofit them!]

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I can't even begin to tell you how many boards I received for repair with stab wounds on them from this kind of mis-handling.....people are stupid.... I've never stabbed one in all my years and many hundreds of ZIF sockets used...

Don't even get me started on the Super Socket 7 boards I used to recieve from Bucharest.

If you thought people would stab the board, then how's it for people LITERALLY breaking one (in one case even both of them)of the retention clips?