best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
Just about nothing newer will have them anymore.

[Agent24]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

You can buy Parallel and Serial PCI-E cards on eBay.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
I have some no-name one. Driver support sucks, as its not addressed as a legacy device. It came with no drivers disk and was a real pain in the ass to get working.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Why does having a parallel port matter if the item in question is a 3 port print server?

[Agent24]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
I have some no-name one. Driver support sucks, as its not addressed as a legacy device. It came with no drivers disk and was a real pain in the ass to get working.

Which chipset is that? I've seen several different types mentioned in the auctions.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Which chipset is that? I've seen several different types mentioned in the auctions.

I really don't remember....its been a long time ago. If I find it, I'll let you know....but short of an old 16 bit ISA card with jumpers, none of them will be legacy.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I have a siig pci parallel card at my old house... its old. Like mid 90's or so. My dad needed to control two printers and didn't like using a switch box iirc

[shadow]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Parallel port print servers are still useful for older laser printers which are still in use and are pretty awesome (huge toner capacity, rarely break down, cheap to maintain etc.), however I now tend to try to get printers with an embedded print server as opposed to using an external one. It is true that parallel printers are pretty much dead with all new printers and are becoming rarer in second hand ones too, that is why I opted to get a USB print server when I got a printer with both parallel and USB interfaces (and no option for built in network).

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Forgot to mention that the week before I got those RS Nova speakers, I bought a Yamaha RX-830 RS stereo amp for $20 at a year sale in my neighborhood. It's a 75W/channel amp with max 0.015% THD. Not the most powerful amp for the money, but I think it's okay. I don't know, what do you all, think? OK deal?
It's a late 90's amp (made in '99 if I recal). Back says "Made in Japan", and it does have a real brushed aluminum frontplate and all Japanese caps inside (mostly Rubycon and Panasonic).
The guy who was selling it also had the RX-930 RS model (the RX-830's bigger brother) for the same price, but it was missing one knob so I figured it's better to get this one, in case I do decide to sell it some later point in time.
Also, the guy had a tape deck, but it looked like late 80's or early 90's (so not worth much IMO), and a Yamaha turntable. Since I have no vinyl records, though, I decided to get only the amp.

http://www.simplyspeakers.com/optimu...t-fsk-10a.html

I refoamed a pair of CV 101W2 woofers with a kit from them. It worked great! Make sure you use shims.

Thanks, I will keep it in mind. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough patience to order that stuff and wait for them to get here, so I did a ghetto repair. I may post some pictures of it in the ghetto mod thread, but I have a feeling one of you oldschool audio heads would kill me if you saw it .

I have plenty of computers with parallel.

Same here. Actually, I don't think I have anything that doesn't have a parallel port (yes, all my computers are all that old ). I love my HP Laserjet 2100, though. No driver required in XP. Just plug'n'play. Literally!

[goodpsusearch]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

HP PS-5341-4CF 340W (LiteΟn)

I got it for free. It's a great power supply. See more here:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...331#post377331

[SuperDuty]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Got some fine stuff last week :
- an old Acer aspire 3613WLMi, missing memory (512Mb originally so I don't care much), hard drive and battery. The inverter was missing and the flat panel ccfl is dead, but I have all the parts to repair this. I've replaced the Celeron M 380 with a Pentium M 735, put 2x512Mb of DDR2, a 20Gb HDD (the only I have in mini IDE), a panel from a long time dead laptop, and here we go !
- a 320Gb Iomega external hard drive. Works just fine, FULL of downloaded movies and games, as well as 32Gb of personal pictures :/ I bet the power supply was toast and instead of trying with another, they just threw the HDD in the dumpster.
- a 2011 portable DVD player, a diode was shorted, easy repair. Works fine and battery holds plenty of power.
- an HP Compaq dx2000MT, this one's boring except it's pretty much new. There're not a spot of dust in the machine. Pentium 4 Prescott 2.8A S478, 2x256Mb, 40Gb, LiteON NR146 with no AGP port (well there's the room on the PCB), a beefy LiteOn 250W PSU

[AIRWOLF3]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

I can't say dumpster found, customer upgraded his 2 Fujitsu Plasma TV's one 42" & 50" with the new Samsung Smart TV's, asked me if I wanted them and for free! Its' for free its for me!

[iMic]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

An oldie, but a freebie. It's a Power Macintosh G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors 2003) with a single 1.25GHz G4 processor. It's an awesome piece of kit, not incredibly fast now considering it's age, but still impressive none the less.



Of course, it has a blown power supply. I would just do a capacitor change but being the Samsung 360W supply, it appears that capacitors are only the beginning when it comes to these supplies. A friend has a working PSU from an MDD that I may able to source, and hopefully it'll be an ACBel. Otherwise at the very least I'll perform an ATX conversion, but I'm leaving that as a last ditch attempt as I'll lose ADC in the process, making my 17-inch Apple Studio Display unusable.

[Agent24]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It will run faster if you put Linux on it

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It will run faster if you put Linux on it

But a lot of stuff won't be compatible (like flash for example).

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I got a good deal several weeks ago on 5 Radeon HD3450 PCI-E video cards on ebay. They are all low-profile and use a DMS-59 connector, which is somewhat of a bummer, but the price was right too: $10 total with shipping (so $2 per card). I also bought a DMS-59 to dual-VGA connector for around $4 shipped. Tested all of the cards and 4/5 worked fine. One had missing red color on VGA1, but I found the problem and fixed it - due to the low price, the seller kind of cheapened out on the box, so one of the cards had a small SMD inductor and resistor knocked off right by the DMS-59 connector. Luckily, the inductor was still in the box, so I was able to solder that. I couldn't find the resistor, though (it was one of those super tiny ones, so it probably got lost). Using one of the good cards as a reference, I was able to determine that the SMD resistor was 75 Ohms. Took one of my Radeon 9700 video cards that I use for parts scavenging and "borrowed" a 56 Ohm resistor off of it (as that's the closest value I could find). End result: 5 perfectly working Radeon HD 3450 video cards. May need some dusting and fan oiling in the future, though, but we will see.

I also got an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ for $4 shipped. I'm planning on reviving my Jetway N2PAP-LITE motherboard again. It works as it is, but it has GSC caps and a 1.4 GHz Duron CPU, which isn't the fastest thing on the planet.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I got a good deal several weeks ago on 5 Radeon HD3450 PCI-E video cards on ebay. They are all low-profile and use a DMS-59 connector, which is somewhat of a bummer, but the price was right too: $10 total with shipping (so $2 per card). I also bought a DMS-59 to dual-VGA connector for around $4 shipped. Tested all of the cards and 4/5 worked fine. One had missing red color on VGA1, but I found the problem and fixed it - due to the low price, the seller kind of cheapened out on the box, so one of the cards had a small SMD inductor and resistor knocked off right by the DMS-59 connector. Luckily, the inductor was still in the box, so I was able to solder that. I couldn't find the resistor, though (it was one of those super tiny ones, so it probably got lost). Using one of the good cards as a reference, I was able to determine that the SMD resistor was 75 Ohms. Took one of my Radeon 9700 video cards that I use for parts scavenging and "borrowed" a 56 Ohm resistor off of it (as that's the closest value I could find). End result: 5 perfectly working Radeon HD 3450 video cards. May need some dusting and fan oiling in the future, though, but we will see.

I also got an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ for $4 shipped. I'm planning on reviving my Jetway N2PAP-LITE motherboard again. It works as it is, but it has GSC caps and a 1.4 GHz Duron CPU, which isn't the fastest thing on the planet.

I bet you can get replacement brackets for cheap...

As for the jetway, recap the mother****er already! My dad's jetway bombed it's evercons in no time, and given how hot athon XP's run, you'll cook them before you know it.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'll lose ADC in the process, making my 17-inch Apple Studio Display unusable.

I wonder if they make an adpater for that... IIRC it's DVI (with something else added?) in a different connector?

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I bet you can get replacement brackets for cheap...

I just remove the brackets altogether and use steel wire to hold the card in place. Works almost just as well

As for the jetway, recap the mother****er already! My dad's jetway bombed it's evercons in no time, and given how hot athon XP's run, you'll cook them before you know it.

I've had that computer since late 2003 and used it very heavily up until late 2006. Caps still appear to be good (but I haven't checked them with an ESR meter). GSCs usually bulge rather than bomb like Evercon and Sacon do.

Also, Athlon XP's are actually not that hot-running at all. They appear to be because the heat sinks back in those days weren't that beefy and S462 CPUs don't have heat spreaders like the newer CPUs do. The Athlon XP 2500+ I have is rated at 54 W TDP and tops out at 68W. That's not that hot by any means.

Anyways, I also found a broken flash drive last Thursday in one of our labs. It was missing the casing and the connector's pins going to the PCB were all broken. Some ethernet wire and 1 hour later I have a working 4 GB flash drive. There's data on it, though, so I may try to see whose it is and try to return it (or at least offer them to take their data off of it if they want). It's got a SanDisk flash chip, so it's not too shabby.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I picked a pair of Genesis Physics II speakers from Craigslist ad on Wednesday night. Post was 7 days old and they were sitting outside under a tarp for that long (or possibly longer). We had rain several days ago too. Original CL post said they were moldy. No doubt they are - they stunk really really badly when I picked them up. Currently, they are sitting outside my house "getting some fresh air" with the drivers removed.

Seems like there are a lot of positive reviews and opinions on AudioKarma. Unfortunately, my set does not have the original Genesis woofer drivers. Instead it has some MG-8030HC 8" 8 Ohm woofers. Can't find much info on them. Some places say 60W RMS, others 75W. Mine have 75W stamped on them. They have huge magnets and are quite heavy, though. So not junk IMO. In fact, I tested them with a crappy 10W TV amplifier, and they seem to respond quite well to very low bass (even better than mid-bass actually). Haven't tested the tweeters yet. Those are still original. Apparently lots of good comments about those. The passive radiators seem in decent shape. Not sure if they have been re-conned or not.

The cabinets themselves are in terrible shape. Besides the mold, it looks like they have been painted over too. Moreover, whoever tried to install the replacement speakers did a real good job ruining the screw holes for the drivers (and tearing big portions of the board). To add some insult, they even put some kind of sticky tack behind the woofer drivers to hopefully make a tight seal and hold the woofer drivers in place . Needless to say, the seal was neither air-tight nor were the drivers held in place by the tack.

But as much as I complain, free is free after all, and I am still pleased I got them. The cabinets are huge and weight a ton. At least 40 pounds each - which is why I'd like to save them. Looks like I will have a good project for spring break (unless my parents throw them out - which is highly probable when they see them). I'm thinking of sanding the entire cabinet, possibly removing even the veneer or vinyl underneath.

If anyone cares to see the speakers, I can take pictures.