best cheap/free scores 1.1

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

How would doing that force the old BCN system into retirement?

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

How would doing that force the old BCN system into retirement?

Because it's a tower server, not a rackmount. Sure, he could recase them... but the big "point" of such a server is that it *is* a massive tower!

To be honest, this is why I didn't expect Topcat to be interested when I passed along the finding of such racks (or rather, Purdue Surplus posted such on their facebook page and my mom noticed!

Ah, what a better thing to do on a sunny day, no?

Really cool pictures, BTW!

That neighborhood reminds me of what this place kind of looked like 20 years ago before every little house sold and got torn down for one of those newer "McMansions".

That's where I lived before I moved out to Madison. Good old New Albany, IN.

I'm assuming the masked guy is TC?? He looks like a total Ninja, lol.

Nope, that's my dad. I'm the guy in the tan work jacket. Remember, these were taken from my parents' house (why I'd be leaving with the racks loaded in the truck).

It's good to hear they are selling their old equipment.

Here, it all just goes to "recyclers" now. Every once in a while, I might see one in the local CL from a local office disbanding / moving and selling old equipment. But from what I've seen, most racks didn't look anywhere near as good. I recall only one did, and of course it got taken very quickly. Not that I was looking to buy it or anything. But curious anyways, as usual.

I've gotten a lot of stuff from there over the years. Such as my black sheep Dell Latitude D630 (that I got a lot of hate here and in person for, why I call it the black sheep)... and countless other things. They sell anything Purdue wants to get rid of... vehicles, industrial/commercial/lab equipment... office supplies... anything non-perishable. Also impounded (abandoned) bicycles (I've bought a few, they're mostly Walmart POSs, but legit ones have shown up on occasion). A lot of stuff does get recycled if it doesn't sell (or can't be sold)... but most of that is junk we wouldn't want anyway.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

How would doing that force the old BCN system into retirement?

...because the right combination of hardware and also being able to house all the networking equipment in there would definitely doom the old 'black beauty' into obsolescence. Since it's also fully enclosed & secure, it's also a great place to house components that run the security system. As thick as it is, it would easily stop a .22 round and likely larger.....by the time someone busted into it, they'd already have been 'had'..... Of course, this build (or series of builds) will take some time & planning....it will be a complete revamping....which is needed, there's a reason I've never shown what's inside the network cabinet where the patch panel & other networking hardware lives.....

The minute RD said fully enclosed beige, I got real excited!!

Thanks again Ratdude!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

If the beige one is in the garage, I guess it must be too big for the electronics work area, lol.

They're both about the same size.....but they fit in the electronics room....the black one on casters for sure. As for the shower stall comment, I can stand in it and completely turn around!! ....so if all else fails!!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...5&postcount=69

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Another cheap pickup (basically the cost of shipping). When I spotted it, I was more interested in the very vintage (circa 1992) Enlight AT full tower case.....that just happen to have a Micronic 486 DX2 system in it with a blistering DX2/50 (66 @ turbo speed) CPU, 16mb RAM (HUGE expensive amount in 1992), and a blazing ISA Trident 512k GPU in it.

The $20 gamble paid off! DX4 @ 100MHz fired right off (Intel). I didn't even have to play musical jumpers.





The full build of this will be for another time...but there's good "bones" here to work with!

[Camarada78]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I got a 1954 RCA 44BX ribbon microphone in working condition for around 500USD. Repaired the grid, new cloth and cable. Resold for 3000USD a few months later.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nope, that's my dad. I'm the guy in the tan work jacket. Remember, these were taken from my parents' house (why I'd be leaving with the racks loaded in the truck).

Doh! Of course, why would TC drive all the way to you and then both of you drive back to his place? Makes no sense indeed... but my mind's brain farts sometimes can't be helped.

I got a 1954 RCA 44BX ribbon microphone in working condition for around 500USD. Repaired the grid, new cloth and cable. Resold for 3000USD a few months later.

Nice!
Always good to hear saving well-made old stuff and putting them back in service again.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Brought back my old HP G6 from the grave, more or less. It had an Quanta R23 mobo, with a pretty nasty burn on the underside of a MOSFET in the charging section. Surprisingly, it charged and worked fine without it, but I wasn't going to take any more risks.

Hence why I got a free Quanta R12 (HM55+ HD6470M) from a scrapped for parts G6 (broken LCD) a friend of mine had, although I had to purchase the cooler separately (he sold the HSF before I got the mobo) and had to harvest a i3-380M from an Toshiba that is currently in pretty bad shape currently.

The only issue I face with it are of course, drivers, because HP and AMD couldn't be arsed to provide a working HD6470M driver for the HM55, only for the HM65 variant.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Was given a Dell Inspiron 24" 3464 series I3 7th gen, 16gb DDR4 RAM and a 1tb spinner today. Came from a house full of cockyroaches..... All were dead, but the exterior of the case and the stand are nasty. Case interior wasn't bad, surprisingly enough....but between the roaches & animal piss, the stand is really bad....and I can't seem to find one on ebay. Brick missing, but powered it off my bench supply and it works....but it'll need a lot of cleaning!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Bought another G6, this time a G6-2238sq. 2nd gen Pentium B960 on a 3rd gen (HM76) mobo w/ 1GB HD7670M and 4GB (now 8) of RAM, 500GB HDD. Spark clean outside, but enough dust bunnies inside to plant a tree, as well as thermal paste that was as dry as the Sahara desert. Cleaned, repasted, and replaced the B960 with an i3-2330M (didn't push my luck trying an i7-2670QM), as well as replacing the 500GB with a brand new 2TB Seagate pull I bought last year. The only things left to do is reinstall Windows using UEFI, as the 2TB was previously used in a Acer 5750 I had before this G6, and of course the driver hunt.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Since this thread seemed kinda dead, figured I'd post a few updates.

1. Figured out both HP G6s. HP, in their absolute idiocracy (because I literally can't word it otherwise), stated that the fix for that issue would be flashing an BIOS they provide that supposedly says it has the option for switching the GPU type to fixed - thing is, most people who flashed the BIOS have NEVER got that. The only fix was installing AMD (and Intel)'s own drivers and configuring it to optimize for battery and go full high performance for AC, as well as set each program I want to use accordingly - office/home stuff uses Intel HM55 IGP, and more demanding stuff (i.e Vegas Pro and games usually) uses the 6470M (which btw is registering as 7400M series and there's nothing I can do to fix that). Same procedure was done on the G6-2000, with the mention that the 2000 doesn't have any option for switchable graphics mode whatsoever. So it's kinda like nVidia and their Optimus technology, except you don't have a clear telling sign that the dGPU is used - the only giveaway is by checking the games performance - if it lags, you're on IGP - if it runs smoothly, you're on the dGPU.

2. Have scored a nice Seagate ST31000528AS for use on my external HDD enclosure. Traded in another Seagate (a ST1000LM024) so no biggie about that.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Since this thread seemed kinda dead

I haven't gotten much lately.... :-/

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Since this thread seemed kinda dead

I've been too lazy to type a proper post with some of the stuff I've gotten lately, given all the other threads I blast with mega-posts. Otherwise, I've gotten a few things here and there.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I haven't gotten much lately.... :-/

Same here... did get "something", but it wasn't really a "cheap/free" score.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an ASUS X54HR from a friend:

Pentium B960
4GB Hynix DDR3 RAM (from an HP very likely due to the CT and SPS numbers printed on it)
500GB Seagate HDD w/ some old games, movies and drivers for the lappy
Radeon HD7470M 1GB DDR3
battery that is in an unknown state
puny 3.42A cube-shaped ASUS charger that's supposedly original to the machine (yeah right. The laptop pulls at least 3.97A, so no way that thing is stock to it.)

Works fine although that puny charger got decommisioned and an properly patched up 6A Li Shin Intl. charger.

[BigTroll]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got a Free Lenovo ThinkPad E550 that was going to the junk pile, was excited when I saw the i7 sticker but its a dual core i7, has a 2gb r7 265 though. I got 8gb ram in it now and a 500gb hitachi but going to replace it with a 250GB samsung 870 EVO.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a free Acer 7720G.

Has a G86-635-A2 chip, I'm guessing this is one of the safe chips as most pictures show white underfill similar to G9x series. C2D T5750, 3GB DDR2, 17 inch 1440x900 screen, Intel 3945ABG WLAN. Had no HDDs and charger so I had to improvise something from an ASUS charger - bent the center pin clips just a bit so they make contact with Acer's smaller center pin, and it's been working fine so far.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Figured out why the G86 was a better one in this unit. It's a 9300M G - relabeled 8400M G that uses the newer G9x underfill. Will probably swap it for a HD3470 or a 9600M w/ modded BIOS though. Will also swap in a 1920x1200 screen probably, since the stock 1440x900 it has is badly yellowed.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored one of Th3_uN1Qu3's fave machines - a 512MB 8600M based HP DV9000, model DV9730ef.

All it needed was a reflow, repaste (as the old one was horribly crappy) as well as some RAM and a ghetto charger. Has a 250GB HDD and, much to my utter surprise, an actual HD-DVD drive! (Toshiba TS-L802A I think)

Anyways, all that's left to do is check the HDD life and install 7 on it (currently has an botched incomplete 10 install)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Had a walk-in drop a pickup load of relics....

In the pile is a custom-built system, plexiglass front & side from early 2000-ish era, has a Athlon XP in it. An IBM PS2/77 486 DX2 @ 33MHz, 16mb RAM, and a 540mb scsi hdd. Sometimes it boots, sometimes it doesn't. It's complete, even including the old clickety keyboard. There was also a complete CTX system with monitor, AMD K6-2 @ 333, 256mb RAM and a 8.4gb HDD....the oddity here was the Super 7 board with an AGP and no onboard GPU. Some HP system with an AMD Athlon in it....a Toshiba Satellite P4-era laptop without the charger....but tested off my bench supply, it works. A newer 24" Samsung LED IPS monitor, a 22" LED AOC monitor, and the usual laundry basket full of keyboards, mice, and other whatnots that breed at night.











The old IBM PS2 will be a fun one to tinker with; albeit pretty useless.... The case with the plexiglass is in very good condition....a little 'blingy' for my normal taste, but would beautifully house a VP6 retro gamer system and remain period-specific...case quality is good (not great), but not completely flimsy like today's trash. As for the rest, meh, more stuff to tinker with.