Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1
Speaking of scores, here's a photo of two laptops I have fixed from some of my posts in this exact thread.
Left: HP Pavilion DV7-1214ea, from post #4737
Right: Acer Aspire 5740G-333G25Mn, mentioned in post #4152.
How I fixed them:
DV7-1214ea: AMD NB needed reflow, this time it actually worked. (I went through 4-5 units that failed to come back to life, this is the first). Have repasted it, swapped in a Turion ZM-82 and added some pennies under the GPU heatsink as the board has slightly warped around the GPU area (since the NB and GPU are pretty close to eachother), and it runs quite cool for a S1G2 machine (much cooler than my now defunct Acer 5536G)
Acer 5740G: ghetto fixed it by programming an old 775 mobo (Gigabyte 945GZM-S2) BIOS chip with the EC BIOS (using this tool) and then soldering the dead 775 mobo's reprogrammed & repurposed SPI chip onto the Acer mobo.
Speaking of scores, here's a photo of two laptops I have fixed from some of my posts in this exact thread.
Left: HP Pavilion DV7-1214ea, from post #4737
Right: Acer Aspire 5740G-333G25Mn, mentioned in post #4152.
How I fixed them:
DV7-1214ea: AMD NB needed reflow, this time it actually worked. (I went through 4-5 units that failed to come back to life, this is the first). Have repasted it, swapped in a Turion ZM-82 and added some pennies under the GPU heatsink as the board has slightly warped around the GPU area (since the NB and GPU are pretty close to eachother), and it runs quite cool for a S1G2 machine (much cooler than my now defunct Acer 5536G)
Acer 5740G: ghetto fixed it by programming an old 775 mobo (Gigabyte 945GZM-S2) BIOS chip with the EC BIOS (using this tool) and then soldering the dead 775 mobo's reprogrammed & repurposed SPI chip onto the Acer mobo.
Attached Files
) But since I was on my bike, there really wasn’t a way to take it with me, obviously. I just noted which street it was on and continued on my route. Later that day, I thought about picking it up. But then I thought, why not leave it for someone else who might need it more?
The only thing left in it was a set of Torx. However, the bolts were a size that none of my Torx fit - either too small or too big. 
I then took out my trusty Harbor Freight 4-in-1 (really 6-in-1) screw driver and tried the small flat head side. It fit! 
I started removing the base bolts with a jolly smile. Two of the bolts were really tight, though. So I put a lot of pressure on the screw driver to make sure it doesn’t strip the Allen wrench head. Then I jokingly thought, What are the chances of Murphy’s law striking me here on the last bolt. Sure enough, this is EXACTLY what happened 
- head stripped on the last bolt (not much, but enough that my flat head screw driver could no longer engage it.) 
The sunken feeling of defeat made me want to put the bolts back in, leave the chair, and hope someone else takes it. But what the heck, I can be stubborn bastard too. I started trying things. I sat on the chair and pushed it all the way down. While at it, I also noticed it’s not as wide as my current desk chair. Then an idea came to my head that I can maybe, somehow, with a pinch of luck, fit it upside down on the passenger seat? (The rear seats were out of question, as the rear doors on my car don’t open as far as the front ones.) So I started fiddling with that and… almost had success. The chair did actually fit, but the arm rests were still a bit too wide (by just a few inches / cm ) for the passenger door to close
(I guess all that goofing must have attracted some WTF attention. 
) Of course, I greeted him and also asked if it’s OK to take the chair. Much to my surprise, he said, absolutely no problems! If you can find a better use for it, go for it. We then chatted a little more and he told me that he got this chair no more than 2 months ago. He barely put any use on it when one of the caster wheels broke from the plastic base. I’m not sure why he didn’t try to return it, as it probably would have been covered by warranty (perhaps an online order and needed to be shipped back? 
) Either way, he said he already bought another chair, so it would be good to know if this one didn’t end up in the trash, as it was $150 when he bought it and still was new and clean (which I had already noted when I saw it earlier in the day. 
Even if I paid for it, my mother would have beat my ass over something like that.
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