best cheap/free scores 1.1

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^Those smart boards are nice indeed. When I was HS we used them all the time... many classrooms had them, especially the rooms for advanced classes (Math, Science, and Engineering). Handy for playing Jeopardy too!

They later made versions to put on bigscreen TV's (which were being rolled out at my school around 2010 or so)... far less calibration required and better picture quality. Likely the only reason why they were in storage.

If they do work, don't toss them... surely somebody will want the big one. Heck, I could set that up at my church for bible study use if nothing else. They were not cheap back then!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Diddled with this thing a little. It's an early/first gen P4 (skt 423 Williamette core) @ 1.8GHz and has a whopping 512mb RAM in it, which was enough to work with, but would definitely be running thin. I didn't have any larger modules of this type laying around (Rambus RDRAM).....I bought 2gb worth for it. I also removed the GeForce 2 MX 200 that was in it and tossed some previous Ratdude tradebait in it I've had for a while, in the form of an ATI Radeon 8500 AIW 64mb. Still period specific!

The HDD was bad; 80gb Western Digital....I had the same size in a seagate, I just ran with that and installed XP (COA'd for win2k). It had a SB Live in it and a PCI 3Com NIC. I pulled the 3com NIC to try a little experiment. This machine has a CNR slot, which gave me the opportunity to use up one of the 4 new old stock CNR 10/100 Intel NIC's I have...Motherboards with CNR slots were very fickle about what could go in them, most CNR's would only run modems...but this one had no issues with the CNR NIC. That keylock thing on the front apparently was a primitive drive lockout system for the optical & floppy. There's a 34-pin floppy ribbon that this interfaced with between the motherboard and the drive, which I guess would not allow communication. To stop the optical; get ready for this....it cut the power! I removed this idiotic thing and replaced it with a Gateway badged CD writer from 2001 (keeping it period-specific) to go along with it's original DVDROM drive.

I didn't take a whole lot of pics of this, I doubt anyone really cares all that much....but it was fun to play with...apparently these are becoming quite collectible....so I'll just keep everything together and add it to my weird retro fleet. With the exception of the speakers, everything is present. It's in fabulous physical condition. No yellowing, no scratches, no dents.



This post created from it; Firefox 24.8.1 ESR.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored the most boring, yet useful freebie - a NETIS AD1102 LAN card, which is just a PCI Realtek RTL8169SC. It's gigabit (1000M) ethernet as opposed to the well known classic RTL8139C.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Diddled with this thing a little. It's an early/first gen P4 (skt 423 Williamette core) @ 1.8GHz and has a whopping 512mb RAM in it, which was enough to work with, but would definitely be running thin. I didn't have any larger modules of this type laying around (Rambus RDRAM).....I bought 2gb worth for it. I also removed the GeForce 2 MX 200 that was in it and tossed some previous Ratdude tradebait in it I've had for a while, in the form of an ATI Radeon 8500 AIW 64mb. Still period specific!

The HDD was bad; 80gb Western Digital....I had the same size in a seagate, I just ran with that and installed XP (COA'd for win2k). It had a SB Live in it and a PCI 3Com NIC. I pulled the 3com NIC to try a little experiment. This machine has a CNR slot, which gave me the opportunity to use up one of the 4 new old stock CNR 10/100 Intel NIC's I have...Motherboards with CNR slots were very fickle about what could go in them, most CNR's would only run modems...but this one had no issues with the CNR NIC. That keylock thing on the front apparently was a primitive drive lockout system for the optical & floppy. There's a 34-pin floppy ribbon that this interfaced with between the motherboard and the drive, which I guess would not allow communication. To stop the optical; get ready for this....it cut the power! I removed this idiotic thing and replaced it with a Gateway badged CD writer from 2001 (keeping it period-specific) to go along with it's original DVDROM drive.

I didn't take a whole lot of pics of this, I doubt anyone really cares all that much....but it was fun to play with...apparently these are becoming quite collectible....so I'll just keep everything together and add it to my weird retro fleet. With the exception of the speakers, everything is present. It's in fabulous physical condition. No yellowing, no scratches, no dents.



This post created from it; Firefox 24.8.1 ESR.

Socket 423? Rare indeed... Never seen one in person. I have a handful of 478 Williamettes (givaway is the use of SDRAM or RAMBUS)... but the only RAM ever supported on 423 AFAIK is RAMBUS. One of the reasons they were so rare... very, very expensive, and unless the software was written for the P4, the PIII would smoke them every time. It wasn't until 478 Willamette that PIII's started to fall out of favor for non-laptop use (and even then, Tualies weren't that much slower!).

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Socket 423? Rare indeed...

I even looked for the 2GHz skt423 CPU; the max made...figuring they'd be plentiful & cheap.... Wrong. Not a single one to be found! I guess I should be happy it's as fast as 1.8!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I have a SD-RAM based MSI 845 Socket 423 mobo. If memory serves me right it was horribly picky about what sticks I used, but when the right combination was struck, it would run great.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I have a SD-RAM based MSI 845 Socket 423 mobo. If memory serves me right it was horribly picky about what sticks I used, but when the right combination was struck, it would run great.

That's one nice thing about RDRAM..... It always works.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Found an nice MSI CX700 lappy, hopefully picking it up tomorrow. C2D T6600, HD4330, 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD, 17.3" LED. Should make an interesting retro gaming machine. Not sure if battery is still alive (probably not, given the era it's from) and comes with no charger, but AFAIK Toshiba/ASUS chargers should work on it.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Uhgg...from this last school batch, there's a couple of these pieces of crap...hollow tin can mid-towers with external PSU's, no expansion slots, and micro ITX boards....boggles my mind why HP put these in such big ass cases!!







Cases stripped....and ready for my newly fabricated case crusher!!





...but it's not a total waste!! These are new enough that they're worth saving for the right micro ITX case to make a really nice little web browsing, emailing, facebarfing, letter typer out of...too bad neither one has an HDMI, they'd make decent HTPC's....ohh well.. I just don't have any ITX cases at the moment, so I've bagged them up for use when I do. They're great for those on tight budgets that need something decent but cheap.



There were also 4x HP 3rd gen I-series AIO's in there, all have LED displays....they all come on & boot, but no backlight....so I'm guessing bad strips....that could be an interesting surgery.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored yet another DV7, a DV7-1205eg. Athlon QL-64, HD3470 (not 3450 or 3650 as written somewhere else on the internet), 3GB of RAM. Has a 100GB main drive and a 640GB Hitachi out of some Toshiba C855 (I think). Usual issue, bad chipset, but with a weird manifestation - every time it would try to boot, it would cycle the DVD over and over.

Reflowed, replaced the IGP thermal pad with a coin as that's all I had at the moment, and am currently installing Windows 10 LTSC on it.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got to the tail end of sorting this last EDU load, and there was a SonicWall NSA 2400. Coming from an EDU, I'm guessing it was config'd to keep student machines off the internet but able to talk to eachother including staff system that were on the interwebs....

I've never messed with one of these.... From basic searching, they seem a pain to config....but once you find their happy place, they're quite solid & very secure.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Got to the tail end of sorting this last EDU load, and there was a SonicWall NSA 2400. Coming from an EDU, I'm guessing it was config'd to keep student machines off the internet but able to talk to eachother including staff system that were on the interwebs....

I've never messed with one of these.... From basic searching, they seem a pain to config....but once you find their happy place, they're quite solid & very secure.

More likely used as a pr0n filter and the like. Although if it's been sitting a long time it may predate the use of the internet in all levels of education.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

More likely used as a pr0n filter and the like. Although if it's been sitting a long time it may predate the use of the internet in all levels of education.

They sell for ~$50ish on ebay, must be useful for something.... I cleared the config off it, I didn't have the password....so I don't know what parameters were in it.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a brand new (not in box, but still had the battery isolation pull tab) Logitech M720 Triathlon Mouse for $6. Actually something I was looking to get for my Lenovo Thinkpad T440s (since the M720 has BT in addition to Unifying; otherwise is identical to my preferred M705's). Had the Unifying receiver with it too... Heck that alone is worth $10-20.

Edit: Forgot to mention that in the case of the T440s (or any future laptop of mine without a free internal PCIe slot to fit an internal unifying adapter via internal USB dongle card), this means I still have a linux friendly wireless mouse without an external dongle. If I ever dual boot (and I don't/can't extract and mirror the bluetooth passkeys between OS's) it has three bluetooth ID's so I'm covered there (just have to remember which is which).

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Found a genuine Windows 98 SE English CD at the dumpster (with a CD key written on a piece of paper ) and two nice retro Coca-Cola coasters.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Had a walk-in drop off a few P4-era systems today...nothing overly exciting except for the one 'diamond in the rough' in every one of these dropsoffs... This time is was a Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) Starion model 919 workstation from 1995. Condition is fair; no physical damage...just filthy, and horribly yellowed...great resto candidate & minor collectible....Dallas RTC bad. Front bezel has been in the bromine de-yellowing soup all afternoon! Stay tuned!

[Xenon-Codex]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I bought two Fujitsu P520's from the auction at work, $90. Then I got a third one for spares, the case had damage. All are i5-4440's with 8GB ram.
All proper equipment goes to auction, which is good way to get rid of them, and get some money instead of paying to waste company.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Some updates on my previous scores

- my DV7-1205eg's AMD board died, so it has been replaced with a DV7-1080es mobo - PM45/9600M GT.
- Acer Aspire 6530G I had replaced a 3470 on had a 3650 fail. Thankfully managed to replace it with the same 3650. Keeping a 1GB 4650 with me just in case it decides to go south as well.
- DV5-1026eo received new MX4 thermal paste and a downgrade from Turion Ultra ZM82 to a RM74. As a result, machine now runs cooler (copper shimmed by the way). Youtube still choppy and I haven't yet figured why.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Today was another interesting day. It started with a phone call at 9:30am from a guy that had a 70" 4K TV hit by lightning and needed it checked out for his insurance company. He said I can keep the TV, he just needs paperwork for his insurance claim....ok, no big deal, I do this all the time....but the free 70" 4k isn't the whole story....just keep reading!!

It was wall mounted and he was older, so I went to his house to pick it up. I got it down, loaded into my truck. Of course being wall mounted, the feet are missing.... :-/

Anyway....I'm not sure if the mainboard or the power supply (or both) are bad.... Has red standby light, press power, the STBY light flickers for a split second, and that's it. Never does power up.....I didn't dig into it that deep....but it looks to have been buzzed. The power supply is missing some voltages and the processor gets VERY hot. It's a 70UH6350.

I got this going. The mainboard was popped as I suspected. The mainboards for these were not easily found....but I did find a new one for $200...only one seller had one. Given the size of the set, well worth fixing. I don't think the colors & blacks are as nice looking as my plasma, but it looks good. I don't think I'll have any trouble re-homing it.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I got this going. The mainboard was popped as I suspected. The mainboards for these were not easily found....but I did find a new one for $200...only one seller had one. Given the size of the set, well worth fixing. I don't think the colors & blacks are as nice looking as my plasma, but it looks good. I don't think I'll have any trouble re-homing it.

I've come to the same conclusion on my dead 70 inch Samsung (same model I think). Not worth 200 to me... Especially if replacing crap with crap.