best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This Sony STR-110 seems to be pretty rare. The three 8V bulbs need to be replaced, and it works. The fuses looked interesting.

I've seen that in the past as well... People can be quite stupid!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Hopefully I might snag another ABIT mobo, an IS7-E2. Nothing very special, though the neat and compact form factor, plus the IDE and SATA placement might help greatly in making a nice Northwood HT machine.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Some recent ones:
64MB (8Mx9) of 30-pin SIMMs, $30
Sound Blaster CT3990, $45
Partial Socket 5 system core (Motherboard, hard disk, 2 expansion cards, random odds and ends), $30
Trane TR200-T2 VFD, free (Dead, all 3 line fuses popped, "shot sparks everywhere", probably a rectifier or inverter failure)

Motherboard has 4x PCI, 4x ISA, 2x IDE connections, looks to be an Intel 420/430 chipset. I've got parts from a dead Socket 5 core to swap over to it.
Hard disk is an 850MB Maxtor IDE drive.
Expansion cards consist of a network card (BNC/AUI/RJ45) and a twin-port voice/fax modem.

I may or may not repair the TR200 VFD. Will have to tear into it first and see if the inverter section is OK. If it's not, then it's likely going to be parted out.

[jons]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Sound Blaster CT3990, $45

^ very nice!

[momaka]

fruit bowl and power tools

I think I haven't posted about 2 years worth of the stuff I've been finding… but maybe I'll catch up on that another day when I have more time.

Meanwhile, here's something recent: the Tuesday before this past Tuesday, I went out scouting on trash day in the neighborhood to see if there are any larger moving boxes. I know I can easily buy some (and I did buy a few), but it costs me nothing to just take a lap around the ‘hood with my bike.

So I did – I found one house had about 3 large boxes thrown away – nice clean moving boxes too. I went back home, got my car and went back to pick them up. Both boxes were labeled “Fragile” and were filled with clean wrapping paper – perfect for wrapping stuff from the kitchen, as I haven't done that yet.

As I was picking up one of the boxes from the curb, though, I did notice it was suspiciously too heavy. Once I got it home and opened it, it also had some discarded medicine/pills on the bottom, aside from the packing paper.

But that's not where most of the extra weight came from. Instead, it was from this, sitting at the very bottom of the bottom:


It's a fruit bowl - nice!
Found by the right person, I suppose - I am a “fruity” guy… as in, I do like fruits A LOT… and well, I am a fruity character too, lol.

So this wasn't a bad find. Granted I have more fruit bowls that I'll ever need (mostly gifts my parents received that they don't use.) But I do like the design on this one. The only thing wrong with it was one of its 3 feet was broken. No problem, though – I dug a little more in the box and found the broken glass foot in there as well. 10 minutes later with some contact cement glue, and it's as good as new.


Sweet!

And the weekend before that, I got a full set of Porter-Cable 20V-MAX cordless power tools (drill, saw-zall, circular saw, impact driver, mutli-tool, and flashlight + USB charger, along with 2x 20V-MAX Li batteries and charger.) This came from family friends' son-in-law, who said he got a new set of tools and didn't want these. He passed them to his in-law parents, and they passed them onto me, because they're not the DIY type and don't care for any tools (and they know that I AM.) I told them they can sell them off and make a good buck or two. But they didn't care and just wanted them gone. Sooo… how do you say no to that?!


Later I asked their SIL why he was getting rid of the tools or if there was something wrong and just to make sure it wasn't a mistake / misunderstanding. He said all of the tools worked, but he didn't like the circular saw, and that's the only thing he really needed out of that whole set. He couldn't finish a project due to it being a little too weak, so he got a new set of tools. While I haven't tested the circular saw yet, I don't doubt it's going to be weak. After all, it only uses a small 20V battery. This is one reason I don't have or buy battery-powered power tools – I just hate dealing with the batteries (be it having to charge them, but never having them charged when needed, too little power, and the batteries dieing eventually.) All of my / my dad's tools are AC powered. The Ryobi circular saw we have is rated for 12 Amps (@ 120V AC) - that's a good 1400 Watts, or close to 2 HP. And yet even with that, I've had the saw struggle, particularly with thicker and/or wet wood. So no doubt a wimpy battery-powered circuit saw would be too weak even for dry wood. My guess is, the Porter-Cable battery circular saw might be just good enough for cutting dry 2x4's (i.e. “light duty” type DIY / construction jobs.) Anyways, like I said, I haven't tried it yet… and probably will see very limited use, if any. But the hand drill came in handy right away. And I suspect the saw-zall will come in very handy. That's one tool I did not have in corded or cordless form.

And that's pretty much all of the “major” stuff in the last 2 weeks or so. I did also find a Ninja Air Fryer / Toaster Oven last Tuesday (again, felt like going out scouting on trash day, and I don't even need any more boxes at this point.) It's a little greasy / dirty, but appears to work just fine… in fact, very nicely – heats up quickly and evenly. I'll probably end up cleaning it up and donating / giving it away, though. Already did that with an older GE microwave in December, along with a few other items. Actually, been giving away quite a few stuff on my local CL (so best cheap/free scores for someone else? )

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
WOW, nice score on the tools! Even if you have to buy a couple batteries, that was a mega score!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored these:

- Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P + FX4300 - nice mobo but the VRM gets a bit too toasty. Not surprised considering they stupidly switched from 4+1 on the 1st revision to 3+1 on the rev 5.1 I got. Otherwise it's a really nice mATX board!!

- ASUS P5P43TD Pro - needs a reflow on the socket. Not sure how I'll do that but got nothing else to lose at this point

- ASUS EN8500GT SILENT/HTP/256M/A - a good ole' G86 card that needed a reflow too. Works nice but I need to find a better heatsink

- Gigabyte P31-DS3L - shorted FET (and possibly driver too) near the southbridge due to a (unfortunately, as it seemed pretty decent) failing CWT ISO unit. I might try and replace both the driver and the FET, but I don't have any high hopes for this board to work again.

- GeiL 512MB DDR400 stick - for harvesting the heatsink, to use on a 2GB Apacer DDR3-1333 stick. Not feeling sad that I kill the stick as I have a better pair of DDR500 ADATA Vitesta sticks looking much better.

- Floston FL-500 PSU - dead, will harvest the heatsinks as I suspect those might fit on my HKC SZ-430PDR (which is much better than the Floston, apart from thin heatsinks, to be honest.). Oh, and the AC wires, since they're removable (not soldered)

- Gainward GT630 2GB sDDR3 128bit - dead with artefacts unfortunately - not sure where they're from as no amount of reflow (on GPU and RAM chips) yielded any change in artefacts. Shame as it would have been a good low-mid end GPU to have as a spare (personally had a GT630 before, it's actually a reliable GPU if you're tighter than a G-string in terms of budget. Just don't expect stellar gaming performance.)

- Samsung SP2504C - nice 250GB HDD of 2007 vintage. I previously had one and they're speedy even to this day.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

May be fake 4K! That's a real thing for some TVs! (not monitors, TMK)

If the LED backlight array is RGBW, then it's not real 4K! (white-only pixels)

Actually, on those, it would be if the LCD pixel array is "R-G-B-W". A proper LCD does not have a "W" pixel!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not so much for me for now:

- Tuxedo W650RB (Clevo) laptop - had a short on 19v. Removed it, doesn't post but at the very least turns on so that's a step forward I guess.

- Seagate ST1000DM003 - 9% health initally, then died. Couldn't access terminal to reset SMART.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Figured I'd update on the Tuxedo laptop - it's been downgraded to a socketed i3-4000M Haswell - I honestly much prefer a upgradeable Haswell over a Skylake.

Current specs:

-Clevo W650SH (Wortmann Terra 1548P mainboard)
-broken 15.6" 40pin 1366x768 HD-ready slim LCD
-2x2GB PC3-10600 SK-Hynix DDR3-1333
-Intel Core i3-4000M Haswell CPU @ 2.4GHz
-WD Scorpio Blue 500GB
-Geforce GT740 2GB
-Win10 Enterprise LTSC

To do:

- get 2x mSATA SSDs (one for the Terra/Tuxedo, one for a Z68P-DS3 I mentioned a few posts earlier)
- get a 1080p FHD display since the LVDS supports it (already done - it should arrive this Friday)
- get a 750GB WD Blue or Black drive (yes, call me crazy but I would like to still hear a rust spinner in my lappy every now and then)
- (hopefully) upgrade to a i7-4800MQ if the cooling system supports it (it is pretty much all copper)
- maybe drop a pair of 2x8GB PC3L sticks if I can get hold of them cheaply

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

On my way out of town I found two TV's roadside with the trash at a farm.

One was an old junky thick/small Hisense (which I left behind). The other was a Vizio E220MV (32" 1080 slimline LED-lit LCD) with the power wart included, which I scooped right up. Filthy as all getout (near a ditch, it sprinkled this morning), but on a power test (in my hotel room) it powers up fine. My HDMI cable in my travel bag is dead (or both this TV and the hotel TV have dead HDMI inputs) so no test. Screen has a ton of water spots (didn't help that I spilled a bit of sweet tea on the screen while fumbling things unloading my truck- I did mop it up!) but I'm hoping a good cleaning will clear that up. Worst case, it's a functional beater?

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Bunch of hard drives:

-Seagate ST3250410AS
-2x WD Caviar WD1600JS
-Samsung SP1654N
-WD Green WD10EZRX

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Bunch of hard drives:

-Seagate ST3250410AS
-2x WD Caviar WD1600JS
-Samsung SP1654N
-WD Green WD10EZRX

Check the SMART stats on that Samsung drive! I've seen them fail, and when they do, they corrupt and mangle everything.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Check the SMART stats on that Samsung drive! I've seen them fail, and when they do, they corrupt and mangle everything.

This. Any Samsung spinning drive I get doesn't pass go or collect 200 dollars....it goes right out to the garage to meet the crusher.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

On my way out of town I found two TV's roadside with the trash at a farm.

One was an old junky thick/small Hisense (which I left behind). The other was a Vizio E220MV (32" 1080 slimline LED-lit LCD) with the power wart included, which I scooped right up. Filthy as all getout (near a ditch, it sprinkled this morning), but on a power test (in my hotel room) it powers up fine. My HDMI cable in my travel bag is dead (or both this TV and the hotel TV have dead HDMI inputs) so no test. Screen has a ton of water spots (didn't help that I spilled a bit of sweet tea on the screen while fumbling things unloading my truck- I did mop it up!) but I'm hoping a good cleaning will clear that up. Worst case, it's a functional beater?

Update: Took some armor-all interior cleaning wipes I have in my truck to the TV... looks like the spots are behind the panel and in the diffusion layers. Either it go rained on more than I though or somebody botched an LED replacement- the bottom center of the front bezel is popped up so who knows... If it passes HDMI testing when I get home, what the heck, I'll disassemble and clean it up.

This. Any Samsung spinning drive I get doesn't pass go or collect 200 dollars....it goes right out to the garage to meet the crusher.

Agreed. Never had a good one. JUNK.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

About all of the drives hover from 98% to 100%. IIRC the Sammy was one of the 98% drives. It's one of those funnier shaped black body drives, not the completely square styled units - the black bodied drives were usually more reliable on me most of the times.

As for the data on each, about the only drive that stood out is the WD10EZRX, which has a bunch of games on it besides a 10 (or 11, who knows) install.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Since I couldn't edit my previous post - the Samsung drive won't see much usage anyways - it's PATA, and aside from maybe a bunch of OG Xboxes and at best a nF2 machine, its utility is quite declining, unfortunately. I'll keep it as a spare tho - Samsung drives are rather speedy, much so the black-body SPxxxxN and SPxxxxC series.

Other drives will probably see more usage since they're SATA - especially the Green WD10EZRX.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

More scores for today:

- WD Caviar Green WD20EARX - 100% health
- HP OEM'd nVidia Quadro FX 3700 512MB
- OG Xbox v1.6a w/ 200GB Maxtor Diamondmax 10 and X-Changer modchip
- Fujitsu Xa 2528
- Fujitsu Pa 2510
- Pioneer SE-205 headphones
- Alpha LC-8500BTX PSU

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
WOW, nice score on the tools! Even if you have to buy a couple batteries, that was a mega score!

Yeah, for sure. Like I said, I can't say no to free tools - in any condition.

Luckily, the batteries are still good on these. Otherwise I'd be modding them like this when they do go out.

This. Any Samsung spinning drive I get doesn't pass go or collect 200 dollars....it goes right out to the garage to meet the crusher.

I'm guessing that's for the (latter) SATA ones?
Keep the PATA ones and early SATA ones before they got bought out from Seagate (was it Seagate?) Those tend to be very reliable. I think when Samsung HDD division got bought out, that's when their quality really tanked.

Update: Took some armor-all interior cleaning wipes I have in my truck to the TV... looks like the spots are behind the panel and in the diffusion layers. Either it go rained on more than I though or somebody botched an LED replacement- the bottom center of the front bezel is popped up so who knows... If it passes HDMI testing when I get home, what the heck, I'll disassemble and clean it up.

If it got rained on, just remove the plastics and let it "breathe" for a couple of weeks or more in a dry place. Then reassemble and see if screen still has those issues. If yes, then you might need to take it further apart to inspect (if it's worth it.)
I found several monitors and TVs like this, and the results varied.

One was an old 720p 37" Sharp LCD TV. It didn't get rained on too hard. Maybe just sprinkled a little. Panel was OK - no moisture got it... though the inverter was not happy when I powered it On the first time (was OK after I let it dry for a few weeks.) Only thing that got affected from the moisture was the power button. I replaced that with a spare I had and gave it away for free on Craigslist. Screen and backlight was near mint. Even the front bezel looked excellent.

Another was a 32" 1080p Samsung LED TV. This one was found in the spring and had some moisture trapped in the diffusion layers due to being left outside a few night before I found it. I let it dry nicely for a few weeks, bought a cheap $5 replacement remote, and sold it for $20. TV looked near mint, especially after I cleaned the screen.

For monitors, I found several in the past that have been rained on. One was a Viewsonic that has a single verticle line. Not sure if caused from the rain or old issue. The Tcon ribbon cables had a lot of crud and corrosion, so who knows.
Another monitor I picked up recently was a 22" Nec LCD. It got drenched from a rainstorm in the fall - a 2-day non-stop rainstorm. Picked it up and figured it'd be only for parts. After letting it dry, the sucker fired right up and appeared to have normal picture. I still haven't tested it long-term though, due to lack of time. Wonder if any moisture caused any issues at this point. I guess we will see.

Agreed. Never had a good one. JUNK.

The 3.5" 80 GB SpinPoint IDE/PATA in my Optiplex 170L has been in use for more than 10 years now, just from me (it's the HDD in my main "rig".) SMART data is locked, so I can't read it and see how it's doing... but it's been keeping my data, so I can't complain. Did have a hickup once, but that was it (corrupted registry... though not sure if this wasn't something Windows itself did.) "Last Known Good Configuration" got it back up running in seconds.

- Pioneer SE-205 headphones

As a heavy headphone user, I think that's an awesome score.
Not sure how well / accurate old headphones like that sound, but at the very least, you got really nice hardware (headband) to work with. Could turn out really nice with a pair of decent 40 mm drivers.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'm guessing that's for the (latter) SATA ones?
Keep the PATA ones and early SATA ones before they got bought out from Seagate (was it Seagate?) Those tend to be very reliable. I think when Samsung HDD division got bought out, that's when their quality really tanked.

I even had a NOS Samsung SSD die suddenly and for no apparent reason in this post. Samsung is just less than impressive these days, this extends into their TV's too.... Their phones are still good (knocks on wood).