best cheap/free scores 1.1

[pi3141592]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Is there a buy/sell section on this forum?

[vinceroger69]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Is there a buy/sell section on this forum?

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=12
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=13

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nice!

But for the love of the electronics gods, please get rid of the GF210 GPU from that system and use the APU's output instead. The A8-6600k (and non-k version too) carry a Radeon HD 8570D... which isn't a power house by any means. According to Techpowerup, it's about on-par with a GF220 and overall slower than an HD5570 and HD4670, so it may not seem like a big upgrade. But believe me, it IS. GeForce 210 is just a re-brand of the GeForce 8400 GS. It's a painfully-slow GPU with only 4 ROPs and 64-bit memory bus.

I too wondered why they added that, the onboard GPU does work.

As for OC'ing - I think 4.5-4.7 GHz is where those APUs will max-out on stock cooling...

Hey now, 600MHz or more is 600MHz or more!!

Well, I wouldn't call that LGA775 C2D system "useless". Boring? -Sure.

I suppose it would make a decent file server, NAS, or something of the like....I didn't bother looking up it's CPU support in great detail, but I know it can accept Xeons....but with onboard graphics, and 8x being the fastest PCIe available; it certainly doesn't have gaming rig written all over it!! If you have a use for it, you're welcome to it.

Indeed the case is really nice, though, and would be cool to see on of your "usual" dual CPU builds or something of that caliber.

Indeed, stay tuned!! I have a special system core sitting in the bin that will be perfect for this! ...and then add in the super cool hotswap SAS cage that's made for this case. Too nice of a case to scrap over a missing HDD holder; the SR209's came stock with basic removable internal-mount cages (missing)....but the hot-swap SAS cage was an upgrade option.

Are these good for anything these days, aside from very extremely basic online browsing?

You'd be amazed! These little systems are stellar for running Nissan ConZult. A little more RAM, a cheap small SSD, Win XP or 7, and the ConZult software & cable, its fabulous for Z car diagnostics! ...and if it gets flung to the floorboard while riding shotgun during a datalog/tune session, it won't hurt it! One of the two of these has one of those big fatboy upgraded batteries; that's good! 7hrs and counting so far!

You'd be surprised.
The K7SEM and their equivalent PCChips were quite popular boards back in the day. Depending on the PCB version you have, you may be able to flash a newer BIOS and get some better OC features, just for shits and giggles. But that probably indeed isn't worth messing with.

I didn't think recapping it would be either.....but you know me and wasting hardware that can be fixed...

Now all this trouble... worth it? - Heck no!
But fun to see what happens? - Heck YES!

I do get it.....

Ouch!

That is indeed pretty bad. I've never quite seen burn-in like this - not on a CRT anyways. (But believe it or not, I've seen worse on months-old OLED TVs.)

Worse than ouch....tragic for such a nice monitor....

Now here is where I get curious ... or was thinking about it while taking a crap the other day (so the idea may be worth just as much, FWIW): what if you take a picture of the screen while turned On and displaying a white background... then invert the colors on image you took, lighten the image, and boost its contrast. After that, display the image on this CRT monitor for several days with the tube @ maximum brightness and contrast to try to "reverse burn-in" the image. Sounds too crazy?
Or maybe I ought to write my ideas down more often while on the throne.

Certainly nothing to lose by trying..... A bright white raster with the brightness & contrast full blast.....hmmm... I don't see it curing it.....but maybe take the edge off it.

The ASUS - yeah it probably needs a recap. There was even a thread about it here. Reason I know is because there was a very similar-looking 24" ASUS on my local Craigslist here.

THis one is a 24 iirc. It actually works, but I'll crack it open....they were notorious for the plague!

Ah yes, I once found $1 in the trash can in my last job.

Back in the TV service days (90's), I was given some old TV's from the garage of a dead guy; they were ~1950's era. I found $500 in 100-dollar bills in an envelope taped to the inside back cover.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I finally got to the bottom of the box of laptops & radios that were dropped off last week to find what was really the gem of the litter....

THis:



It was in a pink antistatic bag; and at first glance I scoffed, blowing it off as a power strip....I get those all the time and usually toss them in the recycle bid.... Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what looked like a display....so I looked closer.... This thing is a Digital Loggers - Smart Power Switch; which allows you to independently control up to 8 110v line receptacles over a network!! I never even knew there was such an animal out there!! This thing looks like it could be loads of fun to play with! It doesn't appear to have ever been used, the bag was still sealed and the cord wound up....and had that 'new smell' to it.

A few more pics;



Weird looking plugs.....I thought at first it was 220v, but it's 110v.


Had it been 220v, the tab on the other side would be flat too. I don't have any outlets in the building with this plug on it, I'll have to grab one next time I'm at lowes.



I used some gator clips with my killer cord, it powered up and I was able to get into it over the network. It was still at its default settings, no config on it....further evidence it was never used.

Not sure what I'll do with it....but I'll definitely have a little fun with it.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Like RJARRRPCGP mentioned, these APUs are kind of like Intel's P4 - high clocks, but IPC is rather poor. So probably best not to OC and keep the temperatures as low as possible - especially under full/high load. The built-in GPU in these APUs actually does make them quite failure-prone.

I think the non-APU versions are better. I have what's a refreshed version of this, but CPU-only version of the gen after Richland.

Kaveri, was right after Richland and while it looks better for IPC than Richland, my Kaveri struggles with Halo MCC, it's easily 60+ percent CPU usage.

Even the refresh version, at times, feels more like only 2 cores!

Mine, is the Athlon X4 860K.

The Richland version would be the 760K, IIRC.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I finally got to the bottom of the box of laptops & radios that were dropped off last week to find what was really the gem of the litter....

THis:



It was in a pink antistatic bag; and at first glance I scoffed, blowing it off as a power strip....I get those all the time and usually toss them in the recycle bid.... Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what looked like a display....so I looked closer.... This thing is a Digital Loggers - Smart Power Switch; which allows you to independently control up to 8 110v line receptacles over a network!! I never even knew there was such an animal out there!! This thing looks like it could be loads of fun to play with! It doesn't appear to have ever been used, the bag was still sealed and the cord wound up....and had that 'new smell' to it.

A few more pics;



Weird looking plugs.....I thought at first it was 220v, but it's 110v.


Had it been 220v, the tab on the other side would be flat too. I don't have any outlets in the building with this plug on it, I'll have to grab one next time I'm at lowes.



I used some gator clips with my killer cord, it powered up and I was able to get into it over the network. It was still at its default settings, no config on it....further evidence it was never used.

Not sure what I'll do with it....but I'll definitely have a little fun with it.

Ah, Nema 5-20's. That's the 16A version of the large IEC plugs we're used to on the other end (IEC C19/C20)... which is also what your PowerMac G5 uses for a power cord (as they can draw more than 10A, which is what the usual IEC C13/C14 can take)

If you have a 20A circuits, just swap the receptacles... that's why 20's have T slots.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Ah, Nema 5-20's. That's the 16A version of the large IEC plugs we're used to on the other end (IEC C19/C20)... which is also what your PowerMac G5 uses for a power cord (as they can draw more than 10A, which is what the usual IEC C13/C14 can take)

If you have a 20A circuits, just swap the receptacles... that's why 20's have T slots.

I knew it was intended for 20A 110v by the plug....but didn't realize that the cord from my G5 would work (I didn't look at it that close)! Thanks!!

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I knew it was intended for 20A 110v by the plug....but didn't realize that the cord from my G5 would work (I didn't look at it that close)! Thanks!!

I find it hard to believe that you didn't wire 20A receptacles anywhere in your shop.

I have one in my garage... a 20A GFCI I scored in a clearance bin (it's on a 12 gauge 20A circuit!).

Early 1000W PSUs used them (and were approaching 15A 120V draw)... one of the "jokes" in reviews was that new gaming rigs were going to force gamers to have their wiring redone. Thankfully, 80 Plus kept that from becoming reality.

----

Scored a used Gen 3 Apple TV for $3. Cosmetically garbage... but like I care. Not that it's good for much.... other than maybe being able to stream my wife's itunes movie collection. Which may not be a good thing!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I find it hard to believe that you didn't wire 20A receptacles anywhere in your shop.

I have one in my garage... a 20A GFCI I scored in a clearance bin (it's on a 12 gauge 20A circuit!).

I did in the house, especially in the garage..... I just didn't think of it in the shop some ~12yrs ago when I did the remodel.....yea, silly me!! I will have to add a few.

On this LPC7 network power switch, it's internal PSU has some issues. It's a simple 5v/12v open frame PSU.... The 5v side works, which obviously runs the CPU & interface. The relays are driven by the 12v side, and they do not function. The 12v rail is putting out 4v. Powered off my bench supply, it works as it should. I may try recapping the PSU. Caps appear ok, but they're some brand I've never heard of (labeled 'JWCO')..... The company wants $50 + shipping for this tiny little power supply.....I bet I can get this done cheaper than that! :grin:

Connected to bench supply for LV stuff. Yes, the Mac cord worked (it obviously still had to be connected for the outlets to be energized).





Yay, light!



Interface:



Still going to be a fun thing to play around with.

[Per Hansson]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The company wants $50 + shipping for this tiny little power supply.....I bet I can get this done cheaper than that! :grin:

That's still nice that they offer it: most companies would just have you buy a new one!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

That's still nice that they offer it: most companies would just have you buy a new one!

Very true. They also offered to repair it for $99 + ship, and also offered a trade credit toward a new one. Good company.

I did fix it. Recapping it did the trick. Every lytic in this was bad. The two in the primary side (the main and smaller one next to it) were the only ones close to spec, but they were still out of tolerance. Most in the secondary were open. The PSU had a high-pitch whine coming from it, it's gone now.

Recapped. Those are the old ones....none were visibly bad. Never heard of the brand either (JWCO)....



Back in the chassis.



Life's good!!



No real plans for this thing....but I'm sure I can make something out of it!

[kevin!]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I recently found this lenovo V530-24ICB AIO with i5 9400t at the electronic recycling center , they threw it away because they broke the screen.
I soldered a 20v 6A PSU and connected a screen via HDMI (it has an HDMI output), and so far it has not given any problem.
I was amazed, it had 8GB of ram, which I later expanded to 16GB of ram, and included a 256GB Samsung SSD with less than 6000h.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I received this HP ProDesk (600g1 TWR) from an EDU back in September....just a refresher:

It's the one on the top of the left side stack of towers.



I finally got around to diddling with this one, I stored it in the 'clean room', as it's a bit newer and in minty condition....and the case is nice looking IMO. Very simplistic & clean design, and not paper-thin flimsy metal as modern HP's tend to be. Supports 4th gen I-series. I cracked it open...8gb RAM in it and a 4gb quadro 2200....nothing overly exciting....but what piqued my interest, they will run the I7-4790K Haskwell @ 4GHz.

The Haskwell I7-4790K experiment was a success.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I too wondered why they added that, the onboard GPU does work.

Maybe just as a meme, to show how bad/slow it is.

OK, OK, perhaps I shouldn't laugh at the GF210 too hard. After all, this post was made possible through an Intel i865 IGP with 8 MB of video RAM.

Hey now, 600MHz or more is 600MHz or more!!

Until the CPU overheats. Then it's 0.0 MHz.

I suppose it would make a decent file server, NAS, or something of the like....I didn't bother looking up it's CPU support in great detail, but I know it can accept Xeons....but with onboard graphics, and 8x being the fastest PCIe available; it certainly doesn't have gaming rig written all over it!!

For sure.
Actually, even for a general-use office PC (email, news, etc.) it will do OK. I was just cleaning up a family friend's laptop that has a Core 2 Duo in it. They also have a newer laptop with a Pentium G (or Celeron??)... well, I don't remember which, but one of those 2-core, 2-thread basic CPUs (not an Atom, though!), 4GB of RAM, and Windows 10 - essentially a super-basic Windows 10 laptop. I put an SSD in it, as the original 1 TB HDD was super-slow for W10. But in terms of CPU "horsepower", I think the Core 2 Duo might actually be on par with that Pentium G / Celeron... and both laptops are quite fine for office work. Well, the W10 one is a bit annoying, IMO, but what can you do? If he didn't needed it for Turbotax, he wouldn't have gotten the newer laptop. He likes his old one quite a bit.

If you have a use for it, you're welcome to it.

Thanks!... but truth be told, that probably would be just another motherboard sitting around waiting for a case.
The only way I can get all of my motherboards used is if I come up with "rotating" PC builds (which has been on my mind a lot lately.)

Certainly nothing to lose by trying..... A bright white raster with the brightness & contrast full blast.....hmmm... I don't see it curing it.....but maybe take the edge off it.

And if nothing else, if you leave it running like that for 2-3 weeks, it should at least serve as a tiny tiny heater in your garage. Actually, in a small room with good insulation, this will raise the temperature by a few degrees.

Full white raster might burn-in the whole screen and make it quite dimmer, though... hence my suggestion for the inverted colors image... but it'd be tricky to make - probably will need to spend a few moments in Photoshop, at least.

Back in the TV service days (90's), I was given some old TV's from the garage of a dead guy; they were ~1950's era. I found $500 in 100-dollar bills in an envelope taped to the inside back cover.

Can't beat free money!

Scored a used Gen 3 Apple TV for $3. Cosmetically garbage... but like I care. Not that it's good for much.... other than maybe being able to stream my wife's itunes movie collection. Which may not be a good thing!

That sure made me LOL!

No love for Love Actually?

Never heard of the brand either (JWCO)....

What!!? You're the BCN owner and you've never heard of JWCO? Shame.
Granted they are not super-common... but people have posted threads with devices with those caps failed.
But yeah, JWCO branded caps are real turds... though you already know that now.

Yay, light!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1644947780

That's a pretty cool-looking industrial-design light. Did you make it yourself from scrap metal pipes/fittings? Then again, given the rest of the custom furniture in your shop, this is probably a dumb question.

I recently found this lenovo V530-24ICB AIO with i5 9400t at the electronic recycling center , they threw it away because they broke the screen.

WOW.
That's a 9th gen i5 - not bad at all. This could even make a decent gaming rig if there's a way to put a GPU in there.
Actually, I've seen mini-PCIE to PCI-E 16x adapters on eBay. I wonder if those would work. If yes, one can mod such a machine with an external PSU and GPU for a basic gaming PC. Given you already have an external monitor connected to it, this might fit the rest of the theme too.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The only thing bad about a 9th-gen, is if you can't flash the UEFI-BIOS to fix a critical remote-code-execution CSME exploit. It has the highest severity rating of all recent ones! With some laptops, users will get left dead-in-the-water, because the CSME update wasn't made available by the laptop manufacturer.

I don't know if that bug goes all the way back to the first-gen Core i series, if not also the Core 2 family, but it looks stark!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Maybe just as a meme, to show how bad/slow it is.

OK, OK, perhaps I shouldn't laugh at the GF210 too hard. After all, this post was made possible through an Intel i865 IGP with 8 MB of video RAM.

Ok, thats a double LOL!!

Until the CPU overheats. Then it's 0.0 MHz.

Triple LOL!

I really haven't had a chance to mess around with it....but it would still make a good web browser for someone....I'll try not to fry it.

For sure.
Actually, even for a general-use office PC (email, news, etc.) it will do OK. I was just cleaning up a family friend's laptop that has a Core 2 Duo in it. They also have a newer laptop with a Pentium G (or Celeron??)... well, I don't remember which, but one of those 2-core, 2-thread basic CPUs (not an Atom, though!), 4GB of RAM, and Windows 10 - essentially a super-basic Windows 10 laptop. I put an SSD in it, as the original 1 TB HDD was super-slow for W10. But in terms of CPU "horsepower", I think the Core 2 Duo might actually be on par with that Pentium G / Celeron... and both laptops are quite fine for office work. Well, the W10 one is a bit annoying, IMO, but what can you do? If he didn't needed it for Turbotax, he wouldn't have gotten the newer laptop. He likes his old one quite a bit.

I still have one Harpertown system going.... No plans to retire it!

Thanks!... but truth be told, that probably would be just another motherboard sitting around waiting for a case.
The only way I can get all of my motherboards used is if I come up with "rotating" PC builds (which has been on my mind a lot lately.)

When I pull it, I'll pack it away safely....it's not going anywhere. If you find a use, just let me know! It's too good to doom to the shredder.

And if nothing else, if you leave it running like that for 2-3 weeks, it should at least serve as a tiny tiny heater in your garage. Actually, in a small room with good insulation, this will raise the temperature by a few degrees.

Full white raster might burn-in the whole screen and make it quite dimmer, though... hence my suggestion for the inverted colors image... but it'd be tricky to make - probably will need to spend a few moments in Photoshop, at least.

Ironically, I had a dropoff today of a 60" 4K TV and a couple 'Eden Pure' heaters. I'm sure the heaters need elements (I've fixed a lot of these).

What!!? You're the BCN owner and you've never heard of JWCO? Shame.
Granted they are not super-common... but people have posted threads with devices with those caps failed.
But yeah, JWCO branded caps are real turds... though you already know that now.

I'm sure I've encountered them before....I just really don't recall. I mean really, I can't even begin to imagine how many capacitors I've encountered in the 19yrs of BCN!

That's a pretty cool-looking industrial-design light. Did you make it yourself from scrap metal pipes/fittings? Then again, given the rest of the custom furniture in your shop, this is probably a dumb question.

My dad actually makes those.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored another oldie laptop - a IPC/Mitac 7521T.

Specs:
-Pentium III 1.1GHz (1100MHz) - not sure what core it is, some photos show it as being a late Coppermine desktop chip
-SiS 630 chipset w/ IGP (Dios mio why.)
-15 inch LCD that's amusingly bigger than the laptop base itself
-about 384MB RAM (read as 368MB since the IGP shares memory)
-20GB Fujitsu HDD (originally had XP SP2 in german, cleaned off and installed WinME. I'm not wasting 2000 on such a garbage chipset.)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

More scores today!

- HP Pavilion dv7-2135eo - C2D P7350, 4GB of DDR2, HD4650 and what I think is a failing 500GB Toshiba with the original Vista Home Premium install still intact? Recovery partition seems to be intact... In process of cloning the drive to a spare 640GB Hitachi.

-Samsung Galaxy S5 G900F - glass is pretty cracked but surprisingly the LCD and touchscreen are still working! Updated from the 5.0.1 I bought it with to the latest 6.0.1.

-fake "HDC" Galaxy S4 i9505 - not much to say about this. Continuously cycles, probably a bad firmware. Is a near 1:1 clone otherwise.

[eccerr0r]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

hmm... rare scores today. Not very good.
- A Celeron 430 in a Foxconn M/B with 8GB DDR2
- A Xeon X3360 in some board with 8GB DDR2
- A i3-4160 in some board with 4GB DDR3

No ATX I/O shields unfortunately. I suspect the 430 is probably trash, but now I need to figure out how to redistribute my computing infrastructure... The 8GB RAM is still a problem I need to somehow work around.

Existing infrastructure that might need to be shifted around:
Core2 Q9550 8GB 4SATA
Core2 Q9440 8GB 4SATA
Core2 E6700 6GB on a board with 6SATA and defective USB ports - probably at minimum junk this board if the "NTM" boards are fully functional.

The lack of I/O shields is the main problem I need to think about as the existing machines all have the shields. But the defective USB board is very tempting to be swapped with the Celeron 430 board right off the bat, if not just using the i3 or just using the X3360... which is already tempting as it has 6SATA ports and I need more SATA ports on my Q9550. That is, if I decide to use the i3-4160 instead of the Q9550... but nope, not enough RAM.

Sigh no easy quick fixes...

[kevin!]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Maybe just as a meme, to show how bad/slow it is.

OK, OK, perhaps I shouldn't laugh at the GF210 too hard. After all, this post was made possible through an Intel i865 IGP with 8 MB of video RAM.


Until the CPU overheats. Then it's 0.0 MHz.


For sure.
Actually, even for a general-use office PC (email, news, etc.) it will do OK. I was just cleaning up a family friend's laptop that has a Core 2 Duo in it. They also have a newer laptop with a Pentium G (or Celeron??)... well, I don't remember which, but one of those 2-core, 2-thread basic CPUs (not an Atom, though!), 4GB of RAM, and Windows 10 - essentially a super-basic Windows 10 laptop. I put an SSD in it, as the original 1 TB HDD was super-slow for W10. But in terms of CPU "horsepower", I think the Core 2 Duo might actually be on par with that Pentium G / Celeron... and both laptops are quite fine for office work. Well, the W10 one is a bit annoying, IMO, but what can you do? If he didn't needed it for Turbotax, he wouldn't have gotten the newer laptop. He likes his old one quite a bit.


Thanks!... but truth be told, that probably would be just another motherboard sitting around waiting for a case.
The only way I can get all of my motherboards used is if I come up with "rotating" PC builds (which has been on my mind a lot lately.)




And if nothing else, if you leave it running like that for 2-3 weeks, it should at least serve as a tiny tiny heater in your garage. Actually, in a small room with good insulation, this will raise the temperature by a few degrees.

Full white raster might burn-in the whole screen and make it quite dimmer, though... hence my suggestion for the inverted colors image... but it'd be tricky to make - probably will need to spend a few moments in Photoshop, at least.


Can't beat free money!


That sure made me LOL!

No love for Love Actually?


What!!? You're the BCN owner and you've never heard of JWCO? Shame.
Granted they are not super-common... but people have posted threads with devices with those caps failed.
But yeah, JWCO branded caps are real turds... though you already know that now.


That's a pretty cool-looking industrial-design light. Did you make it yourself from scrap metal pipes/fittings? Then again, given the rest of the custom furniture in your shop, this is probably a dumb question.


WOW.
That's a 9th gen i5 - not bad at all. This could even make a decent gaming rig if there's a way to put a GPU in there.
Actually, I've seen mini-PCIE to PCI-E 16x adapters on eBay. I wonder if those would work. If yes, one can mod such a machine with an external PSU and GPU for a basic gaming PC. Given you already have an external monitor connected to it, this might fit the rest of the theme too.

Yes, it would be a good idea.
5 days ago in the same place where I found the Lenovo, I didn't realize that there was another Lenovo with an i5 8400 with a 256GB Intel NVME SSD, but I will teardown, and I bought an Asus B365-A on Ebay (as soon as it arrives , I will put 2 8GB DDR4 memories), I will put a GT1030, and in the future I will put an RTX 3050 when prices go down.
And I will have a good machine to emulate wii, GC, PS2, etc... (My intention is to make this PC silent for HTPC connected to my 4K TV, so I can watch movies in UHD, play emulators, etc...)
I will leave the other Lenovo with the i5 9400t for my work PC, which is to flash car control units, search for information, etc... (It doesn't require graphics power, I'll leave it as it is.)