best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Xenon-Codex]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This Asus pc was inside an e-waste container. Don't know why. I transported it 5 miles on a bicycle. 2TB disk with working Windows 10. GPU is a bit slow Radeon R5 310.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not bad for a freebie. A week doesn't go by here when someone drops something off that boggles my mind as to why....but like the old saying goes; "one man's trash is another man's treasure"!!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored 3 more smartphones:

- Galaxy S6 Edge, G925F - BTU stock ROM, so probably a UK import. Runs fine, has no issues so far.
- Galaxy S7 Edge, G935F - originally had a T-Mobile International ROM (as in T-Mobile branded) but I flashed it to standard carrier-free Romanian stock firmware.
- Galaxy Note 4 Edge, N915FY - unfortunately couldn't fix this - I orignally had a pretty mangled N915V (Verizon) model but god knows where it got lost. What's wrong with it is the mainboard is dead. No LEDs, only pulls about 0.34 - 0.35 amps when connected to a charger (+ USB detector gizmo that tells you the voltage and amps its pulling.)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Mega EDU score today. Over 126 custom ITX builds. A shit ton of chromebooks (worthless). Some Ipads....some Asus Win8.1 tablets....the usual breedlot of monitors, printers, keyboards, mice.....but also a ton of SSD's as well. Gonna take me a while to go through all this stuff!

Tons of little ITX systems. Refreshing to see an EDU that actually did custom builds versus the big box stuff. This shelf is stacked 2 deep!





Black/monochrome lasers.... I pulled the 2 small brothers off of there, the rest are going straight to the recycler.



Asus Win8.1 tablets with removable keyboards. All the PSU's are missing, no way to test them.



Some of those ITX cases that have been pilfered.



I pulled one and checked it. Had 8gb RAM and a 120gb SSD. I nuked it and installed Mint20.3, runs nice all things considered....but here it is running on Hirens....





Bag-o-ram and pile of SSD's. Most the SSD's are 120gb. There were a few 250's and a few 30 & 60's in there as well.



Tons of 2.5" spinners ranging from 250gb to 1tb....spinning HDD's are rapidly becoming night breeders; can't get rid of them fast enough!!



7 3.5" drives...



I'm glad this load wasn't in the form of big towers......I wouldn't have had room for all that!!

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Asus Win8.1 tablets with removable keyboards. All the PSU's are missing, no way to test them.

Those are ASUS transformers. I have one of the T200 varieties... very nifty for the era. If they're 10" T100's, not as useful (x32 bootloader, so cannot run x64 windows)... but if 12" T200's (which have more RAM and with an x64 bootloader can run x64 windows), may have some value. Mine's been retired (as I've consolidated my main and travel laptop uses to my Lenovo Thinkad T460/T440 ultrabooks). But despite being a bit anemic to play 60fps youtube videos, could handle a lot of my travel needs and served me well for its years of service.

Arguably the best of the Windows 8.1 tablets ever made outside of the MS surface varieties.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Those are ASUS transformers. I have one of the T200 varieties... very nifty for the era. If they're 10" T100's, not as useful (x32 bootloader, so cannot run x64 windows)... but if 12" T200's (which have more RAM and with an x64 bootloader can run x64 windows), may have some value. Mine's been retired (as I've consolidated my main and travel laptop uses to my Lenovo Thinkad T460/T440 ultrabooks). But despite being a bit anemic to play 60fps youtube videos, could handle a lot of my travel needs and served me well for its years of service.

Arguably the best of the Windows 8.1 tablets ever made outside of the MS surface varieties.

I was able to trick it into installing Mint 20.3 (64 bit) on the 32-bit EFI.... Gonna try with Windows....but not sure about driver support (no 64 bit drivers from asus). Win10 once carved down runs very nice on this...with the crap disabled + SSD, its very responsive all things considered. Good browser....the only reason I'd want 64-bit support is for waterfox....but otherwise there's really no need for the amount of RAM. These only have 2gb RAM, 64gb storage. They appear to have never been used, mint condition (our tax dollars hard at work). They're T100TA's.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I was able to trick it into installing Mint 20.3 (64 bit) on the 32-bit EFI.... Gonna try with Windows....but not sure about driver support (no 64 bit drivers from asus). Win10 once carved down runs very nice on this...with the crap disabled + SSD, its very responsive all things considered. Good browser....the only reason I'd want 64-bit support is for waterfox....but otherwise there's really no need for the amount of RAM. These only have 2gb RAM, 64gb storage. They appear to have never been used, mint condition (our tax dollars hard at work). They're T100TA's.

(Per a private chat with Topcat; this is for anybody else reading)

Windows doesn't support mixed UEFI's... which is why they're "x64" with an asterisk. Early "x64" Macbooks had this same issue (early Core 2 CPUs, but Apple didn't bother updating to a x64 EFI).

Linux can be made to work in such a way... but the issue there is that bay trail drivers are hard to find. Android is built to run on these, but the drivers don't transfer. The internals are closer to that of a smart phone/tablet... IIRC there's effectivly no internal PCIe bus; everything is SDIO, I2C, or SPI. I ran arch on a near-identical (hardware) insiginia tablet... even with a custom "optimized for bay trail" kernel I couldn't make the touch screen or rotation sensors work.

Optimized 8.1/10 runs OK on these... the issue I ran into is all of mine only had 8.1/10 home liscences... and 10 home cannot be opimized/debloated like the pro versions (and 8.1 home) can. Hence why all of mine that I didn't return to the store ended up on Windows 8.1 Home (the "with bing" edition most of these were COA'd for), highly modified.

I bet you dimes to donuts these were spares the school never issued. Would explain the lack of wall adapters... they ordered more than they'd need, that way if someone blew/broke one, they could issue a new one quickly and send the broken one out for repair.

[Uranium-235]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Tons of 2.5" spinners ranging from 250gb to 1tb....spinning HDD's are rapidly becoming night breeders; can't get rid of them fast enough!!

I remember years ago I would have killed for as many HDD's as I have now. They pile up especially as I upgrade customers to SSD's

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Linux can be made to work in such a way... but the issue there is that bay trail drivers are hard to find. Android is built to run on these, but the drivers don't transfer. The internals are closer to that of a smart phone/tablet... IIRC there's effectivly no internal PCIe bus; everything is SDIO, I2C, or SPI. I ran arch on a near-identical (hardware) insiginia tablet... even with a custom "optimized for bay trail" kernel I couldn't make the touch screen or rotation sensors work.

Correct. Mint 20.3 worked nice......but more if it were being used as laptop. The rotation sensors did not work. Touchscreen worked, but not as one would want/expect.

These are licensed for 8.1 Pro; which I've gotten to work and then up'd to 10 Pro. Tweaked, these are darn nice for what they are. Ebay prices, these are going for 80~100 for ones in fair condition. These are mint.... Chargers are no big deal, just micro SD phone chargers. I counted them, I got 44. I did give a couple of them away.

I remember years ago I would have killed for as many HDD's as I have now. They pile up especially as I upgrade customers to SSD's

I probably have a couple hundred of them now..... I hate to trash good drives.....but WTF will I ever do with all these....

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Another interesting day...

First off is a Mac Pro LGA1366 Xeon system with 8gb RAM. System is complete except the mouse. It had 10.11 on it with a password, and I bungled the OS trying to reset it....so I yanked the 2x 1tb drives and stuck SSD in it...and to be obtuse I installed Mint. Has 2x 512mb 9500GT GPU's in it, but no SLI bridge (cards don't look SLI capable)...so not sure what the point of that is other than perhaps more monitors. Apple makes it so damn difficult to get modern (and the right) install media these days; all has to be done through their 'store'....so I didn't bother... If I were feeling really frisky, I'd have put Windows on it!! I always thought these had dual CPU's.....but I guess not....only has 1 socket.







The 22" Cinema display that came with it.





Another G5 and some older core2 era desktops... The G5 has dual CPU's and some kind of liquid cooling setup and 16gb RAM. I've read of the liquid-cooled G5's, but never seen one; no it's not leaking. CPU's are 2x dual-cores @ 2.5GHz. GPU is a Geforce 6600 256mb. Has OSX 10.5.8 on it already and I got lucky; I put in 'password' at the prompt.....and that was it.... Yea, that has paid off more than a few times! Functions well even as useless as it is.









Some "Grandstream" VOIP phones.... No idea who'd provide service for these.....but they look to be of nice quality and feature-rich.... I might tinker with them.



HP either 5:4 or 4:3 20" monitor. THose are a little harder to find in this A/R in this size....



...and last but no least; a 'Dual beam' Tektronics modular oscilloscope from probably the late 40's. The smaller box next to it is the power supply for it. This is all tube-type. No idea if it could work or not....the dongle that connects the PSU to the scope is missing and the PSU cord is rotted to beat hell.....obviously not safe to plug it in....but even this PSU is loaded with tubes...I couldn't find the output specs on it, but I bet it's hefty!!



There was of course the pile of usual night breeder stuff (keyboards, mice, cords, etc), it's already been loaded up to be sent to the recycler.

[Uranium-235]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

You don't need a bridge for 1366. X58 has 2x16 support. Other chipsets that have less (usually 2x8) will be able to have greater performance if they can share extra data with a bridge to make up for the lack of lanes

[Per Hansson]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

...and last but no least; a 'Dual beam' Tektronics modular oscilloscope from probably the late 40's. The smaller box next to it is the power supply for it. This is all tube-type. No idea if it could work or not....the dongle that connects the PSU to the scope is missing and the PSU cord is rotted to beat hell.....obviously not safe to plug it in....but even this PSU is loaded with tubes...I couldn't find the output specs on it, but I bet it's hefty!!



There was of course the pile of usual night breeder stuff (keyboards, mice, cords, etc), it's already been loaded up to be sent to the recycler.

I could not find any specs either, only the output voltages.
Might be best to not start this up if the caps have not been reformed for 50 or so years, the series was introduced in 1958 according to TekWiki:

https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/551
" The external power supply unit produces regulated DC voltages of −150 V, +100 V, +225 V, +350 V, and +500 V."

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I could not find any specs either, only the output voltages.
Might be best to not start this up if the caps have not been reformed for 50 or so years, the series was introduced in 1958 according to TekWiki:

https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/551
" The external power supply unit produces regulated DC voltages of −150 V, +100 V, +225 V, +350 V, and +500 V."

Wow, thanks for the information. The little devil on my shoulder wants to restore this.

[Per Hansson]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yes they do look awesome with all those tubes!
I was near to get one but then got my senses together and realized where the heck was I going to have room for that big thing, it's crowded as it is here!
You seem to have gotten over the first stage of getting one so you got that covered

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yes they do look awesome with all those tubes!
I was near to get one but then got my senses together and realized where the heck was I going to have room for that big thing, it's crowded as it is here!
You seem to have gotten over the first stage of getting one so you got that covered

With that information and some other info, I bet I could make that missing dongle if I couldn't track one down...and finding one would be pretty unlikely. Not sure hwo I'd go about reforming all that besides just bringing it up slowly on a variac.... I'd be willing to bet most of the lytics are toast anyway.....but this won't be sent to the recycler.

FWIW, this came from the same fella that brought in the dual channel high voltage DC power supply from earlier in the thread.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Anyone missed me? Just found an Acer 5542G at the trash. Still has LCD and keyboard so probably fresh drop. No HDD, DVD and RAM sticks tho.

Otherwise, advertised specs are a Turion II "Caspian" M500, 4GB DDR2, a 640GB HDD, 15.6 LED screen (something I can definitely confirm by the pure absence of a inverter altogether.) and an Atheros 5B93 LAN card, as well as a Win7 COA.

My biggest suspect would be the CMOS battery preventing it to boot (Wistron based Acers are known to not boot if CMOS battery is not at least 1V, from what I experienced.) but no idea until I plop in some RAM to test.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
I was wondering where you've been!! Momaka has been MIA for months as well.

[Per Hansson]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yes I'm wondering the same as well!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yeah, life had taken a bit of toll on me. I had to do an checkup on my digestive system just recently (I have been diagnosed with Crohn's since 2016) and so far everything is in check. I had mistakenly stopped taking medication on a wrong basis that it caused me nausea during a enterocolitis episode in April this year - about the same period I had bought my ABIT BE6-II (which btw, Topcat would probably love to see it being polymodded now, and if there's enough demand, I might open up a thread for it, with pics.) - the actual cause was some shady soup I had bought, not knowing the conditions in which it was made.

All this interruption had caused some nasty stomach pains during my 2nd year of uni exams (especially when I'm stressed) and often I'd just lay in bed doing nothing.

Anyways, everything's better now, and I'm hoping to return home to more restorations and retro stuff. I only have one failed exam which I'll have to retake just in a few days (12th of July, to be exact) and then it's off to the train ride home.

So far I've been pretty scarce on scores. I did score another great mid 2000s oldie, which would be a white PSP 1003, but it needs quite some work - the DC jack was pretty rotten and broke (thankfully in the yellow end and not inside!), the right shoulder buttons (triangle, cross, circle and square) need a rubber replacement, it needs a nub stick (which I still think I have, albeit black.), and the whole UMD drive is corroded beyond any salvation (not that I would have any use for it since I'll probably install a Samsung Core Prime or J3 2016 battery in place of the UMD drive). It does power on though and thankfully everything does work.

Then there's the Acer 5542 from my previous post. I did manage to cut out a small hole on the fan side, just for it to cool slightly better. It does still need another HDD, DVD drive and RAM sticks (I currently stole both from a working Samsung NP-R610H that needs a new non-yellowed 16inch LCD - I might have one from a discarded Acer 6530 that had a bad mainboard) as well as a DVD drive with the correct bezel.

It's been just too much for me and I had to lay low for a while until I got better, but I'm hoping that I can get home safe. Oh, and considering I will also have a trip to Bucharest, who knows? Maybe I'll score some more great stuff!

That, and if I can rig myself up a recording setup, I might be starting uploading repairs and all that stuff up to Youtube.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yesterday was a whole lotta wild ride between home and Bucharest, and this behemoth had managed to come with me.




Acer Aspire 8920G. The only issues it has is the battery was the incorrect model (I installed a replacement "chinesium" battery in its place, it's one of the better ones that came with a Packard Bell LJ71) , the CPU had been changed to a Celeron M 575 for whatever reason that is beyond me and the HDD was a 160GB WD instead of 250GB. Oh, and someone added 2x2GB instead of the 3GB worth of DDR2.