best cheap/free scores 1.1

[TechGeek]

At least destroying solid-state media is pretty easy, just snap 'em in half and toss the pieces in a bin.

[Topcat]

At least destroying solid-state media is pretty easy, just snap 'em in half and toss the pieces in a bin.

I feed M.2's to my commercial document shredder. It chews them up like they're nothing.

[TechGeek]

Probably easier to munch on than a credit card offer envelope or an old CD.

[Topcat]

Swapped out an Arctic Freezer II 360mm for a client that for some reason wouldn't cool anymore despite the fact the pump was running and it didn't leak (no coolant loss). I built the system for the client back in 2020 or so. Client gave me the old one....so I dissected it to see where the failure was.... Drained about a cup of coolant out of it that looked nasty as hell and had clumps of crud in it. It appears that it clogged up the passages in the water block; and restricted flow to so little movement that a ryzen 7 5800 sitting idle was running @ 80*~100*c. Any kind of load on it would send it into a thermal shutdown. Back flushed the radiator and washed & cleaned all the sludge out of all the water block parts, and then refilled it with Dexcool.... Same CPU idling @ 30*c again. First time I've ever seen one fail....but come to find out it's not uncommon. The fix is easy if you're patient.

[Dan81]

Scored some more retro stuff:

2x Jasper 360s
Mercury KOB 730s FSMx - basically PCChips M810LR rev 7.1A, has VIA audio codec instead of C-Media/Realtek (thank god - the one on the green recapped M810 is a nightmare.). Came with a green XP1700, one of the CPUs that first got me into the retro business
MSI K7T266 Pro2-U w/ AXP 2000+, 2x DDR sticks (unknown size)
MS Industrial KY-400ATX - pretty beefy Sun Pro \
genuine PS3 Dualshock 3 - you'd be scared to find out how many fakes are out there.
genuine 360 controller
a cold beer

[Topcat]

Had a big dropoff of goodness from a local resort. The pick of the litter is a Precision T7910 dual 2011-3 workstation supporting E5 2xxx v4's. Gonna have some fun with this one.

[Dan81]

Compaq EVO D310v case, probably the next days (awaiting confirmation from my friend that he can give it away).

I'm tempted to build either a P4 or go Athlon XP w/ PCChips M810LR recap.

[Topcat]

Had a big dropoff of goodness from a local resort. The pick of the litter is a Precision T7910 dual 2011-3 workstation supporting E5 2xxx v4's. Gonna have some fun with this one.

Finally had a little time to see what was in this.... 2x E5-2690 v4 CPU's 14 cores per CPU; 28 total @ 2.6GHz....holy shit, 28 cores + HT! 64gb DDR4; 8x 8GB modules. Weaksauce NVS310 GPU, LSI 9361 SAS card w/ BBU. HDD's were 2x toshiba 1tb sata.

Not bad!

The fun has already begun...bought a few things for it...

[ChaosLegionnaire]

I had to reoder the PCI cards for one

ah ok. looks like a pci slot irq assignment problem. the creative soundblaster cards also had those problems. wouldnt work in some pci slots but were ok in others. had to keep moving the card around until it found a pci slot it liked and worked okay in... very fussy and picky hardware!

E5-2690 v4 CPU's 14 cores per CPU

looked that cpu up on wikipedia. turns out it cost US$2090 back in the day when it first came out. couldnt believe it... that price on just a cpu alone...

[jiroy]

ah ok. looks like a pci slot irq assignment problem. the creative soundblaster cards also had those problems. wouldnt work in some pci slots but were ok in others. had to keep moving the card around until it found a pci slot it liked and worked okay in... very fussy and picky hardware!

looked that cpu up on wikipedia. turns out it cost US$2090 back in the day when it first came out. couldnt believe it... that price on just a cpu alone...

Absolutely true .. A real nightmare back then . Specially with some dedicated PCI Cards which came originally with a specific IRQ that cannot be changed .

[dmill89]

looked that cpu up on wikipedia. turns out it cost US$2090 back in the day when it first came out. couldnt believe it... that price on just a cpu alone...

And now they go for around $30 on eBay (gotta love depreciation). At that price point they make a pretty good budget build option when combined with one of the many Chinese X99 motherboards that are flooding the market (or of course in an older workstation if you can get it for a decent price). Performance wise they're on-par with something like a Ryzen 5 5500 of I7-12400F, but since it is split across 14 cores rather than 6 in the newer CPUs the Xeon isn't as good in single threaded performance, and of course the Xeon is far less efficient with a 135W TDP rather than the 65W of the newer chips.

[Topcat]

And now they go for around $30 on eBay (gotta love depreciation). At that price point they make a pretty good budget build option when combined with one of the many Chinese X99 motherboards that are flooding the market (or of course in an older workstation if you can get it for a decent price). Performance wise they're on-par with something like a Ryzen 5 5500 of I7-12400F, but since it is split across 14 cores rather than 6 in the newer CPUs the Xeon isn't as good in single threaded performance, and of course the Xeon is far less efficient with a 135W TDP rather than the 65W of the newer chips.

True. I've got nothing in the T7910 workstation. By the time I build it out to my liking, I'll have ~$200 in it.... A barebones T7910 sells on ebay with lesser hardware for $250 and up + ship, this one will be outfitted well above & beyond that. I'll still make a buck on it in the end....but I'd hate to know what the pricetag for this was when it was new!

[Dan81]

Gutted a C2D BTX prebuilt:

- Chieftec-Delta GPS-350FB-101 A PSU (yum!)
- 80GB Sammy HDD
- T H I C C A F Akasa 8cm fan (suspecting a rebranded Delta)
- Samsung DVDRW
- sleeved PATA cable
- Intel DQ965CO mobo

Other stuff today
- Panasonic Smart TV pre-Vestel buyout
- Xpertvision Radeon 9000 64MB AGP

Tomorrow:
- big retro component lot, among which there is a Quantum Bigfoot.

[Dan81]

So, recent stuff:

- 2x Quantum Bigfoot CY 2160AT - one is dead with unreadable sectors, the other is absolutely fine (managed to partition and format just fine)
- ASUS A52JE - i5 540m+ HD 5470M. Interestingly glossy case (a bit uncharacteristic for the 52 series) and the CPU as well, as I have yet had to encounter a 5xx series CPU. 320GB 7.2k HDD, a Hitachi.
- Chieftec custom-build w/ M2N4-SLI, 450W Chieftec-Delta PSU, 8400GS Rev2 (G98), Samsung 320GB HDD
- ASUS F3SL that had a 8400MG in need of a reflow and some proper thermal paste application. Whoever thought an aluminium square tape over the copper that goes over the GPU is a good idea needs to be fired.
- Seagate Medalist 4321 - working, neat shape! One of Seagate's better drives IMO.
- Quantum Fireball Plus AS 20GB - also working and as a bonus, has 98SE installed already. Will have to pull my 440LX/Deschutes 300 mobo tho, as the dual P3 MSI spits out an insufficient memory error. (1.5GB SDR).
- Quantum Fireball 630AT 630MB - might be bad as only 310MB managed to get tested. I might have a chance fixing it with either Spinrite or DiskGenius.
- Fujitsu MPE3102AT - dead apparently. Produces garbled text during POST.
- Fujitsu MPB3021AT - works

[noppa]

So, recent stuff:

- 2x Quantum Bigfoot CY 2160AT - one is dead with unreadable sectors, the other is absolutely fine (managed to partition and format just fine)
- ASUS A52JE - i5 540m+ HD 5470M. Interestingly glossy case (a bit uncharacteristic for the 52 series) and the CPU as well, as I have yet had to encounter a 5xx series CPU. 320GB 7.2k HDD, a Hitachi.
- Chieftec custom-build w/ M2N4-SLI, 450W Chieftec-Delta PSU, 8400GS Rev2 (G98), Samsung 320GB HDD
- ASUS F3SL that had a 8400MG in need of a reflow and some proper thermal paste application. Whoever thought an aluminium square tape over the copper that goes over the GPU is a good idea needs to be fired.
- Seagate Medalist 4321 - working, neat shape! One of Seagate's better drives IMO.
- Quantum Fireball Plus AS 20GB - also working and as a bonus, has 98SE installed already. Will have to pull my 440LX/Deschutes 300 mobo tho, as the dual P3 MSI spits out an insufficient memory error. (1.5GB SDR).
- Quantum Fireball 630AT 630MB - might be bad as only 310MB managed to get tested. I might have a chance fixing it with either Spinrite or DiskGenius.
- Fujitsu MPE3102AT - dead apparently. Produces garbled text during POST.
- Fujitsu MPB3021AT - works

For Fujitsu MPE3102AT check IDE connector for bent or damaged pins.

[Dan81]

They're all straight. Drive doesn't complete seek test properly but does not spin down, causing garbled text.

[Dan81]

Finally got around and got the dual Coppermine monster in a not-really-retro-but-it-looks-cool case - a Deepcool Tesseract BF I bought for the BP6, originally, in fear that I wouldn't have a case to house it in (which I later found, a Chieftec behemoth that almost BROKE MY SPINE)








Final specs:

Case: Deepcool Tesseract BF
MB: MSI 694D Pro-AR
CPUs: 2x Pentium 3 SL52R, 1GHz/133FSB/256k L2
RAM: 1.5GB SDRAM, PC133
HDDs: WD Raptor 74GB 10k (SATA2IDE, bootdrive), Seagate Cheetah 36GB 10k ST336607LW (SCSI, storage drive)
GPU: Gecube Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB w/ Omega drivers
LAN: Realtek RTL8169SC Gigabit LAN
USB2.0: NEC
SCSI controller: Adaptec AHA-2940UW
TV Tuner: InnoDV SmartTV PCI w/ SAA7131 chipset
PSU: Chieftec-Delta GPS-450AA-101 A, 450W (w/ white Gamemax fan)
ODD: TSSTCorp SH-S182D DVDRW
OS: XP Pro SP3 VLK

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Quantum Fireball Plus AS 20GB - also working and as a bonus, has 98SE installed already. Will have to pull my 440LX/Deschutes 300 mobo tho, as the dual P3 MSI spits out an insufficient memory error. (1.5GB SDR).

it sounds like it just lacks the proper system.ini settings to boot with >1gb ram. just boot it in command prompt only or safe mode command prompt only and edit system.ini to limit the vcache and maxphyspage to 384-512mb and 1gb respectively and it should boot.

[Topcat]

HDDs: WD Raptor 74GB 10k (SATA2IDE, bootdrive), Seagate Cheetah 36GB 10k ST336607LW (SCSI, storage drive)

I'd flip those roles. Use the smaller 36GB 10k SCSI for boot, it'll perform far better than the 74gb IDE for booting.

PS.
I've got a goodie box packed for you....just havent had a chance to get to the PO. I got a quote online and it seems way too cheap....so I want a hard quote from the horse's mouth.

[Dan81]

Technically the 74GB is SATA2IDE, so I'm maxing out the IDE channel output. As in, the drive itself is SATA at its core.

btw I think I tested both drives' speed on HDSentinel (as it has a seek test feature, or something close to that but I forgot their wording) and both were almost equal in speeds - the Cheetah was barely any faster, despite being SCSI.