best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

After 10 years of searching for one of these boards, I find one....and a week later another one pops up priced pretty low....so of course I grabbed it....but funny how this works. These boards were part of my 'daily searches' for weird things....and I find 2 in one week after a 10-year quest!! Unbelievable!

The first one did not survive, it's a wallflower. Corrosion was far too severe. The second one did not appear to have this issue, so fingers crossed.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I guess reviving those is indeed, a score:

- Gigabyte G41M-Combo - neat 775 combo board (DDR2 and 3) which surprisingly has EFI support (!)
- Gigabyte H55M-USB3 - neat 1156/H55 mobo that seems to be HTPC oriented (lots of integrated ports, even as far as having DisplayPort and HDMI onboard!)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A couple interesting dropoffs....

Not sure why I even showed this one....worthless old Dell Dimension 4700....Some P4 w/ 512mb RAM. Pulled the HDD and nuked it.



Next up is a Precision T1500, first gen I7-860 @ 2.8GHz 4gb RAM. Don't remember what GPU it had....nothing to write home about.



Here's something a little more fun... Some intel dual xeon server. Door missing, but I do have the SAS cage caddies.



Not sure what the CPU's are, I didn't fire it up....but seeing FBDIMM's in there, it has to be some LGA771 Xeon platform.



Now here was the pick of the litter. Lenovo TS440 server. Xeon E3-1225 v3 16gb RAM with a LSI SAS addon card....I forgot which one it was.



The SAS cage had 4x 2TB spinners in it. I was contractually obligated to destroy them, so cages are empty now.



Not bad for a freebie! It'd be a great server for this site if I could ever find a local colocation....

[speter]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Surprised a secure wipe wasn't good enough.. My latest freebe is an Imac16. 2 8g / 1TB
and a Kangaroo 2b portable computer

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Surprised a secure wipe wasn't good enough..

These came from a financial institution. They demand DOD wiping and physical destruction....and they're paying me....so the customer is always right....and I got paid to take the server....buying it new drives is a minuscule expense!!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Might have possibly won those, but the following days will tell. One is a sure thing, the other not so much.

-Gigabyte EX58-UD5 + i7 920 - will be here on Monday next week
-ASRock Z68 Performance Gen3 Fatal1ty + i7 2600K - this one I'm not fully sure, I've talked to the seller and he's gonna be in town tomorrow, hoping I can snatch this thing up as it's really sturdy build wise.

Other stuff may include a Cooler Master Gemini II for the X58, and a Deepcool Tesseract BF black case for my i7 860 build.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Update - got the i7 2600k combo - there's something funny about installing a stock Conroe/Kentsfield 775 cooler on a i7-2600k, of all things.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Today's scores:

-bag of cables (2x HDMI, 2x audio RCA, a COLORsit USB mouse, a VGA cable and a Samsung charger)
-Galaxy S7 G930F - possibly dead mobo, LCD is pristine though so I guess I have a whole frame + LCD to make a working phone from
-4x 2GB DDR3-1333 sticks
-Fujitsu Lifebook E751

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Two more scores:

-Gigabyte EX58-UD5 fully boxed (with Crossfire, 2 way and 3 way SLi connectors!!)
-DeepCool Tesseract BF Black case (probably the most popular case I've seen in Romania, along with the myriad of JNC/Delux/Linkworld cases I've seen so far.)

[Xenon-Codex]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Last week I found the Pioneer PL-4 from UNDER the e-waste container at the back yard of a electronic store. It was almost intact as it had no snow on it. The mat and the needle are missing, and the speed doesn't stay exact (a common fault).
Today I took this little Sony cd-player from the dump, I thought it's a VHS-player until I got home... There was very dark when I left my surprise, a damaged Dell case full of smashed beer cans.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Christmas day came in and IT CAME HARD!

- VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3GB GDDR5
- Gigabyte 880GM-UD2H + Athlon II X2 255 3.1GHz
- 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D kit
- AMD FX-4100 CPU

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

PNY 2TB SATA SSD, originally $249.99, marked down to $94.99, was $52 and change after a gift card.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Today's freebie was a 27" iMac mid2010 with an I5 CPU and 4gb RAM. 1TB spinner. Mint condition. Owner just wanted the data off it. Apparently it won't go any higher than 'High Sierra'....good candidate for a native Windows install or Linux Mint.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Oh, right... THIS thread. Completely have forgotten about it.
Let's see when was the last time I posted to see where I was at... please wait <spinning dots>
.
.
*EDIT* and done - my last post was on page 268 (just putting this for my own reference.)

Today's freebie was a 27" iMac mid2010 with an I5 CPU and 4gb RAM. 1TB spinner. Mint condition. Owner just wanted the data off it. Apparently it won't go any higher than 'High Sierra'....good candidate for a native Windows install or Linux Mint.

Last week I found the Pioneer PL-4 from UNDER the e-waste container at the back yard of a electronic store. It was almost intact as it had no snow on it. The mat and the needle are missing, and the speed doesn't stay exact (a common fault).
Today I took this little Sony cd-player from the dump, I thought it's a VHS-player until I got home... There was very dark when I left my surprise, a damaged Dell case full of smashed beer cans.

Those are great scores!
My dad has a Sony CPD-XE220 from the 90's and the thing still works great and sees lots of use even today, especially with my nephew around. Yours looks of similar vintage and probably very similar internally as well.
And the Pioneer turntable is an awesome save!

A couple interesting dropoffs....

Not sure why I even showed this one....worthless old Dell Dimension 4700....Some P4 w/ 512mb RAM. Pulled the HDD and nuked it.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1670479663

Did it have an AGP connector? I think those specific Dimensions do. If so, you should probably have saved it (though I know, you have a lot of PCs and probably not worth it to you.) Otherwise, older PCs with AGP will become more and more rare as time goes. Also, these old P4 Dimensions and Optiplexes, while still abundant, not rare... and kind of annoying sometimes... are a cheaper way for people to get into Win98 / retro computing, since they will take Win98 just fine. The prices of PII/P3 stuff are getting silly now with the whole "collectors" retro PC thing.

After 10 years of searching for one of these boards, I find one....and a week later another one pops up priced pretty low....so of course I grabbed it....but funny how this works. These boards were part of my 'daily searches' for weird things....and I find 2 in one week after a 10-year quest!! Unbelievable!

Sounds like a case of when it rains, it pours, but in a good way.

-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.)

LOL!
Movies on CD-R's and not DVDs?? Those are probably from the early 2000's - think Kazaa, eMule, LimeWire, early Bit Torrent clients, and etc. The quality is probably... ... well, let's call it "acceptable" for the times. Actually, it wasn't too bad when viewed on CRTs. I still have a few movies from back then.

Was given a Sony KDL 46NX810 1080P 3DTV. Seems to work and in perfect condition....but of course the stand is missing...

I've been picking up broken/discarded TVs in the last year to fix just for fun / learning purposes and then try to give away. Don't know how/why, but I've never found one with a remote, and more than half of them were without a stand too. Makes it rather hard to give them away, even if they work. Also, seems like 40-50" TVs are something no one cares about in my area. Probably because they are too big to be a "kitchen" TV and too small to be a main/living room TV. I see these size most often than any other. Anything 32" and below does get taken. Same with 55" or above. I managed to give away a 37" 720p on Christmas to someone on CL. I didn't have the remote, but the TV did have the stand and I put that in the ad. The guy said he was OK with not having a remote, since he was going to use it as a HDMI display/monitor in front of his treadmill and didn't want / couldn't afford to spend on a new TV just for that. Works with me. One less TV for me to trip on around here.

These were in the e-waste container, then transported 2 miles on a bicycle. Every piece works. The JVC deck is really heavy, but it's from the upper end.

WOW, who throws away vintage audio gear like that?!
This is really sad. Glad you found them.

it's amazing how much people pay for some old stuff now!
i cant even remember how many AT-slot soundblaster 2.0 and pro cards i chucked years ago!!

Yeah, it's crazy, the prices nowadays.
I missed an entire IT room worth of PII/P3 class PCs (mostly Dell - some dual-slot Precisions too.) Also at least 30-40 CRT monitors of various sizes (mostly 17", but a few 19" there too.) I should have made space in our garage and took them. Could have made some decent cash these days, even if I sold them at half the cost of what they regularly go for online. People now want $100 for a 17" CRT, and it's not even guaranteed to work or tested half the times.

I always say I get very little of the "good cheap/free scores" compared to other badcaps members, and here is another example.

My neighbor dumped a "clamshell" Dell tower computer on the side of his house. ...

That's actually a pretty decent "retro PC" score. The Radeon 9800XT is definitely hard to come by these days. And the whole setup together, when working, should make a neat retro Windows 98 / ME / early Windows XP era PC.

I used to over-look these Dell P4 PCs probably up until very recently myself. But it seems like even they are starting to become worth something, especially anything with AGP connector. If it's without AGP... then yeah... meh.

Another cartload of fun at the goodwill outlet.

In what weighed in as a $25 cartload, I scored:

• A Dell s2230mxf 21.5" 1080p slim monitor (works, found a compatible wall wart (12V 2A) nearby, some light scratches on screen but is otherwise good and sleek looking!)
• A crapload of Panduit and Hubbel wall/floor keystone plates, dummy insers, and CAT5e/CAT6 inserts
• A half-used (missing) stack of Verbatim BD-R's
• A very long (and tangled yet intact) Cat6 cable (100ft?)
• A 60GB CMS Firewire 400 external hard drive (labeled by the PO as having snow leopard OSX on it!)
• A lightly used pocket USB 2.0 Hub
• A barely used RJ45/RJ11 cable tester (actually RJ12 too... go figure!)
• An Amazon mini USB charge+ethernet adapter (good for bay trail tablet if you need wired access!)
• A 25ft 12 gauge 5-15 extension cord (HEAVY, but at $1.66 per lb still worth it!)

Wow, I'm surprised with those scores for a Goodwill. Here, I don't think I've seen a Goodwill outlet. And their regular stores are a complete rip-off - sometimes selling things like stack of blank DVDs or CDs for considerably more than what I'd pay in Micro Center or Best Buy. Most other "thrift" shops are usually just as bad too. The only one that I find to be semi-decent sometimes is Habitat for Humanity / Re-Store. I grabbed some 4' Philips T8F32 bulbs from them twice now for $1 a pop. They were new, too. Got some nice cheap and bright lightning for the garage 2 years ago. And their dumpster out back is not covered too. So whenever I need scrap wood, I just barge in and take some. They guy who worked there told me I'm clear to do that, so long as it's after hours so that the manager doesn't see me, due to worrying about liability issues and whatnot, should I happen to fall or hurt myself in there... which is understandable.

Someone bought the property that once belonged to a TV repair guy that worked on them from the early 1970's through maybe early 2000's. I didn't know him, he was dead & gone before my time in this area....but the new owners of the property wanted his stuff gone...and so far, lots of sorted/organized components, vintage test gear, and an old P4 PC.....

Well, if he could say something from the other side, I'm sure he'd be glad you got these and they didn't end up in a dump somewhere. I think a lot of us would feel the same way about our "toys"... or at least I know I will. I spent a lot of time on some of these silly old retro PC stuff and would definitely feel good if they didn't go to waste if they are still usable to someone.

Mega EDU score today. Over 126 custom ITX builds. A shit ton of chromebooks (worthless). Some Ipads....some Asus Win8.1 tablets....the usual breedlot of monitors, printers, keyboards, mice.....but also a ton of SSD's as well. Gonna take me a while to go through all this stuff!

You don't say.

Black/monochrome lasers.... I pulled the 2 small brothers off of there, the rest are going straight to the recycler.

Guess no one wants old printers these days.
I think part of it also has to do with Windows 10/11 - lots of people getting rid of perfectly fine old laser printers due to lack of (plug-and-play) drivers for Windows 10/11.

Tons of 2.5" spinners ranging from 250gb to 1tb....spinning HDD's are rapidly becoming night breeders; can't get rid of them fast enough!!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1655935200

Hey, I can arrange for that.

Understandable on your end, of course. Most people probably need an SSD at this point, especially with Windows 10/11. On the other hand, I have absolutely ZERO problems with running Windows XP and 7 on old spinners. Heck, even 10 is tolerable once I'm done de-garbaging it... but it takes me literally an entire day per one machine to go through each and every setting to do that... so again, understandable why no one wants spinners on newer machines anymore.

Please let me know if you need any. I've got gazillions of 160gb ~ 500gb....they need homes!

Well, I don't know if this is still the case on your end, given it was posted close to a year ago... but I might actually take you up on that. Just gotta do an inventory of how many HDDs I have and how many machines I expect to build. Seems like I'm almost 1:1, but not 100% sure. Been years since I took count.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Well, I don't know if this is still the case on your end, given it was posted close to a year ago... but I might actually take you up on that. Just gotta do an inventory of how many HDDs I have and how many machines I expect to build. Seems like I'm almost 1:1, but not 100% sure. Been years since I took count.

Offer still good.... How many and what size?

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I can't believe Momaka missed this one!!





https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...postcount=5535

There's a special plan in development for this!!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

To move on from fX - recently won a cheap combo consisting of a ASRock 890GX Extreme 4 + Phenom X6 1055T. Probably not the best Phenom chip I could get (considering there's the 1060T) but I sense it'll be likely better than a FX chip of the same kind.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I can't believe Momaka missed this one!!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1668317404

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1668317404

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...postcount=5535

There's a special plan in development for this!!

Woah , where was I sleeping indeed?! That is MEGA AWESOME score, even if the state of these is non-function due to not having the rest of the hardware.

Just the other day, I was reading that our Air Force is finally retiring its fleet of 8" floppies that were used to guide WMD / nuclear rockets. As the interviewed Air Force representative put it, he said the old system was great both for reliability and security. After all, how many people have the hardware to mess with 8" floppies (besides you now, TC )... and the fact that everything has to be done on-site - i.e. no remote-through-the-internet commanding.
Mad respect for this old stuff
Thanks for saving it!

Offer still good.... How many and what size?

Oi, that was quick.

Size doesn't matter (That's what she said..... NOT. )
I guess whatever size you have the most / care the least about or whichever HDDs have the most bad sectors, LOL. Most of these will probably go towards my junky builds, so anything from 80 to 320 GB is fine... though I won't say no to higher capacity either. As for 2.5" or 3.5"... again, it doesn't matter, whichever you want to get rid of more.

And how many... OK, I still haven't done the tally yet, but I'll try to let you know soon. Probably over PM.
.
.
Oh wait, I have to free up space in my BCN mailbox, lol. I guess that has been piling up too. Gotta take a few moments for it too, I suppose.

To move on from fX - recently won a cheap combo consisting of a ASRock 890GX Extreme 4 + Phenom X6 1055T. Probably not the best Phenom chip I could get (considering there's the 1060T) but I sense it'll be likely better than a FX chip of the same kind.

Probably marginally, if at all.
AM3 was kind of a sad era for AMD, though not as bad as FM2. FM2 CPUs were literally like the early P4 era - high clock speeds, but no grunt behind it. Well, FM2 is even worse, IMO. Ask how I know.
The fact that a "dual-core" 3.4 GHz FM2 CPU with relatively modern graphics has about the same processing power as an AM2 X2 4800+ is kinda sad (well, in my case, I was running a X2 6000+ downclocked to 2.4 GHz from its stock 3 GHz to run cooler.)

BTW, I also acquired an FX-6100 CPU last year and fixed a mobo that can run it too. Wonder if it would have a chance of running Fornite better than my i5-2500 non-K, or at least somewhat comparable, being that it's a 6-core CPU. I don't have my hopes too high, but will see. Hopefully the mobo I fixed for it holds up. It had a shorted MOSFET on CPU VRM. Nothing I can't fix with my endless supply of Xbox 360 mobos and parts.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Today's freebie was a 27" iMac mid2010 with an I5 CPU and 4gb RAM. 1TB spinner. Mint condition. Owner just wanted the data off it. Apparently it won't go any higher than 'High Sierra'....good candidate for a native Windows install or Linux Mint.

The 27" Imac project was a nice success. Tested both Mint and Windows. Windows (server 2022STD eval) won the battle; as I had a few quirks I couldn't figure out with Mint....main thing was display dimmer control. I will create a thread for this eventually....but screw you apple! You did not successfully obsolesce this machine!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I don't have my hopes too high, but will see. Hopefully the mobo I fixed for it holds up. It had a shorted MOSFET on CPU VRM. Nothing I can't fix with my endless supply of Xbox 360 mobos and parts.

I wouldn't trust a mobo with repaired MOSFETs to run a FX at any rate. Those FX chips are capable of immolating the mainboards if MOSFETs aren't heatsinked. It's one of the reason I'm moving to a Phenom X6 - not the best choice but hopefully nowhere near as criminally hot as the FX-4100 I have.