Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Since the discovery of the damaged USB and the good fellas that helped track down the piece to fix it, I'm at a standstill waiting for the part from China....which will be weeks probably....so I went ahead and reassembled this minus the missing port.... It takes all of 5 minutes to remove the board, so when it gets here I'll install it. The 8gb RAM module got here, so now it indeed has 16gb. I also stuck a 240gb SSD in it and reassembled it.

Installed S2K12 R2. The only driver issue was as per the usual; the Intel GPU driver shell game.....but I finally found one that worked. Everything else was supported/worked with the drivers from Dell's site.

The white bezel looks good, all things considered.



Goodness!!



When updating Windows, WUS was bitching about an unsupported CPU by the older OS.....I installed the most recent rollup update and that issue went away....but geez....between M$ and Intel and their constant quest for forced obsolescence..... ...but all things are happy!

Now a better look at the 2-tone look....black back cover and white fascia. The oddball is the gray stand. I actually thought about taking the plastics back down and either painting them black or white to match the rest of the case..... I'll ponder that one in the weeks to come while waiting for the USB port replacement...



Of course this post created from it.....for what it is, it's pretty decent/snappy.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Got to work on this a little today. The bezel is a perfect fit, not much to assembling it other than a bazillion little screws....but here we go!

The new bezel:





...and the box it came in....



about half way there...I also deleted the camera & microphone....I hate them. If the buyer wants them, I will put them back in.



Not bad!



New genuine Dell PSU (I've had horrible luck with the chinese knockoffs).



Just about ready to test fire!



It lit up!! screaming about the HDD not being plugged in (I'm replacing it with a SSD).



A pleasant surprise, it is an 7th Gen (as I knew), but an i5 7200 instead of the i3 7100 I thought from searching....but only has 12gb RAM. I only looked quick, thought both modules were 8gb....but one is 4gb. I did order a matching 8gb to go with it....



Booted off Hiren PE. NIC works, so does WIFI.



Happy with it so far.



I did discover a USB slot was trashed.... I'll have to pull the motherboard and see if I can find a replacement slot.



YAY!



Wow, that thing speedsteps down a lot!



...and that's all for today...

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

The bezel arrived today....I didn't take any pics or diddle with it much, I was busy with other stuff....but just a quick test has it fitting nicely. The pics in hte listing weren't very good, I couldn't tell if it was white or gray/silver....it is white with the protective film over it.....so it'll be a 2-tone now, white fascia and black back cover.....no biggie.

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Well, disaster struck.... I was getting close to the end of the physical refurbishing when I was wiping down the front and noticed the digitizer had cracked.

Man that sucks for sure!

Apparently there's a non-touch version of this system, I found the non-touch front bezel for this system for $27.00. I also found a digitizer for it for ~$200. That's an easy choice....goodbye touchscreen!

Yeah, I was about to say, wouldn't it be possible to still sell the system without the touch screen?
If there was no non-touch version, I probably would have attempted to cobble something out of plexiglass... though I'm sure that would have looked like ass, which some customers likely wouldn't appreciate. But for the right price, you never know.

Glad you were able to find a non-touch front bezel version, though. $200 is ridiculous just for the digitizer. I bet Dell knows that and that's why it's priced so high.

I've seen worse, though. When I worked as a restore tech, this one 6th gen i7 AIO Dell came back due to overheating issues. It was one of those AIO's with the motherboard and all hardware installed in the base of the machine - everything was super tiny and packed. Anyways, long story short, after stress-testing it once more to determine what the problem was, the soldered CPU overheated again and died. Eventually, I tore it open and found the soldered CPU heatsink stand-offs had broken off the motherboard, and that's why the CPU was overheating. Since I couldn't change the CPU, I needed to order a new board. IIRC, that PC at the time was retailing for something around $600 or $700 new, but the motherboard alone from Dell cost just shy of $1000! Fricken' rip-off for sure. And of course, it was either order that or scrap the machine, since that place where I worked was Dell, HP, and Apple -certified, which meant that all parts we got had to come from the manufacturer only. No eBay or any other 3rd party. Needless to say, that machine was chucked in the recycle bin... brand new, never saw much use, but probably dropped by the customer, which broke the CPU HS standoffs and killed the machine.

The perfect condition panel, hidden behind the glass. The glass digitizer is not polarizing....so no affecting panel function without it.

Lol, that's good. Otherwise, you'd have to go to find some sunglasses that work with the panel and sell the PC with the sunglasses.

On the other hand, you could advertise that as an extra security feature - privacy screen! Never know when some big CEO might want to get a machine like that so they can watch pr0n right in the office without anyone else noticing.

Removed the USB controlled touchscreen control board and all the ribbons.
...
Trash.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1614367922

If you do any kind of circuit board designs, you might want to save those cables and their connectors - they're handy for interconnecting boards.

Now for the stand... Paint is good and set up now. Smell is gone, and it sure looks better!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Beyond this point, this one is kind of an experimental.... I located a new-old-stock non-touch bezel on ebay for $27 shipped.....so a little gamble as to whether this thing will go back together....so while I wait for parts to arrive, I'll reassemble what I can and prep for the new fascia.

Panel separated from the destroyed bezel....yea, I busted it even more in the process.



The perfect condition panel, hidden behind the glass. The glass digitizer is not polarizing....so no affecting panel function without it.



Backplate.



Removed the USB controlled touchscreen control board and all the ribbons.





Ready for the new bezel.



Trash.



Now for the stand... Paint is good and set up now. Smell is gone, and it sure looks better!!



Bottom reassembled.



The rest reassembled.



Set aside....can't go any further. I need to get new foot pads for the stand. The originals are smelly and gross, I have thrown them away. These are nothing unusual, just stick-ons....can get them anywhere.



Stay tuned.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Yessir.
Too bad you can't upgrade the GPU in it. The motherboard looks like it has the BGA pads for a higher-end GPU and dedicated RAM, but it wasn't installed... well maybe that was a good thing, as both ATI/AMD and nVidia GPUs in these AIO's are a lot more problematic than Intel's IGP. At the end of the day, this should make a nice office/browsing/GP PC for someone. Is it touch screen too by any chance?

There was a version of this system that has a nvidia GPU with dedicated RAM.....

Apparently there's a non-touch version of this system, I found the non-touch front bezel for this system for $27.00. I also found a digitizer for it for ~$200. That's an easy choice....goodbye touchscreen!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Well, disaster struck.... I was getting close to the end of the physical refurbishing when I was wiping down the front and noticed the digitizer had cracked. There was a deep scratch out of the screen's viewing area....I guess it scored deep enough that when I applied a little pressure to clean it, it cracked.

You can see the scratch with the little 'flea bite' where the crack originates.



Kind of a shame......



I was cruising right along before the crack....

The base counterweight wire wheeled & painted with rust inhibiting paint.





The rest is aluminum that was corroded. I wire wheeled it and cleaned it up. I also cleaned up the back plastics and other accessories.





All that was left was the front and the system itself...





...and right after that the digitzer cracked... I looked around and they're nowhere to be found. I'm going to remove it from the bezel and see what I can do with it, just to save the system.....but there went the resale.... It'll get delegated to the garage or something....

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

This one is a Dell 24" AIO; model 3464.... Generation 7 I3, 16gb DDR4, and a 1tb spinner. Problem is, cockroaches & animal piss (or so it smells) all over the base...

Wow, that looks pretty bad. Perhaps this was in a basement or some other low area that got flooded? The "water line" on the corroded base seems to indicate so... though it could also have been a "naughty" house pet. (Cat maybe? I know that cat piss smells pretty bad and makes sense if the monitor was on a desk as most normal-size dogs wouldn't go up there to do that.)

This is new & large enough that it's well worth fixing...but it needs some love.

Success, it comes on, screen is good....and since its bitching about a non-genuine power supply, I'll ASSume the motherboard is good.

Probably is, though even with the "unknown" power adapter, you still may be able to run the Dell built-in diagnostics... or maybe not? On some of the old machines, you could, IIRC.

Had to tap with a hammer to break the corrosion loose from the base plate and the vertical portion of the stand.

Ouch. That's certainly going to require some deep sanding to prevent the rust from coming back - at least on the steel parts.

The corroded metal parts in the stand will get wire wheeled and likely painted. That will clean and then make it look good....not to mention get rid of the smell.

Curious question... what kind of paint do you use for this kind of task? From my limited experience, even if the surface is well cleaned, rust will come back through whenever I used just canned spray paint from the big box stores. So as with my PacMan PC case restoration, I've turned to latex house paint, which seems to adhere better and not let rust through anymore afterwards. That case is still 100% rust free.

This one will sell easily for a nice profit when I'm done.

Yessir.
Too bad you can't upgrade the GPU in it. The motherboard looks like it has the BGA pads for a higher-end GPU and dedicated RAM, but it wasn't installed... well maybe that was a good thing, as both ATI/AMD and nVidia GPUs in these AIO's are a lot more problematic than Intel's IGP. At the end of the day, this should make a nice office/browsing/GP PC for someone. Is it touch screen too by any chance?

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

This one is a Dell 24" AIO; model 3464.... Generation 7 I3, 16gb DDR4, and a 1tb spinner. Problem is, cockroaches & animal piss (or so it smells) all over the base...

This is new & large enough that it's well worth fixing...but it needs some love.

Inside the canse isn't bad....openings were too small for the critters to get in.





First things first, see if it even works....the brick was missing, so I used the bench supply.

Success, it comes on, screen is good....and since its bitching about a non-genuine power supply, I'll ASSume the motherboard is good.



Now for the worst part, the horribly corroded stand.... When I have to break out drills, prybars, hammer, and easy-outs just to get it apart; you know it's going to be bad!!

Drilled out 3 screws to separate the bottom from the counterweight.



The remains of the screws. Some did come out....but most didn't.



Had to tap with a hammer to break the corrosion loose from the base plate and the vertical portion of the stand.







...and here we are...



I'll disassemble everything and clean it. The corroded metal parts in the stand will get wire wheeled and likely painted. That will clean and then make it look good....not to mention get rid of the smell.

To be continued. I did order a new & genuine Dell power brick for it for $18.00. I will also get rid of the 5400RPM HDD and replace it with a SSD. This one will sell easily for a nice profit when I'm done.

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Now for the reason of this post....which is not really about a weird system, but rather a benchmark of a 6G 400GB HP Enterprise SAS SSD hard drive in new condition....I was told it was going to be tossed in a scrap bin!! I won't reveal where I got it, but if that person chooses to wave his hand, it's fine by me.

Heh, no worries, I won't get in trouble over this.
That SAS SDD was heading for the scrapper/recycler at my old workplace. It was brand new and still sealed. Likely misplaced by someone when they were organizing the storage rooms. I actually showed it to one of the IT guys there when I found it, and he still said, "nah we don't care, if it's here, just let it get tossed" ... which would have been a major blasphemy, IMO! So, it just had to get rescued.

...and here we are after the battery got done doing it's 'relearn' number... Write speeds came up a bit.

Interesting...

It appears to be slower than the 120 GB SATA 3 Inland SSD I was using in my old work laptop... but then again, that Inland SSD is a consumer drive, and hasn't proven itself as the most reliable thing on the market, which is where I'm sure this SAS SSD should shine quite well.

Nevertheless, even those results should put to shame any regular "rust-spinner" HDD. Probably comes down to the fact that SSDs have much much lower seek latencies (typically sub-1 ms.) On that note, maybe try running an HDTune benchmark. I'm curious what results you will get there for the seek latency and burst speeds.

Anyways, glad to see you can get some use out of it!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

...and here we are after the battery got done doing it's 'relearn' number... Write speeds came up a bit.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

The HP 500-C60 has been rehomed....

Now for the reason of this post....which is not really about a weird system, but rather a benchmark of a 6G 400GB HP Enterprise SAS SSD hard drive in new condition....I was told it was going to be tossed in a scrap bin!! I won't reveal where I got it, but if that person chooses to wave his hand, it's fine by me.

I've heard/read of a lot of Enterprise SSD's being pitched because of the 520 cluster sizes and custom firmwares that make them not compatible with Windows (net app uses), which indeed would make them paperweights for anything practical except...umm net app uses....

So....I finally got around to testing it and was wondering if that's what I had here... I researched the numbers, it indicated no such issue with this drive or it's firmware. I also discovered that these are rebadged Sandisk "Lightning" drives, which have stellar reviews.

So here we go! This is one of my Supermicro workstations with a X8DAI, spec'd as follows:



The drive removed from the HP caddy and placed into a Western Digital 'Ice Tray', which supports SAS and makes it 3.5" compatible....and then slipped into a SM caddy.





...and here's what CrystalDisk had to say:



It's running as a single drive / JBOD config on a LSI/Avago 9260-8i 6G SAS RAID controller. The BBU battery isn't up to par, which disables write caching....so I don't think the write speeds are up to par....but overall, not too shabby! It has a good feel and load times are super! I've just never had a SAS SSD, so it was something new for me.

[TechGeek]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

My grandma has a system or two like this. And they're perfectly fine for what they are, a low power machine intended for general light office use. Still pretty stupid that HP chose such a functionally useless case to house it. At least they could've integrated the PSU into the thing instead of having one more power brick hanging around, spewing RFI like all of them do these days.

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I was given a HP 500-C60 midtower PC from a local shop. Mid tower with an external power brick, no expansion slots, and weighs less than a happy meal.
.....but it's embarrassing on the inside.... an ITX motherboard in this crappy/flimsy midtower case....

Ugh!
I remember those all too well (unfortunately) while working as a PC refurb tech a few years back. I absolutely DESPISED working on these. If they worked - fine. But if they didn't, you couldn't do much more than try to swap RAM or HDD, because everything else was integrated. The few that didn't work just made me want to smash them to bits, ala Office Space style (the part where they take it out on that problematic printer. )

Also just an FYI, seeing that you posted pictures of the motherboard: those tiny CPU fans don't last very long... and they are just about adequate to cool the APU while sitting on the desktop or with a light load. Not that you can do much gaming or heavy loading on a PC like that, but run any benchmark (or YT with Windows update in the background, lol) and that tiny fan will scream while trying to keep the APU barely in its thermal specs. If you have a 50 or 60 mm fan in 10 mm height, just mount that instead to the heatsink. It should run cooler and quieter.

Then a mod for a wifi antenna. The wifi antenna in the original case was a junk internal one, which typically isn't worth a shit for reception...so I scrapped a bricked cisco access point of one of it's antennas. I then drilled out the expansion slot blank to fit the bulkhead antenna fitting into.

Easy Peasy!

Love it!
Your Wi-Fi/Router be like: I hear you loud and clear now!

I also like that the new modded system now has a FULL SIZE optical drive. Many of these cheapo systems come with either a flimsy laptop optical or none at all. It's such a waste of space (and materials) when they place a laptop mobo in a case like that and then leave all expansion slots empty / bricked.

The original case will end up at the steel recycler, so it won't be wasted either.

Good!

I remember the thin steel cases on these cheapo systems. If it wasn't for all those rolled edges and extra ridges and bumps, they'd crumble if someone even farts near them.

I guess here goes $0.05 worth of steel towards another beer.

but I'm one of those that doesn't care....its not headed for the landfill and with the tiny case rework it's far more appealing, so rehoming it won't be hard.

If anything, I think this shows that you are one of the few that actually CARES... about doing things the right way, that is.

That's the cleanest "mod" I've seen! A good general use system tucked into a case perfectly fit for it.

X3

Unfortunately that seems to be the "trend" with OEM entry level desktops these days, basically take a laptop motherboard, shove it in a mini/mid-tower case (cause I guess that is what people expect a "desktop" to be???) and call it a day.

Yup.
And this trend has been going on for at least a few years now.

[dmill89]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

That's the cleanest "mod" I've seen! A good general use system tucked into a case perfectly fit for it.

X2

I was given a HP 500-C60 midtower PC from a local shop. Mid tower with an external power brick, no expansion slots, and weighs less than a happy meal. The shop said the motherboard was bad; wouldn't power up. The brick wasn't included, so I couldn't test theirs....but I plugged one of mine and it was fine. No issues with the motherboard.....but it's embarrassing on the inside.... an ITX motherboard in this crappy/flimsy midtower case....b

Unfortunately that seems to be the "trend" with OEM entry level desktops these days, basically take a laptop motherboard, shove it in a mini/mid-tower case (cause I guess that is what people expect a "desktop" to be???) and call it a day.

[TechGeek]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

That's the cleanest "mod" I've seen! A good general use system tucked into a case perfectly fit for it.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I was given a HP 500-C60 midtower PC from a local shop. Mid tower with an external power brick, no expansion slots, and weighs less than a happy meal. The shop said the motherboard was bad; wouldn't power up. The brick wasn't included, so I couldn't test theirs....but I plugged one of mine and it was fine. No issues with the motherboard.....but it's embarrassing on the inside.... an ITX motherboard in this crappy/flimsy midtower case....but that just makes it fun for me!

It's a Quad core AMD A6-5200 w/ 16gb RAM and Radeon HD 8400 R3 GPU. This would make a fantastic little web browsing, emailing, facebooking, homeworking, letter typer....but in this big clumsy case....meh...so lets hear it for Topcat's last goofy build of 2020!

The old case after being stripped out.





Enter in a useless old HP slimline 7500-series with a single core pentium-m and 2gb ram....



Gutted!


This left some minor modifications after debadging the case. For one, a blockoff plate had to be made for where the PSU once was.







Then a mod for a wifi antenna. The wifi antenna in the original case was a junk internal one, which typically isn't worth a shit for reception...so I scrapped a bricked cisco access point of one of it's antennas. I then drilled out the expansion slot blank to fit the bulkhead antenna fitting into.

Easy Peasy!





Fits like a glove!!





It originally came with Windows 8.1 on a spinning 1tb HDD. I replaced the HDD with a 240gb SSD, and installed win10....which activated no problem....and another weird one spared from the scrap pile & landfill. The original case will end up at the steel recycler, so it won't be wasted either.



If time is money, it probably wasn't worth the effort.....but I'm one of those that doesn't care....its not headed for the landfill and with the tiny case rework it's far more appealing, so rehoming it won't be hard.

[Dan81]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Didn't junk any of them. The former now houses a Q6600 and the latter is just empty. (for now)

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

IIRC I had some weird ones, like an AT board in a JNC caae that housed a Skt939 machine, or a P3 450MHz "Katmai" in what once was a E5300 machine eoth a ECS board.

This case is ugly as home made soap....but given the immaculate condition, I couldn't bring myself to junk it.

[Dan81]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

IIRC I had some weird ones, like an AT board in a JNC caae that housed a Skt939 machine, or a P3 450MHz "Katmai" in what once was a E5300 machine eoth a ECS board.