best cheap/free scores 1.1

[BigTroll]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

We "refurbish" thousands of laptops, computers and medical devices/supplies each year.

Refurbish, reuse, repurpose, recycle -- that last step being the one you want to avoid!

The problem is most places are PC-centric. Apple products are harder to find homes (you need a support staff that is oriented towards servicing them as WE don't have the resources to take on that "ongoing" task).

Our "service policy" for desktops/laptops is to simply reinstall the original disk image (as most "problems" aren't hardware related).

[Lately, I've been building custom restore partitions so the user can do this, himself. This saves us the time -- and bench space -- to do it in the shop. It also denies them the opportunity to come in and try to finagle an upgrade, etc. (we don't have time/staff to deal with "customers")]

I love apple products I would like to get a iPad 4th gen since my 4th gen died on me.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I love apple products I would like to get a iPad 4th gen since my 4th gen died on me.

Most of the kit that we see comes from businesses, hospitals, city/county/state government, etc. It is almost always PC-centric (or, not at all consumer-oriented... e.g., big iron).

But, friends/neighbors/colleagues know that I am active in "recycling" all sorts of kit so it is not uncommon for stuff to end up on my front porch: "Find a home for this stuff!"

Apple products are a chore for me to work on as I can't leverage my efforts to apply them to a large number of "items" -- cuz there aren't many Apple products that come my way and those that do aren't likely to have a lot in common with the "last batch" that I encountered. (you can usually leverage PC-related efforts to damn near any make/model desktop/laptop that comes along!)

So, I reach out to other locals (because shipping kit is expensive and time consuming; much easier if I can drive it over or they can come and pick it up!) who service machines "professionally" to see if they can find homes for items that aren't cost/time-effective for me to screw with.

I think my Apple gear consists of an old iPad (that I've misplaced) and an iPhone 6S (that I've never activated).

There's only so many hours in a day... <frown> Someday I'll have spare time and will be able to tinker with this stuff!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Picked up the rest today....didn't count the monitors...but there were several dozen. Lots of network appliances, several HP laser printers, of course several large totes filled with keyboards, mice and cords...and boxes of stuff I haven't looked through, several external HDD's....and at the bottom of the pile, a couple retro HP Kayak dual Pentium2 workstations. The Dell Precisions were T3500's, unknown innards or function (I haven't had a chance to check them yet). I'll get some pics soon....it'll take me a while to process all this, it was the largest single haul I've snagged!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored another Acer 6920. This time it was the high-end model.

Specs:

Core 2 Duo T8300 2.4 GHz (the usual ones come with T5750)
4GB RAM
Sony-NEC Optiarc BC-5500A BDROM drive (dual lens)
1080p Full HD 16' LCD (usual ones use a 720p 1366x768 16' LCD)
Geforce 9500M GT 512MB (which is just a rebranded 8600M GT, the G84 chip was the giveaway)
no HDD

Still needs some work, I have replaced the dead mobo it had with mine (working but had bad BIOS) but need to replace the 3x330uF tantalums I have as they are not enough to power the CPU. (laptop cuts out after BIOS screen) The dead board has 6x330uF but I'm not sure if it's recommended to add that much capacitance (they sum up to 1980uF) as I fear that it might not work with that much capacitance.

Anyone who has worked with the T8300 variant of the 6920G, let me know what is the required capacitance to work with.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Ugh! It's raining power supplies and UPSs!

Two SmartUPS 2200s (rack mountable), an external battery enclosure (also rackable), four "spare" battery modules (hold 4 12V batteries, each -- though the batteries have previously been scrapped).

And, the bigger "find" is three 1100W Z800 power supplies along with one SB2000 supply (all oddballs so worth holding onto!).

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored another business-level laptop - this time it ain't a Dell, but a HP Elitebook 8530P.

Looks pretty nice, (save for a missing battery and a very faint dent on the lid) and it looks quite modular.

Specs, as it is now:

Core 2 Duo P8700
320GB Seagate Momentus Thin
Radeon HD3650 256MB (MXM2 slot, below the keyboard!!!)
HP/Hitachi GT30N DVD-RW w/ Lightscribe
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1
4GB DDR2-800
Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN

I've also flashed a custom BIOS on it so I could use an Sony Ericsson WWAN module out of a Acer Aspire One D260.

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A couple old routers (not the kind you're thinking):






A Porter Cable 536/537 for $45 (not exactly a "steal" but about half what these usually sell for).



They definitely don't "build them like they used to" this thing weighs 9.2 lb.





And the Real Bargain a McGraw-Edison Shopmate 2700TO for $10:

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This post created from one of the school freebies....a latitude d600 laptop with a fresh install of win2k.

I got 2 of these. d600 # 1 had 2 batteries (main batt and module batt that inserts where the optical goes), both are good. They were completely depleted, but came back when charged. They ran the laptop ~4hrs. The other one, the battery is toast. What makes these a little more marketable, they are one of the last ones made with external serial ports.

A few pics of the hoard...

Towers from day 1...





Started testing a few...


More from Day 2....








More tinkering...



Brand new Geforce 8400


Boxes full of other randon doodiddles....





Plenty of stuff not shown yet....going to take a while sorting this haul out.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

(sigh) I had to "pass" on another pair of Z800s, today. I just don't have the space to stash any more kit! (I need to start making space for "inventory") I probably should have stripped the disk sleds (as they are plastic and one assumes will break, someday) but I was hoping that leaving them more-or-less intact would increase their chances of finding a new home (other than here!).

But, I suspect their size/weight means they'll end up scrapped. <frown>

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

people need to stop scrapping stuff, given the game the globalists are playing - it wont be long before the new stuff dries up in the supply chain!!

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

people need to stop scrapping stuff, given the game the globalists are playing - it wont be long before the new stuff dries up in the supply chain!!

(sigh) You can't believe just how much USEFUL, WORKING kit gets scrapped, regularly!

No, I really mean it! You CAN'T believe it!

One of the places I worked with would process ~600 tons of "local" scrap, annually. You simply can't recover any more than a small fraction of that due to the labor involved in testing and refurbishing!

Maybe supply chain and economic pressures will encourage folks to think more carefully about their "upgrade/disposal" policies!

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

actually i can believe it - it's a scam
in the u.k. they can write off the value against owed taxes.

so every year big scumbag companys scrap hundreds of 1year old computers,laptops, monitors - even battery powertools.
i5's, i7's etc - they drive trucks over them or put them under a bench drill to stop people taking them - then throw them in the e-waste skips!!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

You know what's funny? Some of the gypsies here actually took a few e-waste HDDs (a 500GB Seagate 7200.11 was the one I remembered) that had literal holes drilled through both PCB and platters and wanted a absurdly high price (almost the price of a working HDD) for it.

They also had some Mac HDDs in various states of dead, lol. I remember that for fun I tried to repair a WD1001FALS I bought from them, only to find out the platters were kill. And an even funnier episode was a black label WD Blue 1TB that even though it had the cover dented to hell and back, and that the platters were kill, it actually passed the seek test, only to die a few seconds after it


Anyways, my latest free score is a Acer 5551. Athlon P320 (replaced by a Turion P560 now), 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, and iGPU (HD4250). I talked with a friend of mine and he will bring me tomorrow a 5552G board (NEW75 LA-5911P) which has the 5470, and I suspect it has even 1GB of VRAM. He said he has to look for the heatsink (I checked mine against the 5552G and there's obvious differences.) and he'll (hopefully) get back to me tomorrow with news.

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

actually i can believe it - it's a scam
in the u.k. they can write off the value against owed taxes.

so every year big scumbag companys scrap hundreds of 1year old computers,laptops, monitors - even battery powertools.
i5's, i7's etc - they drive trucks over them or put them under a bench drill to stop people taking them - then throw them in the e-waste skips!!

^This, same here in the US. Back when I worked retail in college we intentionally "broke" (i.e. "accidently" knocked the boxes off a high warehouse rack or ran over them with a heavy skid on a pallet jack/forklift) "outdated" electronics several times because the company could write them off for the full value if they were broken vs. selling them for a heavy discount (well below cost).

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

actually i can believe it - it's a scam
in the u.k. they can write off the value against owed taxes.

so every year big scumbag companys scrap hundreds of 1year old computers,laptops, monitors - even battery powertools.
i5's, i7's etc - they drive trucks over them or put them under a bench drill to stop people taking them - then throw them in the e-waste skips!!

Here, some "donors" will remove the HDDs (and "process" them independently to satisfy their own paranoia). Others will donate the drives after they have been mechanically rendered unreadable (holes drilled through the platter portion of the case or the cases physically SNAPPED in half). Still others will "wipe" the drives in situ. And, the vast majority, will just count on us to do that for them.

[wiping a drive takes a long time -- especially if you have a few hundred machines that need it done! We have special gear that effectively wipes them in 2-4 minutes. This has value to donors as it saves them time/labor (we've had a few of the larger donors try to purchase one of these machines from us -- "sorry, not for sale")]

The same sort of ad hoc approach applies to other salvageable "bits". Sometimes RAM will be pulled. Or, laptop batteries (esp if they have a fleet of similar laptops, some of which might still be in service). I've even seen drive sleds pilfered (makes sense as it's often ridiculously costly to replace those bits of plastic). Power supplies may be missing but I suspect that has been the result of someone pilfering a supply out of a machine for an earlier replacement (in another machine).

Monitors often arrive without bases. Sometimes the bases will appear in a big box, by themselves. Ditto mice and keyboards. Cords ALWAYS arrive in a knotted mess!

PCI/PCIe/etc. cards are almost always left in place. As are optical drives. I've only once seen a CPU (chip) removed from a machine.

Medical kit is almost always usable "as is" (though it always needs sanitation/sterilization). Medical supplies (including medications) are usually pretty close to their expiration date -- though there are many places that will gladly take and use them. Often, we have to "process" materials that we don't want to be common knowledge (e.g., frequently hypodermic syringes, once had a bottle of morphine!)

And, some things are "curiosities" (we once received several "single" breast implants -- no complete sets :> )

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

You know what's funny? Some of the gypsies here actually took a few e-waste HDDs (a 500GB Seagate 7200.11 was the one I remembered) that had literal holes drilled through both PCB and platters and wanted a absurdly high price (almost the price of a working HDD) for it.

We used to ship containers full of CRTs to a group that would dismantle them and reclaim precious metals, etc.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Back when I had the service center, a tribe of mexicans would come by once a year and buy (paying in big bills cash) anything scrap I'd turn loose with....old CRT's, VCR's, stereos, anything and everything....even if it was complete trash....and they would pay big bucks for it. They never would tell me what they really did with it.....there was no fixing any of this stuff, and they had to know it...they rolled through town, 2x semis with a 53' trailer on each one packed full.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Back when I had the service center, a tribe of mexicans would come by once a year and buy (paying in big bills cash) anything scrap I'd turn loose with....old CRT's, VCR's, stereos, anything and everything....even if it was complete trash....and they would pay big bucks for it. They never would tell me what they really did with it.....there was no fixing any of this stuff, and they had to know it...they rolled through town, 2x semis with a 53' trailer on each one packed full.

I'd taken to MARKING, with an indelible marker, items that I knew were clearly irreparable -- primarily as a warning to anyone that the item might be offered to (e.g., at a flea market where it couldn't be tested and the "vendor" would likely be impossible to locate, thereafter).

The guy buying it from us could clearly see the marking and, if he was comfortable with that and chose to purchase it from us, anyway, then so be it. But, pawning it off on some sucker (at a price inflated from our "scrap" prices) only to end up having it back in a landfill (whereas we could divert it from that fate) when that sucker discovered they'd been "had" is not consistent with our mission statement.

[grss1982]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This post created from one of the school freebies....a latitude d600 laptop with a fresh install of win2k.

I got 2 of these. d600 # 1 had 2 batteries (main batt and module batt that inserts where the optical goes), both are good. They were completely depleted, but came back when charged. They ran the laptop ~4hrs. The other one, the battery is toast. What makes these a little more marketable, they are one of the last ones made with external serial ports.

A few pics of the hoard...

SNIP!

More tinkering...




Plenty of stuff not shown yet....going to take a while sorting this haul out.

Did anyone ever tell you that you hoard waaaayyyyy too much beige boxes? It's like your reliving the good old days of beige PCs.

Been a while since I posted here by the way.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Did anyone ever tell you that you hoard waaaayyyyy too much beige boxes? It's like your reliving the good old days of beige PCs.

Advantage of beige boxes is you have far more flexibility in deciding what to put IN them! No oddball form factors for power supplies, motherboards, special disk sleds, drive brackets, etc.