best cheap/free scores 1.1

[SuperDuty]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Just got a HP 6820s, it's been sitting outside for a while (there were earthworms on it lol), but it's complete and in pretty good condition. I'm cleaning it completely, there is water trapped beneath the BGA chips of the motherboard so I'll let it dry. None of the components seem damage, just dirty, and a tiny bit of rust on some of the steel parts. The worse seem to be the WiFi card but who knows. I have quite a few of those anyway.
Inside is a Core 2 Duo T7500, 2x1Gb of DDR2 and a ATi X1350 with 128Mb of dedicated memory on a 17" screen, and a 160Gb hard drive. I have good hope to get it back to life since it doesn't have the bad GeForce chips from the same era. It could be a pretty good machine. The GPU is old, but at least it can play games like Source engine games (I could play L4D2 with a X600M and a Pentium M 750).

EDIT : the HDD works, that's a good sign ^^

EDIT2 : Yay the motherboard works !!! One more laptop, and a pretty good one. The flat panel has water in it though, I'll try to clean it but I have two spare ones so it's not a big deal.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an HP officejet 6500 for $8. Included ink.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an HP officejet 6500 for $8. Included ink.

Once you run out of ink, that printer is going to become a big paperweight (as I bet the ink for it is quite expensive). The local CL here is flooded with similar free inkjet printers - and I still wouldn't touch one unless I needed some gears/motors/optical sensors out of it.

But I guess if you print more than 160 pages out of it with that ink cartridge, then it wasn't a bad deal ($0.05/page).

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Once you run out of ink, that printer is going to become a big paperweight (as I bet the ink for it is quite expensive). The local CL here is flooded with similar free inkjet printers - and I still wouldn't touch one unless I needed some gears/motors/optical sensors out of it.

But I guess if you print more than 160 pages out of it with that ink cartridge, then it wasn't a bad deal ($0.05/page).

Not really. Remanu ink is $12 for a large black tank and $10 per M/C/Y tank. For name brand, $20 per black and $10 per color.

It's not some throwaway POS one... heck it even has a duplexer and wireless (not to be confused the the base model 6500 which lacked both)... Yeah, it's HP, but a high end officjet HP.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not really. Remanu ink is $12 for a large black tank and $10 per M/C/Y tank. For name brand, $20 per black and $10 per color.

The question is, how many pages can you get out of one cartridge?

It's not some throwaway POS one...

I hate to break it to you (pun intended), but it is. We had some 8000 series officejets in my workplace and they were all plastic-fantastic inside. Most common problem was a broken plastic toothed ring in the paper feed mechanism. Requires the whole printer to be taken apart down to the smallest bolt and screw to get to it.

I got a large box of motors, gears, optical sensors, and other goodies out of the 2 we threw out, though.

The scanner is nice, though. I have a crappy consumer-level Epson AIO, and all I keep it for is the scanner.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Brand new in 2009 it was a $500 unit... yeah, the insides are plastic, but it looks pretty well built.

Not sure how the yields are... It uses the HP 920 series of cartridges. Supposedly the high yield 920xl set is good for up to 1200 pages...

[tom66]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

46" Full HD Panasonic Plasma.
Won it for £71 on eBay listed as not working "half screen distorted".
Turns out only fault was loose cable between A & D board.
Has run fine for over two weeks now.

[DJduck]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got a free dell c400 for free from another forum. Only paid the post €2.79 = around 4 dollars. Has no hdd and charger, and a broken hinge. Don't know the condition, not tested. It has one of them older 3pin chargers, PA-6 or PA-8. PIII M 1.2 ghz, 1gb of pc 133 sdram. Battery is empty or dead.

[SuperDuty]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I won an auction on eBay last week for five supposedly dead Graphics cards :
- HIS Radeon HD5850 with the box and all the bundle (nothing on screen)
- Radeon HD4850 (nothing on screen)
- Radeon HD4890 (nothing on screen)
- GeForce GTS250 (nothing on screen)
- GeForce 9600GT (artefacts)

All of this for...15.5€, plus 20€ for the shipping (the french postal service is awfully slow and expensive for such a small country). It should arrive this week.
Even if I repaired only one of them, it would still be a good deal. If not, well they would be good additions to my collection !

[newtothis]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Most recent and decent find has got to be my now two spare pc's...

First one is and Emachines E4264

Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 CPU
1Gb DDR2 533mhz RAM
80GB HDD
Nvidia GS8400 512MB PCI-E Graphics card
DVD RW Super Multi Format optical drive

Second is a custom Build

Intel Q6600 Cpu
8GB Kingston DDR2 800mhz RAM
2 x Nvidia 8600 GT graphics in SLI config
500GB SATA 2 Raptor HDD
Multi Optical Writer
15 in 1 Card Reader
All housed in a ThermalTake Tsunami Dream case.

Both systems would not post.... connected speaker to F_panel Jumpers and tried again.... Both system beeps indicated RAM Failure... So popped RAM out of both systems and cleaned contacts and reseated... Emachines booted fine but Custom gave same error... Airblasted the DIMM sockets and reseated RAM.... BAM!!! Booted fine

[SuperDuty]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Well well, I've received the cards this morning and so far:
the HD4850 works...
I've repaired the HD5850 : a little Z08K 5 pin component was gone, found another one on an old dead Ti4400, and bam, started right up

It even comes with the complete bundle in great condition.
The 9600GT does indeed makes awful artefacts
The HD4890 is actually a 4870 1Gb :/ doesn't work indeed.
The GTS250 doesn't work either.
I haven't looked closely at those three yet.

[Phaihn]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Spooky, Phaihn - I found the same PC a couple days back. Going to try and fire it up tmorrow. 500GB HD. Maybe there's a reason people toss them. *
Found a Toshiba Satellite Laptop - BIOS password locked. Took an hour to read up online, jumper a pin and presto.
LOts other stuff, gotta know where to look*

i assume it was tossed cause of the bad PSU i havent tried to turn it on yet need to pickup a good PSU for it.

[CamW]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Gotta be my 512MB Sapphire 3870 I found IN THE BOX with ALL ORIGINAL ACCESORIES.

[Heihachi_73]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Found a PS2 Slim and first-gen Xbox on a roadside collection tonight. Both systems were missing controllers and other peripherals, however I already have a PS2 Slim power brick (also a trash-find from last year) and many games for my current 'fat' PS2; I won't be able to test the Xbox for a while as I have never owned one before; it's pointless just powering it up with just a figure-8 AC cable alone.

The PS2 works, but only with CDs; DVD-based games don't load at all. Good enough for Tekken Tag I suppose.

[Lobo]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

My friend's daughter gave me an iPOD touch 4 with a shattered screen. She told me to "just get rid of it". It also needed a wifi antenna, and home button.

For about $30 in parts, I am now the proud owner of a very expensive, overrated, Apple, Facebook, Google tracking device.


:P

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The 9600GT does indeed makes awful artefact

That one should make it alive too. Just reflow GPU and RAM (don't forget to use flux).
You got a pretty good deal with those video cards.

Got a free dell c400 for free from another forum. Only paid the post €2.79 = around 4 dollars. Has no hdd and charger, and a broken hinge. Don't know the condition, not tested. It has one of them older 3pin chargers, PA-6 or PA-8. PIII M 1.2 ghz, 1gb of pc 133 sdram. Battery is empty or dead.

Classic solid laptop. The only downside is those Latitude C series laptops won't take more than 512 MB or RAM, and even for that you need low-density 256 MB sticks which are hard to find (and will probably cost much more than what you paid for the laptop too )
I got a C600. Still kicking along - even its 13 year old battery holds a 1 hour charge. I use it regularly too.

[Phaihn]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

got for $35 a c2d motherboard and cpu 2x512mb ddr2 a wd 250gb hard drive and a ide opitical drive and a cheap power supply there was a case i just took everything out and tossed the case it looked like crap anyway. looks like it was a MDG special.

[Phaihn]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

got for $35 a c2d motherboard and cpu 2x512mb ddr2 a wd 250gb hard drive and a ide opitical drive and a cheap power supply there was a case i just took everything out and tossed the case it looked like crap anyway. looks like it was a MDG special.

ok it might be a Pentium d at least according to the bios someone must have swapped the cpu at some point.

oh well ill switch it out with the Core2Quad i got from my friends computer.

[shovenose]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Getting a 1U SuperMicro server with dual quad core Xeon CPUs, 32GB, and four hot-swap SATA bays
Two of these will use a crapton of power, and it's noisy, but I couldn't resist a good deal!
http://ark.intel.com/products/33088/...z-1600-MHz-FSB

[Elysarian]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Recently picked up a Dell Poweredge 2600 server with a pair of 73GB HDD's, two 2.6GHz Xeons and 2GB ram for less than £50 including shipping!

right now it's running a (kosher) copy of server 2003 I've had laying around forever and SQL 2008 R2 (the latter for a project I'm working on), just need to decide what to do with it beyond this...

when I got it I was hoping it would take a pair of 64-bit s604 processors but it seems these aren't supported by even the latest bios

Guess I'll have to go with plan B: max out the RAM and put another four HDDs in there unless there's someone out there who knows a way to hack the BIOS into working with the later, 64-bit Xeons?