best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Ratdude was here yesterday bearing tradebait. It was a good day for us both....and nice seeing him, as always!

The scores:
1) New in sealed box 3DFX voodoo3 2000 PCI
2) New open box ATI Radeon 9000 AGP 128mb
3) Linksys Nighthawk wifi router DD-WRT compatible
4) Really rough condition Aopen socket7 retro rig (I spent all day today restoring it)
5) Supermicro mATX case

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Ratdude was here yesterday bearing tradebait. It was a good day for us both....and nice seeing him, as always!

Never a bad day when I get to visit TC...

The scores:
1) New in sealed box 3DFX voodoo3 2000 PCI
2) New open box ATI Radeon 9000 AGP 128mb
3) Linksys Nighthawk wifi router DD-WRT compatible
4) Really rough condition Aopen socket7 retro rig (I spent all day today restoring it)
5) Supermicro mATX case

And in return, I got another eATX SM chassis... one of the big 8x SAS ones. (Built it up last night, will post in the relevant thread later).

The Voodoo card was part of a vanload I got back in my soph. year of HS... It's on the forum somewhere. All sorts of fun stuff back then.

The 9000 pro was a $15 thrift store find from last year (I think it's in a post in this thread?)

The Router is a netgear R7000 that I paid about $1 for... same model as what I use at home. Runs DD-WRT very well.

The aOpen was another thrift store score for February... that I never got off the ground. Socket 7 ATX... only just socket 7, not super 7 (Intel chipset???). Must have been very early ATX; the board has both SDRAM and EDO sockets!

The SM case was a cheap ebay find that was intended for an X7DCA build but wasn't even close to fitting. Not branded as SM, but the components, layout, and front panel cable indicate that it was SM made for a SM board (probably one of their single CPU boards?)

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

some pics of the new voodoo3 and radeon 9k pro with card+box plx if u will topcat? i luv new electronics pr0n. haha!

[brethin]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I got a box of Voodoo cards from my private hording group I had to trade my stash of Nvidia cards. As far as passion goes I lost but $ wise I'm sure I win Voodoo freaks are crazy stupid and will pay crazy prices for Voodoo crap.��

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

some pics of the new voodoo3 and radeon 9k pro with card+box plx if u will topcat? i luv new electronics pr0n. haha!

The funny part, I still haven't opened the voodoo3 yet....I'll slice it open as soon as I finish up the aopen system... I'll snap some pics.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an ASUS G70S before heading home.

Works fine, but had to scrap both GPUs (2x 8700M GT) as whatever monkey tried to do a reflow on them literally popcorned the PCBs on both. No wonder everything was shorting.

Will also need to adapt the heatsinks to acommodate Acer cards, and either edit the BIOS to take a 9300M, or adapt a 8600M GT MXM in there.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Some unopened 3dfx goodness!!



Film sliced....I asked Ratdude if he wanted to do the honors.... He declined.



First time this beauty has seen daylight in 21 years!



Not even a smudge!





Now for the radeon 9000. This one was an open box, the card was never used.



Not a smudge, scrape from screw or speck of dust in the fan.





Good stuff!

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

6 Million Triangles/sec
286 Megatexels/sec
WOW!

Really cool cards, though.
Despite not having been powered in 20-odd years, I see no electrolytic caps on the VooDoo, so no surprise it was just fine.

And even for the Radeon 9000 Pro, I'm not worried. Those Nichicon HC caps are pretty good. Also, looks like that 9000 Pro has the better/faster BGA RAM. Would be interesting to see which card performs better in older games. From what I've read before online, despite the VooDoo 3 and newer being very efficient and quite good for old games, cards like GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500 and 9000 were already surpassing them in speed, despite using Direct-X (which is slower and less efficient than Glide.)

Make sure to keep them boxes safe, especially that of the VooDoo. Some people pay a good chunk of money even just for that, lol.
Though I must admit, the boxes of VooDoo 3 and VooDoo 5 looks pretty cool, actually.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored these today:

Nintendo Wii, model RVL-001 (1st gen) - working, already done a shell swap on it
PS3 CECHC04 - YLOD, suspecting NEC TOKIN (though RSX isn't out of the equation)
Fujitsu MPB3032AT - completes seek test successfully, haven't looked deeper into it

[RukyCon]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I found a few older PCs today, the first one is a Gateway PC with an Intel Celeron processor, i need to pop it open and test it to see what the other specs are. The second one is a heavy Dell PC with an Intel Pentium 3 processor, i still need to test it, but i'm betting it still works (but i may need to reseat the RAM for it to work). The third one (and the saddest looking of the three) is a Future Power PC with an Intel Celeron processor, now i have not tested it yet, but I'm willing to bet it will not work, as (according to the owner) it has been sitting outside for 5 years, not only that, but it has been sitting in water for some time too.

I still need to go through and test them and check what their specs are in full, but until then, these will be sitting in my workshop.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

yay! many thanks, topcat! errr... good to see these video card virgins deflowered and showing us some pics. oops not the vip room... hahaha! lets just say that i am now a very satisfied man after looking at those pics! and we'll leave it at that...

time to play benny benassi's satisfaction again! pity tho that we cant record the smell... i'd luv to know how those video cards smelt!! okay enuff of that before it starts to get kinky... haha!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The county (a different department than I normally deal with) called this morning and said they have 3 'junk computers' for me. They are 3x HP Z230 SFF workstations, i5's 16gb RAM. HDD's missing, but caddies there. These are actually pretty cool little boxes, mfg'd 2015....they have 3x displayports; hence they can run 3 monitors. Not bad!

This post created from one booted off Hiren's. They were in an office setting since new, they're in pristine condition. I was told they were phased out because some "expert" conned them into believing that buying new systems versus upgrading the OS to Win10 (they have/had win7) would be cheaper/better. While we all know that's BS, I got some stellar freebies out of it.....but yea, a fine example of our tax dollars hard at work!

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

They were in an office setting since new, they're in pristine condition.

(sigh) I get annoyed when I rescue something that's in a carton that's still sealed with the original packing tape! Which idiot DID NOT get fired for this screwup (but likely SHOULD have)?

All of my (physically) larger (48V) UPSs came to me this way -- no doubt the boxes were just so damn big that some "boss" tripped over them one day and decided "get these things outta here!".

Also received a NIB Tek DSO like that!

Annoying cuz there's almost a "need" to rescue them -- even if you don't really have a use for them (e.g., I already have several DSOs so this is just another "spare")

And, equally compelling to hold onto the "original boxes" (WHY???).

I was told they were phased out because some "expert" conned them into believing that buying new systems versus upgrading the OS to Win10 (they have/had win7) would be cheaper/better. While we all know that's BS, I got some stellar freebies out of it.....but yea, a fine example of our tax dollars hard at work!

In some places, the labor costs of doing the upgrade can exceed the costs of simple replacement.

In the 70's, I recall a consultant billing a firm I worked with $400 to drive into the city to buy a VCR for them (his invoice was not "well received"! But, hey, you're being billed by the hour and YOU decided he should do this for you...did you expect him to do it "as a favor"?)

I, long ago, realized that servicing a $100-$200 item was just not cost-effective, for me. I can buy a replacement for less than my billable time is worth.

But, there is some "therapeutic" value to rescuing and repairing stuff. You can't "work" 24 hours a day! And, you get to see how other folks' stuff fails, assembly techniques, etc.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a ASUS G1-AK005C/NOR "Republic of Gamers" lappy. It was easy to fix as just the RAM sticks were dud.

Has a C2D T7200, a 100GB Seagate I dropped from an HP that got dismantled at work, HL-DT-ST DVD-RW from an Acer, and a hotter-than-sun-surface Geforce Go 7700. It's surprising how that thing still survived and the DDR2 RAM kicked the bucket (to be fair, it wasn't original to the ASUS - both sticks had HP stickers)

I loaded Windows 8.1 on it and so far it's been running fine.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Since I can't edit my older post, scored a Acer 5738ZG yesterday.

T4300, 4GB RAM, 500GB WD Blue, and a Radeon HD4570 512MB. Only issue was a bad fuse near the LVDS, a 1.1A 24V fuse. Replaced that with a wire, hope it will be fine over time.

While at it I also replaced the CPU with a C2D P8700, the crappy Sony DVDRW with a Panasonic UJ-890, and the Samsung LCD it had with a more colorful and lively AU Optronics LCD. A nice touch was that the HDD, despite being 11 years old at this point, still reports 100% health! Might just clean the contacts with IPA as a preventive measure, and hope it lives another 11 years.

EDIT:

Also scored these today:

Samsung NP-R610
PS2 SCPH-90004a w/ 2 cards and controllers
ABIT NF7-S + AXP 2500+
WD Black 320GB (IBM FRU)
Alcatel microUSB-B charger

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Since I can't edit my older post, scored a Acer 5738ZG yesterday.

T4300, 4GB RAM, 500GB WD Blue, and a Radeon HD4570 512MB. Only issue was a bad fuse near the LVDS, a 1.1A 24V fuse. Replaced that with a wire, hope it will be fine over time.

While at it I also replaced the CPU with a C2D P8700, the crappy Sony DVDRW with a Panasonic UJ-890, and the Samsung LCD it had with a more colorful and lively AU Optronics LCD. A nice touch was that the HDD, despite being 11 years old at this point, still reports 100% health! Might just clean the contacts with IPA as a preventive measure, and hope it lives another 11 years.

EDIT:

Also scored these today:

Samsung NP-R610
PS2 SCPH-90004a w/ 2 cards and controllers
ABIT NF7-S + AXP 2500+
WD Black 320GB (IBM FRU)
Alcatel microUSB-B charger

Those WD drives will run dang near forever. I've got a 21 year old AC14300R, still in service. Also have an 11 year old 160GB (or a 320GB) WD Blue, perfect health. Have a nearly 10 year old 640GB, also perfect health. Pulled one from service when I retired a laptop, pulled the other from service when I upgraded to a 4TB WD Black in my fileserver. Still use it as a drive to shuttle disk images from a couple of computers to my fileserver about once a week.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Those WD drives will run dang near forever. I've got a 21 year old AC14300R, still in service. Also have an 11 year old 160GB (or a 320GB) WD Blue, perfect health. Have a nearly 10 year old 640GB, also perfect health. Pulled one from service when I retired a laptop, pulled the other from service when I upgraded to a 4TB WD Black in my fileserver. Still use it as a drive to shuttle disk images from a couple of computers to my fileserver about once a week.

Says SMART is bad for the black drive, but I bet it will run much more past what SMART says

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Says SMART is bad for the black drive, but I bet it will run much more past what SMART says

What SMART attribute is getting flagged? And how fast is the drive running?


P.S.: The only failures I've seen from WD drives are as follows:


Failure 1- WD My Passport 2TB - Physical abuse (WD RMA exchanged it fine)
Failure mode: Extreme slowness and unreadable sectors (possible head stack damage)

Failure 2- WD Black 500GB - Physical abuse (RMAd fine)
Failure mode: Catastrophic failure (head stack unable to calibrate)

Failure 3- WD Black 2TB - Overheating (RMAd fine as well)
Failure mode: Extreme slowness and unreadable sectors (possible head stack damage)




OTOH, I've had Seagate drives die within a few years, and all of them certainly did so on their own with no external encouragements. Had a Seagate from 2014 that was placed into my mom's computer, brand new. Drive was not abused, and was considered to be failing in 2017/8. Racking up SMART errors and performing sluggishly. Replaced it with a WD Black drive and it's still going strong to this day. So are the 2x 2TB Blacks in my main computer.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Couldn't get that far as the Windows 7 install on it is hosed up somehow. As for speed, it's on par with the healthy 500GB WD Blue from the Aspire 5738ZG lappy.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Couldn't get that far as the Windows 7 install on it is hosed up somehow. As for speed, it's on par with the healthy 500GB WD Blue from the Aspire 5738ZG lappy.

Fire up a Linux live CD or whatever, install the gnome-disk-utility package, open the program labeled Disks, select the drive in question, ^S, there ya go.