Your Best Dumpster Finds

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by dood

Currently typing on a Dell Studio 1735 that I got for free. Hard drive and memory had been stripped. Had a note on it that the motherboard was bad, but I decided to check it out. Found that it would not detect a known good HD. I suspect that the goofy proprietary sata adaptor is bad.

So, this laptop is so beastly, it has a spot for a second hard drive (which uses a different kind of goofy SATA adaptor). I moved the drive over to there, and hey presto, a working laptop. I'm going to order a replacement primary adaptor, as well as the real secondary drive mounting kit, so that I have both.

Not a bad machine for free.... C2D 2.0ghz, Intel 965 graphics... runs Windows 7 just fine. I'll have to pick up some DDR2 to put in it, since I'm borrowing some for now just to test.





(And yes, I have the drive Scotch-taped into its spot, since Dell saw fit to use two different drive cages, as well as two different connectors...)

nice.

Spec wise, similar to a D830 minus the multiple hdd locations.

nice.

looks cool to me.

[PCBONEZ]

Originally Posted by dood

Currently typing on a Dell Studio 1735 that I got for free. Hard drive and memory had been stripped. Had a note on it that the motherboard was bad, but I decided to check it out. Found that it would not detect a known good HD. I suspect that the goofy proprietary sata adaptor is bad.

So, this laptop is so beastly, it has a spot for a second hard drive (which uses a different kind of goofy SATA adaptor). I moved the drive over to there, and hey presto, a working laptop. I'm going to order a replacement primary adaptor, as well as the real secondary drive mounting kit, so that I have both.

Not a bad machine for free.... C2D 2.0ghz, Intel 965 graphics... runs Windows 7 just fine. I'll have to pick up some DDR2 to put in it, since I'm borrowing some for now just to test.

(And yes, I have the drive Scotch-taped into its spot, since Dell saw fit to use two different drive cages, as well as two different connectors...)

~Finally~, a laptop with 2x HDDs stock.

So tell me,,,, Does the BIOS let you put them in RAID 1?
.

[dood]

Pretty much the same specs as my d620 that I use at work, as well. You can use a second hard drive with that machine, but only with the special media bay adaptor. The Studio has a slot-load DVD drive, so no media bay.

Also, the battery is shot... I dunno if I feel like replacing it right now, though. For the most part, this machine is just going to sit on my desk and be used as a 2nd PC when I'm gaming on my primary.

[dood]

Originally Posted by PCBONEZ

~Finally~, a laptop with 2x HDDs stock.

So tell me,,,, Does the BIOS let you put them in RAID 1?
.

Sadly, no. I've seen Dell laptops with RAID capability, but this one doesn't have it.

I also got an HP DV9000 for free that has two hard drive bays, but that one doesn't POST. I think it's got a dead nVidia chipset...

[PCBONEZ]

I'd love to know the model numbers of any laptops with BIOS supported RAID.
Looked for that for a while [years ago] but gave up and haven't thought about it since.
.
I have several old Gateway 1GHz P3 laptops that support up to 3 drives with bay swap adapters but none with system based RAID.
.

[mockingbird]

965 is ICH8M which allows AHCI capability, but not RAID. ICH7R does both.

[dood]

Originally Posted by PCBONEZ

I'd love to know the model numbers of any laptops with BIOS supported RAID.
Looked for that for a while [years ago] but gave up and haven't thought about it since.
.
I have several old Gateway 1GHz P3 laptops that support up to 3 drives with bay swap adapters but none with system based RAID.
.

I know there's some Sony Vaios that support RAID. I'm not sure if it's 0, or 1, though. I could set up this Dell with software RAID if I wanted to, but I'm not going to...

[PCBONEZ]

When they come up with a software RAID that supports multi-boot I'll be in there...
.
Until then I need a BIOS supported RAID to do what I want.
.

[kc8adu]

last week i got a 6 month old #27 deep cycle battery and a new in box 2x4 troffer out of my own dumpster.i forgot to lock it.maybe i should stop?my luck next time it will be junk tires or nuclear waste!
the battery just needed to be charged.the troffer had 1 busted bulb.
were not dumpstered but still free are 2 55" plasma tv's.
y buffer issues.already sold as soon as the boards come in.

[Koda]

Never ever found or got anything for free Only can hope to get a lappy or an LCD TV.

[mob]

19" Viewsonic VX912 (caps)
17" Iiyama TFT (caps)
Commodore 64 + module games + joysticks
Xbox
Sega Megadrive II
SGI Indy workstation - unable to test due to lack of proper display cable
3x IBM Model M keyboard
eMac G4 800MHz
PowerMac "graphite" G4 450MHz
4x PVR-DVB-t receivers with (caps and missing hdd's)
GVP SCSI hard disk and controller for Amiga 500
handfull of external hard disks (some with broken enclosure - hdd's were ok)
bunch of hard disks

and some other stuff..

[Per Hansson]

Managed Dell PowerConnect 2716 Gigabit Switch
Would not power up at all.

Tiny "startup cap" was dead, replaced ad it worked.
I heard some strange noises from it though, turned out the bulk cap was completely dead (but the switch still worked with it dead!)
I replaced that cap too with a nice new Samxon and now it's running great

[mockingbird]

Originally Posted by Per Hansson

Managed Dell PowerConnect 2716 Gigabit Switch
Would not power up at all.

Tiny "startup cap" was dead, replaced ad it worked.
I heard some strange noises from it though, turned out the bulk cap was completely dead (but the switch still worked with it dead!)
I replaced that cap too with a nice new Samxon and now it's running great

Somebody gave me a PowerConnect 2324. 24 port... Opened it up, PSU is all Jap caps, made by Delta... Logic board had Taicons that looked OK. I replaced ALL of the caps (Even the tiny ones which were already japs - must have been more than 20 of them). Lead holes were so small and it was RoHS slder, which made this very time consuming. It also has the rackmount brackets, but just take em off and you have a standard stackable switch. Only 10/100 though.

[tom66]

TODAY-

Dumpster by Dad's office, found a four slice toaster with two independent bread carriages. Plugged it in and it works fine and only had a bit of burnt toast stuck in it. Only minor issue is the bread clamps don't fully engage for one slot sometimes, but it just looks like it needs a bit of mechanical tweaking. Still toasts fine though. Checked prices... still sold new at £40. I think it was thrown out by nearby restaurant. Anyway the old toaster is going to a friend who needs one. Such a waste to throw it out when the local charity shop could have had it if it was going to the bin because it had been replaced.

Dumpster by <unnamed large electronics chain named after something astronomical... or at least their prices are. ZING!>, I found an awesome glass TV stand for any TV (wall mount bracket used) only problem was one of the small 30cm rods was missing but it is readily available at Wickes DIY. RRP £169.99. And just thrown outside to get broken!! Ridiculous.

Also found several component cabinets which were a bit worn (but still plenty usable). There were 5 cabinets but I could only fit two in the car . But that's still enough for all E12 resistors.

Oh and a bit of wood from a broken wood palette for firewood for Dad.

[Scenic]

Originally Posted by tom66

Dumpster by <unnamed large electronics chain named after something astronomical... or at least their prices are. ZING!>

http://static.zoonar.com/img/www_rep...f7f9f5b461.jpg

?

[mariushm]

Went to the mall a few days ago to eat and passed a store that has some recycling boxes where people can throw their stuff in.
Found a nice bag with several motherboards , a cpu cooler, an amd cpu... also got a few days before a dvd writer - no clue why it died, looked inside and didn't spot anything wrong.

on the first motherboard some agp traces are peeled, on the rest of the boards don't see anything jumping out but they're all using ost capacitors and lelon so maybe that could the problem.
oh the first uses panasonic fc for capacitors - don't know if they were original, soldering looks too nice to be replacements.

oh.. the person that owned these probably had a fetish for bioses and batteries... they're gone where it was possible to be removed.

I'm probably going to remove the headers and leds and inductors and maybe some of the linear voltage regulators to reuse on some microcontroller projects. those damn headers are "expensive" bought separately... about 40 cents each on digikey
The capacitors... I don't know, I don't have an esr meter yet and I like using quality caps... may probably save just some of the 8mm ones just in case.

inlining the pictures later as the attach function craps out.

[mockingbird]

The QDI has some nice Panasonic caps.

[lti]

Originally Posted by mariushm

a dvd writer - no clue why it died, looked inside and didn't spot anything wrong.

Nothing usually appears to be bad inside an optical drive when it dies.

[tom66]

Originally Posted by Scenic

http://static.zoonar.com/img/www_rep...f7f9f5b461.jpg

?

Comet.

[osaeed]

not really in the dumpster, but when me and my dad were tilling the backyard, I found this deep inside the dirt

http://www.x86-guide.com/Photos/Gran...20-%20haut.jpg

We used to have a amd machine a long time ago. It was a 450MHZ athlon k7. Played doom back then. Man those wonderful times!