best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Might try reflowing the NF7, though I don't have high hopes as the board is slightly warped.

Also forgot mentioning a Creative Labs GB0010 GPU, which is a 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 32MB - aka Geforce 2 GTS. I also went full ghetto on it and mounted some passive cooler from a FX5500, as well as straightened the I/O shield (it was pretty bent) with a hammer no less

Didn't test much of the stuff - got the DV6000 back to life through a mild reflow on the 8400M GS. Why did HP think a aluminium sticker over the core (behind the sticker being pure copper no less) would be good for a heat hungry chip is beyond my understanding. I just removed that, used some Termopasty (polish brand, pretty popular in Romania for soldering stuff as well as thermal paste) AG Silver thermal paste - not the best but much better than sticking Halnzlye crap.

Made it into a lil' neat Pentium machine, w/ a T4300 and about 2GB of RAM. Might slap some Linux Mint + Server 2008 R2 action just for the lulz, since it may be able to handle that. Do have 2x2GB 800MHz sticks if I will need them.

The 5520G willl probably get gutted, and I'll either go for a GM965 variant mobo or the PM965+MXM variant, assuming I can track it down with the respective heatsink (it's very different than the 5520). Might also throw a 1680x1050 LCD at it, as well as a T9300 and maybe a 9600M GS.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I did an experiment with some extremely cheap Windata DVD+R DL discs, and old IDE drives either couldn't recognized them or produced some random write errors. Then tried the same discs on a late model desktop SATA optical drive, and had no problems whatsoever.

that was probably because the older burners had limited and less support for burning different types/brands of discs. the newer burner had more support so it could burn okay.

as for RW discs not lasting, u have to get the good brands that use good quality phase change material. i use only verbatim mitsubishi japanese media for RW discs. they use the SERL phase change material on their cd and dvd rw discs and no problems burning to them multiple times.

i frequently use dvd rw discs on my LG hdd dvd recorder for recording analogue tv years ago and no problems burning to it over a hundred times to transfer recordings from the hard disk to dvd rw to transfer the recordings onto my pc.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

the biggest problem with RW disks is they are far less reflective.
this allows scumbags like philips to tweek the power on their lasers to intentionally block the use of RW disks in AV fear and car NAVI units.
(you can fix them by turning up the power slightly - but scope the eye pattern if you do)

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

this allows scumbags like philips to tweek the power on their lasers to intentionally block the use of RW disks in AV fear and car NAVI units.

Sounds more like something Sony would do with their new PlayStations...

You may be forgetting that Sony has involvement in the "copy-gate" scandal. (XCP) (more like Xtreme Copy Paranoia)
They shouldn't have bought Columbia Records. Wish I can go on a time machine! (IIRC)

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

i didnt forget, but the only sony stuff i have is playstation 1,2 & 3 - all hacked.

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got some decent deals this sunday carboot.

thermaltake poseidon z rgb mechanical keyboard (£3) all working now. Only issue was Q key was double pressing. Just needed blowing out.

Corsair Vengeance K70 mechanical keyboard (£3) about 6 keys dont work and is missing 5 keycaps. Not sure if i should fix, if it was just the switches hell yea,, getting keycaps is like a few pound per key on ebay.

imac early 2009 - c2d, 2gb - Free - all working so far, need some more ram and possibly a cheap ssd if i keep.

3x 2TB Sky boxes £3 each - just pulled out drives and throwing rest in away. Hitachi, WD and a seagate 2TB drives.

Humax 1TB HDR-1010s freesat box. £5 - dead HDD, stuck one of the 2TB in in and up and running.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Three more Smart-UPS 750s. So, I think I now have one for each of my machines and can get rid of the beastly 1200's!

[upgradestations]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Being the "family tech geek," as it were (I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about...) I often get asked "what should I do with this [insert electronic device here]?"

Most of the time, I recommend the nearest big-box electronics retailer for recycling, but last week, my grandpa (*never* get's rid of technology, so I was intrigued...) said he was getting rid of a few of his recent laptops (he runs audio and podcast stuffs for the church he's in). Thinking I'd be getting something old, it ended up being a fairly nice collection of somewhat recent laptops, namely, one that i was most intrigued by:

Neat little gift of a free Asus RoG G751JL.

I know, I know. Anticlimactic. No vintage equipment, no unique stuff, but I digress. Was a nice little find among the other lesser laptops.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Most of the time, I recommend the nearest big-box electronics retailer for recycling, but last week, my grandpa (*never* get's rid of technology, so I was intrigued...) said he was getting rid of a few of his recent laptops (he runs audio and podcast stuffs for the church he's in). Thinking I'd be getting something old, it ended up being a fairly nice collection of somewhat recent laptops, namely, one that i was most intrigued by:

Neat little gift of a free Asus RoG G751JL.

I know, I know. Anticlimactic. No vintage equipment, no unique stuff, but I digress. Was a nice little find among the other lesser laptops.

Sounds like you don't know your grandpa too well. With laptops like that, I suspect he may be a popular gamer/ streamer. Probably made many kids cry when winning against them in Fortnite.

Jokes aside, that's a nice laptop you got.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Being the "family tech geek," as it were (I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about...) I often get asked "what should I do with this [insert electronic device here]?"

Ans: "Let me remove and destroy the hard disk(s) and then you can drop the rest off at your town's hazardous waste recycler."

[Do NOT trust recyclers to blindly ignore the contents of your disks *or* take explicit measures to prevent those contents to be read by someone else "down the line"! Too many will decide "the drive isn't worth salvaging" -- and, consequently, won't bother destroying it!]

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

2x USB to RS-232 serial cables.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Do NOT trust recyclers to blindly ignore the contents of your disks *or* take explicit measures to prevent those contents to be read by someone else "down the line"! Too many will decide "the drive isn't worth salvaging" -- and, consequently, won't bother destroying it!]

True.

When I worked at a big box electronics store as repair tech, PCs sent to the recycle bin never had their HDDs removed. From what I asked/researched (because I was actually interested in buying some of the store-rejected stuff sometimes), most (if not everything) in there was simply crushed and chopped for metal (gold, steel, etc.) recycling... but we never knew if that was true or not, because everything went as-is to some 3rd party recycler for cents/pound. So eventually I started pulling the HDDs from recycled PCs and saving them, then typically LLF-ing them over lunch break. Over the course of a few months, I accumulated a nice stack of HDDs I could use for testing OS installs on customer PCs (because sometimes they would have so much crap on their OS that it was impossible to tell if the issue was hardware or software - this cleared that issue up nicely a good number of times times.)

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

True.

When I worked at a big box electronics store as repair tech, PCs sent to the recycle bin never had their HDDs removed. From what I asked/researched (because I was actually interested in buying some of the store-rejected stuff sometimes), most (if not everything) in there was simply crushed and chopped for metal (gold, steel, etc.) recycling... but we never knew if that was true or not,

you know damn well most of that stuff ends on ebay as parts.
there are a number of company's that do nothing but sell huge amounts of used components on ebay from clearly stripped machines

i dont blame them, the energy costs to shred,smelt and seperate metals cant cover it's costs nevermind make a profit.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

you know damn well most of that stuff ends on ebay as parts.
there are a number of company's that do nothing but sell huge amounts of used components on ebay from clearly stripped machines

i dont blame them, the energy costs to shred,smelt and seperate metals cant cover it's costs nevermind make a profit.

Not here in the area.
Being close to the capital, there are a ton of gvmnt agencies and offices that change office gear in set cycles. So unfortunately, there's very few small-time recycles that do the parting and re-selling from stores like ours. Pretty much the bigger recyclers gobble up everything and really only re-sell the more valuable stuff (i.e. recent complete i3/i5/i7 systems and similar.) I believe CG above mentioned that he is in a similar situation at his workplace, where certain older gear, even if in good condition, simply doesn't get sold because it's not as profitable as the newer stuff, so it tends to get scrapped instead. And with a lot of the HDDs that I took out, most were in the 80 to 250 GB range - i.e. too small for most recyclers to care. I also know that the recyclers that we used didn't care either, because the way the machines were shipped to them were often carelessly packed. A lot of times, someone would literally just throw/smash a computer into the e-waste bin. So a lot of good desktops, TVs, and monitors got quite damaged from that. So I saved what I could and used it as bench test gear for myself and the other tech... and some of the stuff (like spare high-end GPUs, PSUs, and HDDs) ended up being quite useful.

[jayjr1105]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got all this for $20 on facebook marketplace this week. Xbox was a very early model and didn't have a single bad cap. Just cracked solder on the power input.



XBOX Before https://i.imgur.com/DttPgVJ.jpg
After https://i.imgur.com/8Q16ZMI.png

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

NIIIICE!!!
specially the black wii - never seen a black one before!
did you get any controllers for the wii or cube?

btw, you can boot cube games from the memory card with a couple of tricks

[jayjr1105]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

NIIIICE!!!
specially the black wii - never seen a black one before!
did you get any controllers for the wii or cube?

btw, you can boot cube games from the memory card with a couple of tricks

I got almost no cables for anything other than the xbox, but as you can see, I got an xbox component adapter which go for big bucks but I'm going to keep it. I full refurbed the xbox and tsop modded already. I haven't gotten to the Wii or GC yet. No cables or controllers whatsoever.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

When I worked at a big box electronics store as repair tech, PCs sent to the recycle bin never had their HDDs removed. From what I asked/researched (because I was actually interested in buying some of the store-rejected stuff sometimes), most (if not everything) in there was simply crushed and chopped for metal (gold, steel, etc.) recycling... but we never knew if that was true or not, because everything went as-is to some 3rd party recycler for cents/pound.

Mid 80's I went into a retail "computer store" and found the techs browsing *photos* on a machine that was obviously in for repair. Learned, early on, never to expect folks to "resist temptation" to go poking around!

The disk sanitizer that I built relied on folks putting EVERY disk into the machine -- so the machine could decide how best to dispose of the drive (and not some pinhead who decides what "effort" should be expended on a particular drive)

[Before we bought the disk SHREDDER, disks that couldn't (broken electronics) or shouldn't (waste of time) be wiped were "snapped in half" with a hydraulic press -- breaking platter(s), frame, PCB, etc.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a ASUS K73BY for free.

6600mAh battery that I can only presume is aftermarket (though it has amazing charge, and only 1% wear), AMD E-450 CPU and HD6470M GPU (aka 7400M) w/ 1GB DDR3 VRAM, Lite-ON DVDRW. Had no LCD, front bezel, HDD and RAM, but surprisingly had the RAM/HDD covers. Sourced a LCD from an dead ASUS K70IC, some RAM and a 250GB HDD and it runs Win10 Enterprise 1909 pretty nicely.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Another score:

Toshiba A200-1AG. T5500, 2GB RAM, Geforce Go 7300, 160GB Toshiba HDD, Windows 7.

GPU needed a light reflow, works great now. I was thinking of replacing it with a HD2400 but I fear it might not fit.