best cheap/free scores 1.1

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The pick of the litter is a HP 20" 4:3 LCD with a native resolution of 1600x1200. Quite rare, especially these days!

yeah indeed! i've been looking everywhere for those! what is the model number? LP 2065?

Panasonic Toughbook CF-31.

yes thanks for showing us that! thats one tough book indeed! the japanese really know how to build their stuff.

another laptop similar to that which i like is the dell latitude e6400 xfr. the casing it comes with is made of kevlar apparently... bulletproof laptop?! hehehe!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

yeah indeed! i've been looking everywhere for those! what is the model number? LP 2065?

It's a L2025

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Massive score today. Local shop that has been around since the 80's has closed, they gave me most all their stuff...and quite a few treasures!! There were two pickup loads so far....

Load # 1:

In the truck....





Those CPU's are still in the boxes. Lots of new old stock heatsinks & opticals



A ton of fans ranging from 80mm to 120mm....and a wonderful treasure full tower heavy metal case.



The stack of nobilis systems, most working but some had ram stolen. Most are 4th gen I-series. A stack of laptops too....I'm sure they're all junk.



All the full towers...and a couple new beige cases.



Pickup load # 2:







More GPU's and some vintage sound cards....and of course some keyboards....but hey, there's a flawless condition IBM PS/2 clicky in there.



Some more treasures!! A supermicro workstation/server, some dual S604 in it...case is immaculate. The Intel next to it is also in fabulous shape. Not sure what's in it.



A couple of those nice chenbro cases....



This little treasure is a box full of Win98SE OEM disks, never opened or used with COA's!!



HP 3800 color laser, said to work.



...and the wall of towers...



Not bad!!

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Any Pentium-era AT cases in the lot?

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Any Pentium-era AT cases in the lot?

There was one (not shown); empty full tower. <-- oxymoron?

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

One of the scores for today... an pretty rare (near extinction, if I may.) Sun-Pro built Rhino PSU which was made by none other than....Raidmax.

Granted, the 5vsb section has a quite decent soot mark near it, but where would the fun and joy of swapping parts between scrap Leadman LP-7700 PCBs be anyways?

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Massive score today. Local shop that has been around since the 80's has closed, they gave me most all their stuff...and quite a few treasures!!

wow! thats one hell of a liquidation sale!! lol!! at least it didnt go to china! the chinese would rip off all our asses for all that stuff! rofl!

More GPU's and some vintage sound cards....

yeah, i also spy what might be a creative sound blaster pci card in there! is it made in singapore? if so, i wanna talk about a possible hostage exchange there! lol!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

There were 3, 2 were made in malaysia and the other didn't say.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an Spire SP-ATX-420WTN-PFC PSU. Looks pretty solid... might not do 420W (the PFC coil reads 300W... that's not good, I guess.) but it otherwise looks rather packed to me, even if it's a bit on the simple side PCB wise.

Recapped it as all the AsiaX caps on the secondary were bad, and also replaced the seized fan with a shiny blue LED CoolerMaster fan - didn't have any other 12cm fans on hand, and it kinda fits well with the shiny case (dunno what it is, but it is reflective).

Meanwhile, I'm slowly progressing with the blown Rhino. Finally got to the point where I have 5vSB but no PowerGood voltage - a few days prior I had no 5vSB at all and smoke coming from a diode on the secondary.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

S'more scores!

Delux MT302 PC - no idea what internals, other than an AMD based GB board and a Delux branded PSU (which would correspond to everell's iMicro fleet)
ASUS P5PE-VM - great for a compact retro 775 build, thinking of a strange Conroe based build that would have to compete with AMD's 939 based Athlon 64 x2
ABIT NF-M2SV - badcaps galore, one ripped SATA port (nothing unfixable tho), needs good cleaning
Matsonic MS8308EP (aka PCChips M810LR rev 7.1) - needs new caps - same board as my Totem TM-S730LMV (in fact, the Totem is based on the Matsonic revision of the M810LR - even the BIOS string on the Totem reads MS8308EP)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Figured I'd post up the Rhino PSU as I've finally got it to work. Most of the work done on it is mine.

What has been done:

- sourced AT-2005B platform from a "500W" Delux - the original PCB still needs a lot of work to be done - I have 5VSB on that one but no power, and as I've experienced with this AT-2005B, I suspect the 12v rectifier is bad. Least of my problems, considering the whole 5vsb section was literally cooked to death (almost.) and yet it didn't stop me from harvesting parts out of a Leadman to fix it. (the original PCB is basically momaka's RX-380K on a whole lotta steroids.)

- replaced the Te Bao fans with a 80mm Yate Loon for the rear (sourced from a scrapped OEM-made FSP that was useless for me) and a DeepCool branded fan for the front (which I honestly have no idea who made it, but good god it's silent. Even at 12V!!)

- used radioactive green Yang Chun caps from an Allied that I (slightly) upgraded its primaries on (that one received the OST primaries from the scrapped FSP, as a matter of fact) as I got the PCB without any primary caps (probably Seacon, knowing the secondaries were Sapcon - the PCB is dated circa 2010 so Seacon would be my closest guess. I think I have two original Seacons 470uF 200v as a matter of fact, kept them for posterity sake )

- completed additional EMI filtering on the PCB, with safety rated Y caps. Fuse is a 6A fast-blow I think? (F6A, 250V)

- replaced the tall heatsinks that it had with some low profile thick heatsinks (out of what I assume was either a Gembird or Casecom unit - those are usually super-beefy SunPro/Leadman units)

- slightly redid the sillicon - 2x Fairchild 13009 TO-220AB (actual Fairchild parts!) w/ 2SC3105 for 5vSB in the primary side. For the secondary, 12v uses a 30A part I found put of some scrapped Delta (and I specifically know which... the tobacco smell it had still haunts me to this day.), 5v is also 30A, and 3.3v uses a 20A part.

- the voltage selector switch is now a decoy - wires were removed as I have no plans on using it on 115v anytime soon.

- didn't recap it too much - replaced the small capacitance (2.2uF) Sapcons around the middle with AsiaX of 2012 datecode (I trust AsiaX more than Sapcons, sue me lol), while the secondary caps themselves were both a grab bag of Teapo, AsiaX and whatever Sapcons this unit oeiginally had slightly shuffled around. I figured I wouldn't really waste a UCC KY batch just yet.

Voltages seem within spec. 3.3v is rather high, around 3.5v or so, but I recall someone here said that it's the 3.3vSense circuit that's responsible for this, so I just let it be.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Welp, some updates on my previous scores:

- gutted the Delux MT302 build for now. PSU is absolutely J-U-N-K. I mean it - it had a horribly hard time powering as much as a Sempron 3000+ and a 9550 from Sapphire, for God's sake! I fear to think what else that thing powered. Case is of rather okay-ish quality, found a 2010 datecode LG GH-series PATA DVD-RW (which is rather surprising, as I remember these were mostly SATA...?), as well as a 200GB PATA Hitachi drive. No SATA drives.
- Matsonic board is dead - seems the ITE SIO chip is burnt, and considering I have a working one already, I'm not gonna even bother fixing this one up.
- P5PE-VM works, still haven't tested a E2160 or 2180 on it
- ABIT NF-M2SV works now, although one RAM slot is dead due to about two bent pins, unfortunately. It does POST with the other one. Needs a SATA connector as someone ripped one of the two SATA ports that were supposed to be on the board.

[Xenon-Codex]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Someone forgot this Esprimo PH300 on a dishwasher going to e-waste (the container was full already). It was a bit wet so I didn't use it's own PSu yet.

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A Lenovo ThinkPad R61. The laptop itself is fairly unremarkable aside from being in excellent condition for its age, however it had the highest hour laptop HDD I've ever seen, a 250GB Western Digital Scorpio Black with 49,355 hours on it (it certainly isn't in prefect condition with quite a few reallocated sectors, but it is still functional, though I immediately swapped it with a 120GB SSD).





Specs on the laptop:
CPU: Intel Core2Duo T7100
GPU: Integrated Intel 965 Express
Ram: 2GB DDR2
HDD/SSD: Originally 250GB 7200rpm SATA HDD, replaced with 128GB SATA SSD
Optical Drive: DVD-Rom/CD-RW
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3











And a "cosmetically challenged" (looks like this one had a drop) though fully functional HP ProBook 6470b.

Specs:
Specs on the laptop:
CPU: Intel I5-3320M
GPU: Integrated Intel HD4000
Ram: 4GB DDR3-1600
SSD:128GB SATA SSD
Optical Drive: DVD-RW
OS: Windows 10 Pro











These are among the easiest laptops to service, you don't even need to remove screws to remove the bottom cover, just flip a latch.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The last ~10 days have been amazing for goodies!!

We'll start with this:

IBM 5114 dual 8" floppy disk drive from some old mainframe....with the impact printer sitting on top of it no less. Research has it made around 1978. I did not get the mainframe itself, it was long gone....so this is utterly useless besides a conversation piece.....I have an idea for it though..worry not, it won't go to the recycler....but it will be repurposed in my uniquely weird way!!





Tested that Intel server, works. It's a SKT604 Xeon @ 3GHz. Dual sockets, but only one is populated. 2gb DDR2 RAM. I was more interested in the case; eATX in a shorter but widebody case. Very classy looker and in mint shape. Has a SCSI SCA backplane and 4x 73gb 10K's in a 147gb RAID10. As if by some miracle, I found a box with a SATA/SAS backplane. As promised, I broke the RAID and wiped the drives.



Same with the rebadged Supermicro chassis....it was a SC743 chassis with similar innards as the Intel. These are marvelous chassis as well....I've used many of them. Drives were in a similar cnfig as above...wiped.



Some Dell 9020's and that infamous Precision T1650...and some old P4.



Got 6x old world heavy metal shelves.







One of the finer picks...this 'weatherhead' bin cabinet. All the bins & trays are present, some are in boxes; as they had things in them. I have already got this moved into its permanent spot...it was a stash of PC fasteners & other PC stuff. I've got this cleaned up and now the daunting task of sorting it.....but it'll be worth it!!



Some more OS's showed up in a box. A couple win10pro's, 1 win7pro oem, about a dozen win2k oem's, and of course the dozen or so win98se oem's....all of these are sealed and with their COA's.



There's still a ton of it I haven't gone through yet, priority one has been destroying data on the ~50 Nobilis systems....most of those were 4th gen I-series.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

More scores!

- custom build - MSI P55-CD53, Intertech FP-750W PSU (which looks quite sturdy, even if it's pretty chinesium), Intertech case (haven't figured the model out yet)

-two boxes full of burnt CD-Rs with movies (not trying to condone piracy by any kind, I was legitimately expecting all of the discs to be blank.)

-standard LGA775/1366 HSF

-Seagate ST31000524AS that miraculously survived with just two shorted TVS diodes (which I suspect were the fault of a bad SATA cable, judging by the two burnt inductors), which is now working and has a fresh Win10 install.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

More scores!

- custom build - MSI P55-CD53, Intertech FP-750W PSU (which looks quite sturdy, even if it's pretty chinesium), Intertech case (haven't figured the model out yet)

-two boxes full of burnt CD-Rs with movies (not trying to condone piracy by any kind, I was legitimately expecting all of the discs to be blank.)

-standard LGA775/1366 HSF

-Seagate ST31000524AS that miraculously survived with just two shorted TVS diodes (which I suspect were the fault of a bad SATA cable, judging by the two burnt inductors), which is now working and has a fresh Win10 install.

I've seen a drive or two in the past have its protection diodes just short with no clear reason as to why. Ended up removing them and the drives sprung back to life. One hadn't run since 2014 and had a relatively fresh Windows 7 installation on it... it wasn't the happiest when it booted back up after resting 8+ years.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Mine had two burnt inductors along the diodes. Not really a critical thing since I did just wire up the 5v diode to bypass the inductor. In my case, the 5v inductor trace was far too gone so I just bypassed it by wiring the TVS diode cathode on the first 5v pin (I think it was pin 9 on the power connector?) using a capacitor lead wrapped in shrink tubing. The 12v required no additional work other than installing a new inductor and diode.

I figure it will be a great match for the P55 build above. Now to decide whether I should stick with the MSI or go with a Gigabyte

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Here's what became of that 'Weatherhead' storage bin cabinet after 4 days of agonizing work sorting and making new labels.... Well worth it, but it was a sucky job!

This got my hoard of screws, hardware, adapters of all kinds, RAM, CPU's, and many other whatnots under control.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I've seen a drive or two in the past have its protection diodes just short with no clear reason as to why. Ended up removing them and the drives sprung back to life. One hadn't run since 2014 and had a relatively fresh Windows 7 installation on it... it wasn't the happiest when it booted back up after resting 8+ years.

Protection diodes do that. Heck, at work we had a remote output (relay) card fail and take a whole industrial network on a large robot cell due to one of the two protection zener diodes shorting out the serial comms line (if you're curious, it's CC-link, a variety of RS485). Being the cheapskate I am, I cut of the SOT23 and was able to make the module run (and I later soldered in a new twin zener pack).