best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

4 10' two-headed 16AWG power cords (for my SANs)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I was given (took in trade, sold client a newer/faster one) a mint condition Inspiron 1300 laptop with charger & Dell case. Has a single core celeron @ 1.5GHz and 512mb RAM in it. I got the max CPU (Pentium-M 780) @ 2.26GHz and 2gb RAM for it for $20, which is probably about all the system is worth....but given its pristine condition, batt is good, and it works...what the hell.

This post created from this laptop. Maxed out CPU (Pentium-M 780 @ 2.26) and memory (2gb), and actually runs Win7 ok....not great, but ok. The biggest hangup is the 915G GPU, while I found a driver that will work (no official support past Vista, and that was sketchy to say the least), it just doesn't have the stones for Aero....even getting it to work was tricky....so I just set it up with the stellar XP-look.....and here we are from FF56.0.2.

The one thing this one had over most laptops, CPU swap was all of 6 screws. Two that held the cover plate on, and four to remove the heatsink.....they should all be that easy!

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This post created from this laptop. Maxed out CPU (Pentium-M 780 @ 2.26) and memory (2gb), and actually runs Win7 ok....not great, but ok. The biggest hangup is the 915G GPU, while I found a driver that will work (no official support past Vista, and that was sketchy to say the least), it just doesn't have the stones for Aero....even getting it to work was tricky....so I just set it up with the stellar XP-look.....and here we are from FF56.0.2.

The one thing this one had over most laptops, CPU swap was all of 6 screws. Two that held the cover plate on, and four to remove the heatsink.....they should all be that easy!

My latitude E6430 is four screws... as is my Asus X83V. Not common but such designs did continue to exist.

[LLLlllou]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I think the VooDoo3 graphics card is very likely FUBAR. What I thought was a small scratch on one of the RAM chips is actually a crack, I think. The way I checked: I used a screw driver to scratch the RAM chip in a direction perpendicular to the scratch, and I kept "feeling" the scratch no matter how deeper I went. If that's the case... only remedy would be to find some old SDRAM sticks with 16 Mbit chips... which I have NONE at all. Might put a post up in the "looking to buy" forum when I get to it and confirm if that RAM chips is bad or not. If it is, it's going to be a RAM chip replacement job + who knows what else. But for a VooDoo3 card, I think it's worthwhile.

Got any old 40GB Maxtors laying around? Looks like they use the same Micron RAM.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thre...stance.674440/

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got a free 486 motherboard I can't for the life of me identify (UMC UM8498F, 4x ISA, 3x VLB, 72pin SIMM) with removed cache slots (I think I have some old boards I could remove the sockets from ) and a Gigabyte H61M-S1 that appears to be dirty to all hell, and may be dead as well.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

id your board here:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It's a AEI/Chicony TK-8498F.

I managed to get some beeps this morning, although nothing much than that. They're unusual for AMI BIOS - they're low in tone, while AMI BIOS uses a higher tone.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

touch the cache chips, often bad ram gets very hot.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

could be bad caps there! i know bad caps can change the tone of the audio on amplifier and speaker systems! same thing could happen to mobo speakers...

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Cache chips stay quite cold, and I've already replaced the caps (three caps lol, one 1000uF 10v and two 220uF 10v)

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

have you got a frequency counter or multimeter that can read upto the speed of the crystals?

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A pair of MD3200i's. I can fill them with 300G 15K drives (i.e., ~7TB) and use them to host the "working" copies of my VMDKs (so I can put them in a different room from the ESXi servers!)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a PSP model 1004 (phat) for $7. Case is quite cracked, battery for some reason won't charge on it (works on a 3004 I have tho) but otherwise it works fine. I removed the UMD drive since I don't need it (I have a 1GB MS Pro Duo stick) and cleaned the LCD.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

is the charging socket good?
i had one that wouldnt charge - the center pin was missing!!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yeah, it's good. Apparently the charging circuit didn't like the battery at first as the cells weren't active. Placing it into another PSP (a 3004) I have must've reactivated the cells as after letting it charge up until 50% I could then charge it using the 1004.

The only thing left that irks me is the wifi switch, but that may be also because of the pretty beaten up casing it has (gotta order a new one sometime)

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

6 mini-SAS cables -- but, they're only 2m. I guess I'll have to keep looking...

And, 15 2T, 6Gb, Dell-branded SAS drives (so, that fills another SAN shelf with a few spares)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Free ASUS P5QD Turbo - P45 chipset, J-Micron 361 + Sillicon Image SIL5723.

Looks nice, was just dusty. Has EPS12V connector, a jumper named OV_CPU (which I can either describe as overclock), heatsinks for the MOSFETs.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Cheap rummage sale find....I'm normally not a yard sale guy....but when driving by and I spot this:



Yea, I stop!! It lights up and appears to work. I haven't fed it a signal yet though. It's all there and intact. One knob missing.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Philco Predicta. Those are PITA's to service.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

that thing looks awsome - you could probably lease it to film production company's!!