Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

[mariushm]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

You know, you could just get a <0.5$ PIC10/PIC12 micro with ADC and built in oscillator and use a current shunt to monitor the current consumption of the fan and output a tacho signal (something fixed at 1000-2000 rpm or something like that) as long as the current used by fan is within some limits.
Less than 1$ for everything but on the other hand if it saves a few dollars per fan...

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

Hmm. I do wonder whether some fans are true to word whether they're sleeve or ball or whatnot. Alas the hotswap bay does not get as hot as a chipset or GPU so it might last a little longer.

i strip fans and check them - then add new oil.

yea what stj said. only way to know for sure is to strip open the shaft and have a look inside. take a look at this topic about the vantec spectrum pci fan card i posted! liars!!! lol!

next, i want to rant and talk about ebay sellers who misrepresent their items. have a look at this listing i found.

Item condition: New other (see details)

Its looking like Brand new just I used it for month or less every thing in package the item shown in pix the same item you receive it and all information about it shown in pic. please read it before you bid on it for fitment the sale in final No return . Thanks

srsly, please... if its used, just mark the blardy thing as used. dont over-represent stuff and think u can get away with it in the DSR (detailed seller ratings) feedback.

there are so many sellers that sell stuff either new or used but say they are sold as-is, no returns etc. if u're unsure if its working, please just list it as faulty for parts or not working and price it accordingly. by marking the item as used or new, its an implicit guarantee its working thus ebay buyer protection will cover any doa issues with the item!

its either used or not, new or not and working or not. it cannot be half-new or half-working or any of that shit! dont be a trashbay seller!

[stj]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

lol,
that gfx card has a LOT of rub marks on the dvi connector - he must have plugged and unplugged it a lot in a month!

[eccerr0r]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

Dang, I marked things as used even if I just took it out to test to make sure it still works, then write that's all I did with it.

---

Those fans, I don't think I've rarely seen a real ball bearing brushless fan. Then again I don't check until they fail...

[6BW6]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

Don't forget the faked Hakko soldering stations.

Dave

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

Dang, I marked things as used even if I just took it out to test to make sure it still works, then write that's all I did with it.

thats fine to mark it as new since it was only in operation briefly for a few hours for testing. all products sold on the shelves are used albeit only for a few hours for factory testing to see if they work before leaving the factory (QA testing).

also, i notice many china sellers selling things as new but they state in their listing that the item will be tested before being shipped out. i think what they are doing is right and smart. mark the item as new but say it will be tested before being shipped out. it should be fine to do that imo.

the issue i have is that the ebay seller in the link i posted used the item for a month!!! and still dares to claim that it is new... ugh...

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

here's an ebay listing of a wd 500gb ide hard drive with the casing around the molex connector broken. thats how NOT to treat your hard drive and charge an outrageous price for it!!!

[diif]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

I bought one of those cheap 40w stick irons with the big copper end to have a play with tab bonds. It came with a foreign plug, so I snipped the end and stripped back some insulation....
wtf !! I think I've cut it too deep there's only a few strands. So I did it again and just the same.
I unscrewed the handle and yes....7 stands for the live and 9 for the earth.
I unsoldered it completely and replaced with a quality lead and plug from my parts bin.

[stj]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

that will probaby trash the tabs,

there is a video over on eevblog where davy fixes the tab on a fluke scopemeter by heating with a hot-air station and then pressing it down as it cooled wih a bit of rubber.

[diif]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

It has got a rubber strip to go on the end. I wasn't going to try it naked
Yes I've seen that video, it looked promising and this thing was about £6 from Ali.

[Viperel]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

500gb ide hard drive with the casing around the molex connector broken and charge an outrageous price for it!!!

50$ for an 6yo 500GB PATA HDD with 16MB cache...
Wonder who buys stuff like that when for the same money a 120GB SSD can be bought or a new 1TB HDD.

[stj]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

if you need pata then you dont have much choice.

[momaka]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

Does anyone have experience or know if the cheap LED conversion kits for LCD monitors are good? I have a 22 inch 16:10 LCD that has a bad CCFL (connector burned and CCFL has cracked seal), and I'm wondering whether I should get a replacement CCFL from LCDParts (it will run me about $10 with shipping) or get a cheap kit on eBay for like $7.

I'm looking at this one currently:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/490mm-LED-Ba...oAAOSwFfhXjds0

Any ideas on quality of the LEDs? Will they last more than 5 years?

It came with a foreign plug, so I snipped the end and stripped back some insulation....
wtf !! I think I've cut it too deep there's only a few strands. So I did it again and just the same.
I unscrewed the handle and yes....7 stands for the live and 9 for the earth.

Haha, that terrible. I've seen thin wires like that only on very cheap RCA audio connectors and headphones.
On the positive side, that crappy cord can serve as a built-in fuse
... or a heating element, if you put more than 1 Amp of current thought it.

here's an ebay listing of a wd 500gb ide hard drive with the casing around the molex connector broken. thats how NOT to treat your hard drive and charge an outrageous price for it!!!

Yeah, don't get me started on that. I browse eBay a lot, and some of the things I see there make me want to go slap the people that post these items. Some of them are straight-up garbage , yet the sellers ask for outrageous prices.

One of the stupidest I've seen was this seller/e-cycler offering computer CPUs, RAM, and other cards for gold recovery, but he had already cut all of the gold pins on the CPUs and the RAM (yes - CUT!) And any of the cards/motherboards that had inductors were also removed for the copper. Heatsinks and aluminum capacitors? -Nope, gone for aluminum recycling too. So what do you get from these scrap boards? Answer: PCBs with barely anything on them... i.e. NOTHING.

Not that I care, since I don't really do gold recycling. But what I really found outrageous was that some of the scrap boards that this seller had in the auction were actually worth 10x more if he were to sell the items in "as-is" condition. Some of the CPUs were actually recent and fairly decent AMDs.

if you need pata then you dont have much choice.

There are 250 GB PATA HDDs in my local Micro Center going for $15 a pop, or thereabouts. Re-certified, of course, but I've bought many of their refurb/re-certified stuff before and never gotten a bad one.

[stj]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

the led kits are good, but i'v not seen that invertor before.

as for 5 years - they have not been around long enough to know.

[momaka]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

That's what I am worried about. Given that LED backlights have problems even from supposedly okay manufacturers like LG and Samsung, I trust the cheap LEDs in these strips even less. Sure I get a full replacement backlight kit for a price that is less than even a single CCFL... but if I have to tear the monitor apart again in a few years, that's no fun.

So I think I might go with the replacement CCFL here. The inverter in the monitor looks healthy and well-built too, so it should last for a while. The replacement CCFL from LCDParts should also arrive much quicker, since it ships from the US (which is good, because I want to get done with this monitor and close it up.)

Also, I've bought many flexible LED strips before to use as lightning, and they don't last for shit. Half a year, and they loose their brightness output almost in half. Then some of the LEDs start dying after a year or so - and that's with a well-regulated 12V DC power supply. I found that the problem with those is that the LEDs are overdriven. Typically, the arrangement is 3 LEDs in series followed by a 150 Ohm resistor to limit the current for them. This resistor is okay if the strip is used with a 8.5 to 9.5 Volt power supply. But when used at the suggested 12V, the LEDs will draw exponentially more current and will burn out rather fast. Using them in a car is even worse, as the voltage there is easily above 13V.

What I find even more amusing is that on a lot of the white 5050 size LED strips, only one of the three LEDs in each array is used... which is good, because when the LEDs burn out or loose too much brightness, you can disconnect the first LED ring and wire in the second. I got a few dead LED strips for free and was able to salvage them. Needless to say, I am now running them on 9V. Drawing about 250 mA for a 3 meter strip - not bad! That's about 1/4 of what they drew at 12V.

[stj]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

i trust the led kits, they run cool and use a lot more led's than shit like LG does from the factory.

[momaka]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

i trust the led kits, they run cool and use a lot more led's than shit like LG does from the factory.

That's good.
Sounds really tempting. But I think I should still go with the CCFL for that 22" LCD. I really want to get it done by the end of the month.

That said, I do also have a very old rack-mountable 15" LCD meant for server rooms... a Compaq TFT5000. That thing ran until you could barely see anything on the screen. The CCFLs were so deteriorated from age and use that the inverters were starting to get cooked trying to drive them. Funny thing is, everything still works. Only problem is, the screen is only capable of 1024x768 and analog input. So I don't even know if it's worth repairing. I guess I might fix it just for fun some day. It's very heavy (weights about half of a 17" CRT - no joke!) and takes a lot of space for an LCD. Would be nice to find it a new home.

[stj]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

if it's that old, you should open it and see if it's edge-lit.
i had an ancient 15" panel and it was backlit by 6 tubes!!!

[momaka]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

Already did that a long time ago.
It's edge-lit, with one tube at the top and one at bottom.

If it was backlit, I would probably have fixed it with some cheap leftover LED strips.

It also crossed my mind to take that 22" LCD monitor and stick the TFT in the case of my dead Sony GDM-FW900 monitor, then use a regular light bulb on the back for the light.

[stj]

Re: Cheap Ebay Stuff: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Post Your Reviews

that's been done on an eastern european website years ago.
the guy put a standard batten holder & cfl in the back of the case and removed the aluminium backplate from the lcd panel.