best cheap/free scores 1.1

[shovenose]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Deal hasn't been confirmed 100% quite yet but some random person on Reddit was complaining they have a Unifi PoE switch with a bad PSU. They took it apart and when 48V applied directly it worked. They might send it to me for the price of shipping since they can't use it like that (but I can hehe) just need a PoE switch for a couple IP security cams

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Made a few tech scores at goodwill today:

-Startech USB32VGAE USB 3.0 VGA adapter ($1): Seems to work fine. Will either keep on my work bench (since the KVM uses VGA and it does support a couple usable highish 16:10 resolutions) or give to church to interface things to the VGA based AV system (which can either 1280x1024, 1024x768, or 800x600). The current "slim" version doesn't support as many resolutions and costs $79... win???

-NIB TP-Link USB 2.0 AC600 adapter with "high-gain" antenna ($3): Handy to have on the shelf... Not being USB 3.0 sucks though since I think USB 2.0 is going to cap the actual throughput? Still handy to have for use in a pinch

-Bosch LCT0435/60 color security camera (BNC) with LCT3384/21 10x zoom lens ($1.39 per lb, outlet find). Camera made in Portugal, lens made in Japan. Don't need it, but it's built like a tank and if nothing else, I'll mail it to EEVBLOG for a teardown. Don't have any other BNC security equipment to test it with, sadly. Do they make ethernet based BNC adapters/FTP recorders?

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored another HP Pavilion dv5, this time it's the AMD Turion/HD3450 combo, model number dv5-1026eo.

Surprised to find that:

- it has NEVER been reflowed
- it has NEVER been disassembled
- it still worked (and still works) before I bought it

The only issues with it were that the LCTRL button isn't original to the keyboard, and of course the battery is dead (these machines already hit the 13 year old mark!).

Has been cleaned, repasted and upgraded. Original config was Turion RM-70, 3GB DDR2 and a 250GB HDD. New config is Turion Ultra ZM-82, 4GB DDR2, same HDD.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Was given a HP DV6-7345US Friday afternoon by a walk-in. Throwing a battery error at POST but otherwise works, and in mint condition. Inspite of the battery error saying the battery is weak, it still ran ~3hrs on it.

Will obviously need a new battery....came with the charger. A SSD and a little RAM, it'll be a nice laptop.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

HP's batteries are weird indeed. I have a DV9000 (yes, such a old battery!!) battery that despite holding decent charge, is reported to be bad by HP's Battery Check application.

And most of all, none I've had on the older DV5,6 and 7s would show the time remaining of the battery. Only the newer Core i3 1st gen ones and higher would show the time remaining.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

-NIB TP-Link USB 2.0 AC600 adapter with "high-gain" antenna ($3): Handy to have on the shelf... Not being USB 3.0 sucks though since I think USB 2.0 is going to cap the actual throughput? Still handy to have for use in a pinch

should be fine,
usb2.0 is 480Mb throughput.
i'm sure thats faster than you will realistically get across an AC600 link.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a free SL4SH Socket 423 Pentium 4 1.5GHz CPU. Probably not that useful but still a nice piece of history to have.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Was given a HP DV6-7345US Friday afternoon by a walk-in. Throwing a battery error at POST but otherwise works, and in mint condition. Inspite of the battery error saying the battery is weak, it still ran ~3hrs on it.

Will obviously need a new battery....came with the charger. A SSD and a little RAM, it'll be a nice laptop.

Stuck a 240gb Kingston A400 + 16gb RAM in this. Windows10 now runs quite smooth. Still need to order a battery.

My wife came back from the local junk shop with a Compaq CQ61 Athlon2 1gb RAM in it, minty shape with charger for $25. Threw 4gb I had in the bin + a used 120gb SSD from the bin in it.....runs 10 decent as well. Batt is good.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a free Panasonic NV-MV16EP VCR, with cables and remote.

On the same note, have copper shim'd my dv5-1026eo and, along with the Turion Ultra ZM-82 it has in place of its Turion RM-70, it runs really great, the temps are really good. 60-65*C max in load, around 55-59 in idle, and the GPU (a HD3450) runs really low, somewhere in the low to mid 40s tops and mid 40s to 50s.

[jayjr1105]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Did pretty good today. My "guy" hooked me up. Not even going to say how much I got all this for because nobody would believe me.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

what are those 2 at the back like shrunk ps2's??

[diif]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

PS2 Slim

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Two goodwill scores:

Vizio E221-A1 22" 1080P TV ($6). No remote, but fully functional. Has one HDMI, one VGA/3.5mm, and one Component/Composite input, along with USB and a tuner.

A really old Pandigital R70f200 7" Android tablet/e-reader ($5). Seems to have a fried battery preventing bootup... Might fix it, IDK. Has a resistivite touchscreen with a built in plastic stylus.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Here was a bit of a funny one today. Gal brought in a box of stuff to get rid of....in it was a brand new HP Stream netbook. Celeron Dual-core, 4gb RAM, and 32gb SSD. Real kick in the balls for the horrendous steaming pile known as Windows10 Home, she used it for about 3hrs, it did its usual automatic update nonsense, rebooted, and became so unusably slow that she shut it off and said the hell with it. The online retailer that sold it to her basically told her to go pound sand when asking to return it...and it sat in its box for about a year.....so fast forward to today; she was going to throw it away....and asked if I wanted it.... I offered to fix it, she said nah....she bought a new Macbook Pro.

I hate win10 with a passion, especially Home edition....pro + GPEDIT is a bit more tamable, but home is completely worthless. I certainly wasn't buying a Win10 pro license for it and didn't really want to mess with 10 Home....so unlike the old Macbook from earlier in the thread, this one genuinely is good testbed for Mint 20.... It's a bit of a gutless CPU; dual core celeron....but Mint runs very nice on it compared to bloated w10.....so hello world from a sub-entry-level laptop with Mint 20.2 & Waterfox G3.2.5!!

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Dish Hopper 3 DVR. Pulled it apart, slammed the drive into a dock, found ~500GB of TV recordings, all unencrypted and watchable.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Here was a bit of a funny one today. Gal brought in a box of stuff to get rid of....in it was a brand new HP Stream netbook. Celeron Dual-core, 4gb RAM, and 32gb SSD. Real kick in the balls for the horrendous steaming pile known as Windows10 Home, she used it for about 3hrs, it did its usual automatic update nonsense, rebooted, and became so unusably slow that she shut it off and said the hell with it. The online retailer that sold it to her basically told her to go pound sand when asking to return it...and it sat in its box for about a year.....so fast forward to today; she was going to throw it away....and asked if I wanted it.... I offered to fix it, she said nah....she bought a new Macbook Pro.

I hate win10 with a passion, especially Home edition....pro + GPEDIT is a bit more tamable, but home is completely worthless. I certainly wasn't buying a Win10 pro license for it and didn't really want to mess with 10 Home....so unlike the old Macbook from earlier in the thread, this one genuinely is good testbed for Mint 20.... It's a bit of a gutless CPU; dual core celeron....but Mint runs very nice on it compared to bloated w10.....so hello world from a sub-entry-level laptop with Mint 20.2 & Waterfox G3.2.5!!

For Windows, you would be better off with XP, with only 4 GB of RAM, if possible, LOL! Especially that small drive, LOL! Or Windows 7 maybe, even 8.1 is pushing it, despite 8.1 runs fast for me, the last time I used Windows 8.1.
Yep, of course, it's Linux time!

Lately, it looks more likely that a bunch of people with much better PCs than that "sub-entry-level" PC, will be forced to go to Linux, anyways.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Goodwill again: Scored a used but working Corsair CX430 for $15. 10+ year old 430W PSU... not very efficient (not 80+!), but from what I found on hardware secrets, a solid build CWT. Maybe a bit too much to call it a score, but I'll take a solid 400W+ PSU when I see one. PO had apparently "upgraded" to an ultra 750W per the box it was in...

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an Acer Aspire 8530G. Turion RM-72 upgraded to Ultra ZM-80, added the correct GPU in (HD4650 1GB, the wrong one was a Toshiba OEM'd 4570 512MB), reflowed the chipset (Acer really didn't think this one fully through, just like the 5520), 18.4 inch LCD, DVD-RW, 500GB HDD.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an Acer Aspire 8530G. Turion RM-72 upgraded to Ultra ZM-80, added the correct GPU in (HD4650 1GB, the wrong one was a Toshiba OEM'd 4570 512MB), reflowed the chipset (Acer really didn't think this one fully through, just like the 5520), 18.4 inch LCD, DVD-RW, 500GB HDD.

Is there something in the air in Romania? You do more reflowing than anyone I've ever seen!! I come into a lot of tech, reflowing is few & far between...

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Mostly people using them in places that heavily restrict airflow (beds being the most popular culprits) and the fact that none of the machines I have come across have NEVER had their thermal paste replaced. Granted, it's mostly been AMD systems that needed reflows, but I've also had a fair share of Intels that needed it too, usually anything that ran on nVidia chips based on the G84 and G86 that didn't have the white underfill (for example, I have two cards that are from both sides - one is a older underfill 9500M GS, the other is a white underfill G86 based 9300MG, which is a rebadged 8400MG - both are Acer OEM cards) and rarely some downright garbage tier cooled Radeon 4500/4600 cards (in this case, a DDR3 based Acer 5738ZG, board marked JV50-MV DDR3 M96 & MADISON MB, aka 5738ZG w/ HD4650 1GB)

Also replaced the HD4650 with a HD3470 and gained the ability to do Crossfire, much to my surprise. What this actually means is that the onboard IGP is actually used in tandem with the HD3470 I installed in it, as a kind of Hybrid Crossfire setup.