best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Curious.George]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Where are you located in the world?

Desert southwest.

If you don't have a use for the SAS drives Topcat and I are always using them for things (for example, if my X7DWA hardware ever gets reused, I'll want to run SAS drives in the build).

I have 8 of such drives (15K) in my main rig. Old but fast... and somewhat loud. Fits me well .

I'll move them into the box that I use for rendering video. While strictly not necessary (as you can render in non-real-time), it would make it easier to get to post.

Looking at a pair of M1000's with 300G 15K SAS drives, presently...

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The monthly rounds to the local shops yielded a pickup bed full of junk....with a few diamonds in the rough of course. The picks of the litter today were:

ECS HT2000 motherboard with a Phenom quadcore 9750 CPU & 4gb RAM in it, working order. It came in a really cheap ass case with a bad PSU.

several samsung 250gb HDD's, good.

2x P4-era HP towers, untested.
1x P3 HP tower, untested.
1x HP slimline, reeked of cockroaches, so its still sitting outside.
1x dell dimension 1100 early P4 mATX with a dead board, but the case fits a special something for a possible super sleeper build...
1x Compaq Presario s4020wm, old t-bred CPU in a board full of bad caps.

[jiroy]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Free scores for last week :

1 - LCD View Sonic VA1918 . Sounds like a badcaps job , lol .

2 - nVIDIA GT 710 Zotac . As good as new . He bought it one month ago and was disappointed in Counter Strike GO and Player Unknown's performance , so bought an Asus 1030 GT OC edition , and had no problem leaving the other one .

3 - Laptop HP G62 . On with black screen and fan always spinning , A BGA job , oucchh ...

4 - I-Life with broken screen , never used , screen was cracked the second day of purchase , due to a possession quarrel between children .

5 - TV Thomson 20DG10E . Fell from bed while cleaning house , Screen neck's blown .

[jiroy]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Welp, most of those PCs say they have Athlon II X4, which is quite decent in itself.


Could probably sell them incomplete to a "lower-tier" repair shop for them to fix up and sell so you don't waste time doing that. Anything is better than parts sitting in boxes. I have one too many myself already.


Yeah, some of the new 2015/2016/2017 -made laptops are real sad built quality. Starting with the flat-pack Lithium batteries, you'd be lucky to get more than 2 years out of that before the battery bulging and cracking the case open. Macbooks are the best when it comes to that.


Well, in America, we like to make and use acronyms for everything - it makes us look more professional, even when we have no clue what we are talking about.
So maybe we can call this battery SPS?

@Momaka; There are dead seasons where the market goes very low , so i keep myself busy with those old laptops , but anyway , it's not in my plans to get rid of anything electronic . You know sometimes a very small resistor can be a live saver . In Lebanon , most of the Electronic dealers stopped importing 90% of the usually needed items .
When i ask them why , while you're already more than Billionaires , they say sites like Aliexpress , Ebay and the usual others killed their business .
One small item needed , and you'll have to order it and wait .
Imagine all Lebanon with a no heating gun , lol ..

SPS ? , Well , if it's okay with SPSS , Lol ...

[tmcw]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

....
Nice!
The price of these things is going to be like the VooDoo video cards someday.
....

Do these have some good value?

I have an old what I seem to recall is a VooDoo3 3000 PCI, complete in the box, that I used for maybe 3 days, then put back in the box.

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Do these have some good value?

I have an old what I seem to recall is a VooDoo3 3000 PCI, complete in the box, that I used for maybe 3 days, then put back in the box.

The Voodoo 3s aren't worth a ton since they are fairly common, but are still worth more than most video cards from that era (generally around $50-$100 for a Voodoo 3, while NVidia TNT2 and ATI Rage cards can be had for less than $10), but the higher-end and rarer Voodoo 4 and Voodoo 5 (especially these) are going for crazy money ($500+ isn't uncommon) on eBay, etc.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I have a couple voodoo 3500's, the ones with the TV tuners. one of them is in a retro P3 system. It has the original box, breakout box, dongle, etc.

[momaka]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

We process "discards" (regular maintenance cycles) from local businesses, etc. Usually, with an eye towards putting the kit back into service (i.e., furnishing classrooms in disadvantaged areas, third world countries, etc.).

The T7400's are behemoths so there is little use for them; much prefer smaller desktop (SFF/USFF) boxes with "generic" capabilities (e.g., a single disk plus optical, motherboard video and network connection).

Seems like everyone prefers those small hot shoe boxes for some reason. Last week, I picked up several tower/desktop computers that were destined for recycling from a local repair shop. The guy there said I can take all the big desktops no problem, but to leave all of the small (true) desktops. Speaking of the T7400's, that guy had two of them as well, but he said these were the only big towers he wanted to keep, as they are still capable of server duty (and he's right ).

[Curious.George]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Seems like everyone prefers those small hot shoe boxes for some reason. Last week, I picked up several tower/desktop computers that were destined for recycling from a local repair shop. The guy there said I can take all the big desktops no problem, but to leave all of the small (true) desktops.

Most folks seem to want to position their machines on the desktop, nowadays -- perhaps for ease of access to USB connections, optical drive, etc. By contrast, in the past, "towers" could sit on the floor -- with the items that needed to be most often accessed residing up near the top. And, most workstations, nowadays, don't need more than one "accessible" drive (usually optical) and one internal drive.

I keep most of my machines on the floor as a way to conserve desk space. I have two or four 24-30 inch monitors at each workstation so there's little room for a desktop machine -- unless I put it under the monitors (which then raises the monitors to an uncomfortable viewing height).

I have at least two optical drives in each machine (tower) along with several internal drives (typically 4-8T per machine). And, SCSI or SAS HBA's to access external drive arrays/devices. And, "card reader" and floppy drive (my prom programmer uses floppies so its more convenient to have them easily accessible on machines instead of having to move files to a particular machine that is equipped with a floppy drive).

Speaking of the T7400's, that guy had two of them as well, but he said these were the only big towers he wanted to keep, as they are still capable of server duty (and he's right ).

Their big advantage (over more conventional, e.g., 1-2U servers) is that they are much quieter! Really large diameter fans that can run at lower RPM's. I scrapped my 1U and 2U servers because the fan noise was deafening. I'll be scrapping my blade server, soon, for similar reasons (sounds like someone is running an industrial vacuum cleaner).

The 7400's are also nice in that they support dual PCIe interfaces so I can put a pair of dual-head video adapters in each (four monitors per workstation).

[Per Hansson]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The Voodoo 3s aren't worth a ton since they are fairly common, but are still worth more than most video cards from that era (generally around $50-$100 for a Voodoo 3, while NVidia TNT2 and ATI Rage cards can be had for less than $10), but the higher-end and rarer Voodoo 4 and Voodoo 5 (especially these) are going for crazy money ($500+ isn't uncommon) on eBay, etc.

I know, I've lost a Voodoo5 5500 PCI with DVI output somewhere.
It's the MAC version converted to PC with a modded BIOS.
Really annoys me that I have no clue where it is, for years
Maybe I'll find it in 5 years along with an old HDD with a couple Bitcoins on it? I wish lol!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Gave 5 bucks for a goodie box containing the following:

8x 160gb Velociraptors with adapters (adapters are excellent for using SSD's in SAS trays)
3x ISA 10/100 NIC's, new in retail boxes (great for retro systems)
1x AWE64 Gold, used but with packaging & disc
2x 74gb WD Raptors

All items in working order.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Gave 5 bucks for a goodie box containing the following:

8x 160gb Velociraptors with adapters (adapters are excellent for using SSD's in SAS trays)
3x ISA 10/100 NIC's, new in retail boxes (great for retro systems)
1x AWE64 Gold, used but with packaging & disc
2x 74gb WD Raptors

All items in working order.

Nice. All the HDDs in good order?

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nice. All the HDDs in good order?

I haven't done surface scans on any of them yet...but they are recognized by the controller, and the SMART data shows no bad sectors. The 160gb drives all have ~9000POH's, no bad sectors, the 74's are in the ~3000POH range, no bad sectors.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^dang. I love raptors and Velociraptors. Combined with a 3ware 9550 or 9560, they're generally unstoppable.

------

Today's scores:

$5- Acer P205H 20" Gaming Monitor (1600x900 16:9 glossy). Great condition (no scuffs, which matters for a glossy screen and housed unit) and has good picture quality. Has 3-5 dead pixels in the middle of the screen, but not really noticable.

$3- Asus G01 KB Gaming keyboard- Types decently, has a red backlight and an actual volume knob.

$3- Vintage Cortelco wall-mount phone:







Always wanted one for the garage... yay vintage made in USA build qualuty

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

cool fone.
now you need to find one of those rotating-jack things radioshack used to sell for a $ that stops the cord tangling up.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Given a FIC AM37 motherboard with 2gb RAM and an Athlon XP2400+. Needed caps of course.

Also given a box full of surveillance cameras and the C2D PC that controls them.

[tmcw]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

In the trash at work today were the following...

- 2 Dell E5500 laptops, only missing hard drives, but caddies are there. One missing a battery, plus 2 PSUs for them
- 10 (yes, ten!) GTX 480 graphics cards, 8 still sealed in the anti-static bags, and in the box they were shipped in from Hong Kong in 2012 (are these any good?)
- a Geforce GTX 580 and a Quadro FX580
- an old BlackStar push button multimeter
- HP E3610A PSU
- A triple (!) PSU with analogue dial
- a counter-timer Multimeter with a broken display cover, TTi branded
- a nice looking 22" or 24" Sun Microsystems monitor, WDZF model number, with a funny stand

There were also 5 or 6 Netras, which I didn't take, and what looked to be a 17" Dell LCD monitor, around 2000 vintage I'd say, with external PSU.

There was also a Sun keyboard, similar style/colour to the monitor, I might go back for it.

There was also an empty GTX Titan box, I guess whoever dumped the other graphics cards, recently got the Titan.

[stj]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

sun keyboards are great - i have 2.

[tmcw]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Yes, I went back for the keyboard, it's a Type 7 UNIX one, a little dirty, but should clean up ok. Keys feel good.

[stj]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

dont know that one, mine are type-5