best cheap/free scores 1.1

[momaka]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Good stuff ^ .
Here, it's been too cold lately to walk around or bike in my neighborhood before trash day like I used to in the summer. So nothing new...

[shovenose]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Well, the apartment manager needed my help figuring out how to remove the hard drive from a PC... so I show her she needs to take the front off. Anyway, a few minutes later she comes to my door with the rest of the PC and $10. score!
It's this (minus the HDD of course)
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...product=405460

[Agent24]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not bad, but if you keep going at this rate you'll fill your house up

(Trust me, I'm an expert at collecting junk!)

[kc8adu]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

tow yard guy strikes again!he gets to remove aftermarket stuff from unclaimed cars prior to auction.and gets to keep the stuff.he is an audio nut and i fix up stuff for him.
so last night i was at a friends place having some of her homemade chili when i get a call.
what is an icom 275? or a corsair 2?you want em?
both need tlc but what a score!

[shovenose]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not bad, but if you keep going at this rate you'll fill your house up

(Trust me, I'm an expert at collecting junk!)

Unfortunately I'm not allowed to fill any part of the house (except my room) with computer stuff.
I'm actually going to sell the HP when I'm finished upgrading and reinstalling it.
I've added in a Geforce FX 5200, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB HDD. It's actually not half bad.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Well, the apartment manager needed my help figuring out how to remove the hard drive from a PC... so I show her she needs to take the front off. Anyway, a few minutes later she comes to my door with the rest of the PC and $10. score!
It's this (minus the HDD of course)
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...product=405460

nice score!

i see it has sata, firewire, lots of usb (2 front headers), and an AGP 8x port... and it uses a VIA chipset ( nvidia)! the only fault is that it is an asus and only has 2 DDR ports. I hate to say it but i am a tad bit jealous. it looks like they used a good case too (has a card reader using one of the four front usb channels). find a new hdd for it and do something cool with it, I dare you.

Info on the board:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...#c00069442_doc

it looks like you could reflash it to the stock ASUS bios (and use the COA sticker for OS installs) if you wanted to OC it...

[ncovert]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

My best dump finds:
Gateway Performance 733 (no HD or CD, but it had 2 mobos stuffed in it)
Gateway GP6-300 (E-3100) (complete system)
Custom built computer (had a working Intel D875PBZ board WITH Intel P4 HT 2.8Ghz and 1GB ram, the board is in my main computer with 2GB RAM)
2 Other Gateways (another GP6-300 missing faceplate and another one of unknown model)
Also, a few months after the big score, a custom built computer that sat thru a thunderstorm (I scrapped everything cause the only working things that I tested were the fans) I still have the parts.... somewhere

[Topcat]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

I guess i forgot to mention this one...

Asus 22" ET2203 EEE-PC, fished out of someone's garbage in mint shape with original box & all accessories. C2D @ 2.2 4GB ram. HDD was bad. Replaced, reloaded, been perfect since.

[shovenose]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yes I stuck in an 80GB drive and am gonna sell it for $130. I also upgraded the RAM to 1GB of some really nice heatsinked OCZ RAM I couldn't get to work in my other PC...

New stuff since then:
-somebody gave me a box of Mac keyboards. 3 are ancient ("old world macs") so I'm not even going to mess with those, but 3 are the white ones - after swapping keys I ended up with 1 functional USB one and 1 functional Bluetooth wireless one!
-Aunt gave me 2 computers from her work: she asked me to wipe the drives (did that) but other than having no OS they're not bad systems:
1. HP d220 MT, Cel 2.4, 256MB, 40GB, CDROM... I upgraded to 512MB RAM, clean install of XP, and am goig to sell for about $100...
2. HP dx2000 MT (same case and PSU, different mobo), Cel 2.4, 256MB, 40GB, CDROM, Upgraded to P4HT 3.06 (533 bus), 512MB (going to get 2GB of RAM for it if I can get the damn thing to work right), and put in a DVDROM drive. It's going to be my 4th server...
Now, I had some problems installing Windows, decided to do a Surface Scan on the drive and found 6000 or so bad sectors. Put in a different drive, all seemed fine, except it showed a BSOD while installing chipset drivers and now it won't boot... WHAT DO I DO? is the chipset driver simply incompatible with Windows Server 2003 Enterpirse 32-bit???
-Also got a VA720 but Aunt (same one) wants me to fix it and give it back to her... might just take me a while and I'll give it back to her for christmas or something...
-Got a computer bag from somebody, it had a USB hub, some USB cables, a 1GB MicroSD card with SD adapter, and unused 2GB USB flash drive inside it! That made me pretty happy...

[ncovert]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

)Custom Built PC with Antec SX1030 case with P4X400 board, 400w PSU, 100GB IDE hard drive, and other goods* (Free garage sale find) (Case houses my main PC)
)HP Pavilion a1130n PC with 250 gb HDD, 2.2Ghz Athlon 64, 1GB RAM ($20 USD garage sale find) The HDD and ram went into my main PC
)Gateway2000 P5-166 ATX Minitower ($5 USD flea market find)
)Unknown model Gateway PC with Pentium 4 (Free garage sale find)
)Emerson 4Head VCR ($4 USD thrift store find)
)DirecTV DVR R10 ($4 USD thrift store find)
)Custom built AMD K6-2 500 PC ($5 USD garage sale find)
)Custom built AMD Athlon 550 PC ($5 USD garage sale find)
That's only about a fraction of the stuff I find at garage sales, thrift stores, and flea markets.

[ThePCDoctor]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

I'm getting too old for Dumpster Diving. I'm afraid that if I get in, I will never get out.

So I just wait for my customers to get rid of their old PC's and I offer to "Dispose" of them.
I recently got a Dell (not my favorite brand) Laptop that the owner thought had a bad motherboard. So she bought a new Acer Laptop and gave me the not too old Dell.

The only problem was the OS. It was really hozed!
After a re-install of XP Pro SP3, the little PC is running just great!
I maxed out the ram and tweaked and tuned XP for maximum efficiency on a laptop and now that little PC is my Go-anywhere PC, residing in an armored hard-case and using a USB WiFi N adaptor with a 15", 9db gain antenna.
That more than doubles my WiFi range when surfing for WiFi hot spots.

The last thing I ever found in a dumpster, was an upright vacc cleaner. It had a broken belt and small kids toys and a huge hair ball in the vacc tube.
Once cleaned up and with a new belt, that machine that sells for over a hundred bucks at the retail stores, is working just fine.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

[ant3202]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

shared some items tt I had found.

Sony 5.1ch home theater system RCH is soft, upon warm up, all system is working fine. (last year)

SpeedStream 536v6 @ dustbin > cannot boot up, reload firmware and it works (last year)

intel P4 2.00Ghz 400mhz, this guy know the stuffs well, ram and hdd gone, but cpu and board is there, working well, btw mainboard is a MSI PM8M-V, working fine too.

intel P4 2.4Ghz PC with HT 800Mhz, 512MB Kingston RAM, Sony CD-RW, Seagate ATA 160GB HDD with some cheapo mainboard, PSU and flimsy casing. (4 yrs back)

others > not worth mentioning, just 486 junks, pentium PC, II, III, AMD Socket A,
i seen ppl throwing huge crt tv away but because of the weight and size, i let it go.

[Hondaman]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

A few months ago (September 2011) I got a Compaq Evo D300. 1.7 GHz "pizza box" desktop case (has 512 MB of PC-133). Put in new caps near CPU, upgraded to a 2.8 GHz P-4 for about $8 from an eBay seller in China, and dropped a PCI wireless in it (onboard ethernet shot).

About that same time, a co-worker told me I could have his old machine - Dell Dimension 2400 (ethernet shot also). Dump the 2.4 Northwood Celery, (get another 2.8 GHz from that eBayer in China) and drop in any half-decent PSU. 640 Megs of PC-266 (or PC333) RAM.

No super-lightning graphics, but great for fileservers, learning, development, family computer, whatever.

Now where can I get a KVM switch? Hmmmmmm.....

[lti]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

What is wrong with the Dell's power supply?

[shovenose]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Today I got myself a netbook to bring to school... sure it doesn't compare to a MacBook Air but hey it's not such a big bummer if it gets damaged/stolen...

I got it for $51 used. Included AC adapter, but XP was like half-installed and I couldn't get it to install completely.
It's an HP Mini 1030nr
Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU
1GB RAM (I upgraded it to 2GB first thing when I got home)
16GB SanDisk SSD
Broadcom WiFi
Webcam
Intel Chipset

Anyway, with Lubuntu 11.10 it's a fine little computer, with an almost-full-size keyboard, and a webcam...

Only thing is the built in speakers SUCK I mean SUCK like REALLY BAD...

But over all it's a good buy.

[kc8adu]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

snagged a fancy power to go smart charger/booster of the curb.guy who set it out hollered that it still works if you can put up with the noise.just a bum fan.
2/10/20 amp with 50a boost and desulphate.

[ryszardx]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

A 24" gateway LCD monitor with 5 bad caps. new caps like new monitor. Nice find!

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

went to goodwill and found a few possible winners:

belkin f5d8236-4 draft N router- $3



linksys wrt54g v5- $5



I bought both

all i could do in store was plug them in and see how they boot... both powered on ok.

haven't gotten a chance to test them further

now to figure out how to open the belkin... that could be "fun".

[mockingbird]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not worth the money for either. Both only have 2MB ROM.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not worth the money for either. Both only have 2MB ROM.

well... considering my current router a an atheros based netgear g router, both are improvements.

personally the lite version of dd-wrt never seemed so bad... i'm not exactly doing anything fancy with it either...