best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by Uranium-235

Just because something is free does not mean it's worth much

on ebay the board sells for ~40, and I'm sure shipping from Romana is a bitch

Unless you rebuild for others I don't see any point of redoing it and setting it aside

FYI your state and country are reversed

I don't use eBay, and I've seen people buy 775 locally as long as it meets their needs. (in fact, I remember selling three 775 (and one AM2+/AM3) machines for as high as $80 locally, and these were in my town. And by needs it usually boils down to watching YT, browsing Facebook and such, not gaming.)

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by Dan81

I don't use eBay, and I've seen people buy 775 locally as long as it meets their needs. (in fact, I remember selling three 775 (and one AM2+/AM3) machines for as high as $80 locally, and these were in my town. And by needs it usually boils down to watching YT, browsing Facebook and such, not gaming.)

Just a little tidbit of planned obsolescence from the Waterfox browser....which recently got some corporation's fingers in it now....so all version of WF from gen4.x and up now require the SSE4.2 instruction set in their requirements. This eliminates anything harpertown/yorkfield and older from running it. Very asinine move, as no other browsers require this as of yet; including Firefox itself in which waterfox was founded on....but one more nail in the coffin for both LGA775 and the waterfox browser.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Just a little tidbit of planned obsolescence from the Waterfox browser....which recently got some corporation's fingers in it now....so all version of WF from gen4.x and up now require the SSE4.2 instruction set in their requirements. This eliminates anything harpertown/yorkfield and older from running it. Very asinine move, as no other browsers require this as of yet; including Firefox itself in which waterfox was founded on....but one more nail in the coffin for both LGA775 and the waterfox browser.

So far chrome is working on my two harpertown systems (Win10 x64, of course)... if that goes, that's my two workhorses of the fleet out of the picture. Sure, my other two are newer (Westmere and Opteron Istanbul), but for various reasons the harpertowns see most of the use around here.

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Just a little tidbit of planned obsolescence from the Waterfox browser....which recently got some corporation's fingers in it now....so all version of WF from gen4.x and up now require the SSE4.2 instruction set in their requirements. This eliminates anything harpertown/yorkfield and older from running it. Very asinine move, as no other browsers require this as of yet; including Firefox itself in which waterfox was founded on....but one more nail in the coffin for both LGA775 and the waterfox browser.

Half if not most people I've sold these machines to, they use Chrome or Opera. Barely anyone using Firefox (other than me, lol), if at all.

(seriously, why do people love Chrome? I can understand Opera, but goodness gracious Chrome feels like a slowpoke on even a 3rd gen i5 w/ 16GB of DDR3.)

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Dan81

Half if not most people I've sold these machines to, they use Chrome or Opera. Barely anyone using Firefox (other than me, lol), if at all.

(seriously, why do people love Chrome? I can understand Opera, but goodness gracious Chrome feels like a slowpoke on even a 3rd gen i5 w/ 16GB of DDR3.)

It feels like a slowpoke even on a 9th-gen i7.

[vinceroger69]

todays freebies a DigiHome 43268FHDT2 came with stand and remote, easy fault remove and clean lvds lead all seems fine.
i also picked up a panasonic TX-43GX550B 4k tv came with remote no stand, fault no backlight, turned out to be a easy fix the led strip connecting joints needed hard wiring set works fine now.

[Uranium-235]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Meh...who cares, 2 games. Still perfectly usable...

Since your games won't play on that v5500, best toss it in the trash....it's no good by that logic.

Tribes will. As well as descent 3 (but you can get a glide to vulkan wrapper for that)

I didn't say the motherboard is no longer good, it just has a low value, something my 5500 does not

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by Uranium-235

I didn't say the motherboard is no longer good, it just has a low value, something my 5500 does not

No, that's not what you said....you said medium-range games wouldn't play on a 6th gen I5....but didn't even bother telling us what GPU it had or even the games, so I'm ASSuming you were using the embedded.....which sucks by default. I bet if you tossed a good GPU in it, I'd be willing to wager those games would be just fine on that CPU.

Coming from someone who's always implying how much time I waste on old hardware builds; to even include some of the 3DFX ones, I'm surprised you did anything with yours.....you know, waste of time....

[vinceroger69]

Originally Posted by vinceroger69

todays freebies a DigiHome 43268FHDT2 came with stand and remote, easy fault remove and clean lvds lead all seems fine.
i also picked up a panasonic TX-43GX550B 4k tv came with remote no stand, fault no backlight, turned out to be a easy fix the led strip connecting joints needed hard wiring set works fine now.

The Panasonic TV when on soak test one led is flashing/failing so ordered a replacement set of strips from Ali express.

[Topcat]

Today's freebies were a 43" Vizio 4k, no pic....probably needs strips...and a Dell Dimension 2400 P4 system, unknown working condition.

[Topcat]

Today's freebies from a local printing company include a bunch of laser printers; wide format color and some normal blacks. All are said to work.



Sorry Momaka, the 19" viewsonic screen is burned to shit, its scrap.



Also in the mix is a HP Pro 6300 I3-3220 @ 3.3, complete & working.



Now for an interesting relic I didn't know existed....yea, I knew of G5's, but never knew there was dual ones in PPC models....but here's a 2GHz version.



Running OSX Server 10.4.11
It's definitely lacking in RAM with 1.5gb....it can take up to 16gb PC4200 DDR2



More specs....




Definitely needs a cleaning. It's in fabulous condition, just dirty. Might be a fun restoration; albeit not too terribly valuable.....but it does fit the traditional 'dual CPU' specialty of mine....



I'd run with 10.5 with tenfourfox and some other goodies, would be a fun toy.

[goodpsusearch]

Got this Braunig Mony made in Taiwan Turntable for free.

The rubber on the idler wheel has turned to plastic.

Found local business that makes o rings and things like this and they made a replacement rubber o ring.

The problem is that the original rubber was higher placed than the new one and now when I select 33 rpm it is touching the metal cylinder on the 45 rpm position and when I select 45 rpm it is touching it even lower resulting in ~65rpm (more details on pics attached)

Do you think it is worth fixing or should I abandon project?

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Sorry Momaka, the 19" viewsonic screen is burned to shit, its scrap.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1642206113

Heavy burn-in, you mean? In that case, could we see some pictures (with the screen On and Off) before you send it to electronics heaven?
If it's really that bad, then it's finished its mission in life as a monitor.

That said, consider pulling the boards out to keep as spares. The flyback and HOT (but especially the HOT) probably still have some value. Heck, if you get all of the electronics off the tube, and depending on what kind of tube it is (Trinitron/Diamondtron or Shadow Mask), you may be able to directly put this on another monitor that may otherwise have unrepairable board issues, but has a good tube (some Philips CRT monitors come to mind here.)

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

Got this Braunig Mony made in Taiwan Turntable for free.
...
Do you think it is worth fixing or should I abandon project?

Well, you got quite far with the new rubber wheel part machined. So why give up now? It probably just needs a little bit of tinkering and modding to get it going. Is that brass shaft that sticks up the output of the motor? If yes, perhaps remove the motor and add some spacers in front of it, thus lowering the brass shaft. Or perhaps modify the metal washer that holds the rubber wheel so that the wheel sits higher where it's supposed to be again?
And if not, maybe sell it as-is to someone who might be interested in getting it fixed. Seems like an OK turntable overall.

Originally Posted by Topcat

Had a couple nifty dropoffs..... The pick was a NEC Powermate all-in-one with a LCD, circa 1999; model PM 2000. There was pretty much nill out there on this thing as far as information. It was made in Japan. It had a Celeron 433 & 192mb RAM.

Wow, someone must have paid top dollar for that machine back in 1999. LCDs were not commonplace back then... and generally prohibitively expensive for most folks.
FWIW, that LCD looks surprisingly good in terms of colors. Most of the old LCDs I remember, at least from late 90's / early 2000's laptops, were pretty cringe-worthy in terms of image - poor viewing angle, poor brightness, a ton of pixel lag... you name it. (They did last, though, unlike modern stuff. )

Originally Posted by Topcat

Now to get rid of the nasty WinME....for Win2k. I thought about NT4, but working USB is nice.... Why not win98? Well that one is pretty self explanatory...

Eh, don't be so harsh on Windows 98. It does have it's place and time - generally a better choice for retro gaming PCs, on which one might intend to run DOS-based games too. But for an office/desktop/work PC, yeah I'm with you - Windows 2k or XP if it can take it.

Originally Posted by Topcat

The other system was a Momaka special; came with a 19" CRT....Aopen SKT478 Celeron. I haven't tested it yet.

Any updates now?

Originally Posted by Uranium-235

Not even medium-end gaming. I have a 6700k (@4.4) and there are some (like two) games it struggles with

I think what TC meant by "high-end gaming" is current AAA/latest game titles that are all supposed to be "graphical marvels".

Otherwise a 3rd or 4th gen will still run many of the competitive multiplayer titles at 1080p and 60 FPS with some GPU tweaks, given a good GPU, of course. So titles like CS:GO, Rocket League, Fortnite, Apex Legends, GTA:V online, Minecraft, and probably a good list of others.

Originally Posted by Uranium-235

Just because something is free does not mean it's worth much

Yes, but the bigger question is: can you find or do you have a use for it?
If you can answer YES, then it's probably worth doing.

Core 2 Duo/Quad stuff may be considered "worthless" by most folks today, but that doesn't mean that they are. If you just need a PC for very infrequent use to go online for things like paying bills, sending emails, typing word documents, and etc. (i.e. "light" usage), you don't really need a whole lot of processing power... and a C2D/Q will do just fine. Heck, high-end C2D and C2Q can still handle Youtube acceptably well.

Originally Posted by Dan81

(seriously, why do people love Chrome? I can understand Opera, but goodness gracious Chrome feels like a slowpoke on even a 3rd gen i5 w/ 16GB of DDR3.)

I would love to get an answer to that as well.
Chrome always felt sluggish, unresponsive, and too dumbed-down for me.
I can't say I am a huge fan of Firefox, especially Quantum in the last few years... but it's probably the least offensive "modern" browser currently. Sure Pale Moon feels more responsive and takes a lot less RAM and CPU resources... but it's quite far behind in the multi-core utilization department, making it perform rather poorly with video websites, unless you have a modern CPU with really fast single-threaded performance.

[eccerr0r]

hmm...got a nearly unused 1lb spool (~450g) of 20 mil Sn63 from the refuse...
I think I have enough solder for probably two lifetimes now.

[goodpsusearch]

Originally Posted by momaka

Well, you got quite far with the new rubber wheel part machined. So why give up now? It probably just needs a little bit of tinkering and modding to get it going. Is that brass shaft that sticks up the output of the motor? If yes, perhaps remove the motor and add some spacers in front of it, thus lowering the brass shaft. Or perhaps modify the metal washer that holds the rubber wheel so that the wheel sits higher where it's supposed to be again?
And if not, maybe sell it as-is to someone who might be interested in getting it fixed. Seems like an OK turntable overall.

Facebook came to the rescue (maybe)

Posted pics of the turntable on a greek turntable fans group and a guy that owns the same model had the same problem as me with dried rubber o ring and offered to send me o ring he bought from ebay years ago that he believes it would perfectly fit.

Yes, when I have something like that, old enough and with enough metal parts, and highly considered collector's item today, I have to try to fix it.

It might not be Technics MK2 but it definitely doesn't look to be garbage too.

And since the motor and the rest of thge mechanism appears to be OK it's a shame to go to landfill due to rubber gone bad.

I will post again, after I meet with him and get the o ring

[momaka]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

hmm...got a nearly unused 1lb spool (~450g) of 20 mil Sn63 from the refuse...
I think I have enough solder for probably two lifetimes now.

Now the Solder Sloth will never have to think about starving again.

Yeah, 1/2 Kg really ought to last you forever... pun intended too.
Wanna trade some of that for Sn95/Sb5 flux-less lead-free stuff? My dad bought a 1/2 lb (~200g) spool of that stuff about 15 years ago when he thought he could try his hand at soldering copper pipes (it didn't work.) So I ended up with the spool eventually. In the 10 or so years I've been using it, I haven't been able to get even 1/2 way through it. Not sure if I've even gone 1/4 of the way. Since it has no flux in it, almost none of it goes to waste. It's also a very hard and non-malleable solder - certainly not great for electronics... but it works and I haven't had anything (PCB) soldered with it fail. Actually, it's really nice for SMD, since it hardens almost instantly without dragging - prevents accidental bridges on really small SMD stuff.

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

Facebook came to the rescue (maybe)

Posted pics of the turntable on a greek turntable fans group and a guy that owns the same model had the same problem as me with dried rubber o ring and offered to send me o ring he bought from ebay years ago that he believes it would perfectly fit.
...
And since the motor and the rest of thge mechanism appears to be OK it's a shame to go to landfill due to rubber gone bad.

Nice!

Yes, rubber parts should be considered consumable, more or less, especially past 15-20 years, though YMMV. It's really more of a shame that manufacturers don't usually regard these as consumable (on modern electronics anyways) and therefore don't include instructions or design the device to be easily taken apart in order to get to the part to change it. Case in point: water fill valves. I have very hard water where I live, and it's also highly Chlorinated in the winter and the spring seasons. This takes a heavy toll on any rubber parts in a water system. So I usually have to change toilet fill valves every 3-6 years. The worst part is (pun intended) that the part that breaks is usually just a simple (but complex-shaped) rubber ring/plug in the valve mechanism. Therefore, when that goes, the whole toiled fill valve mechanism has to be replaced... and it's really not that hard to get to the part, despite the thing not being considered "user serviceable". So it's a big waste to change a whole mechanism simply because of one failed rubber part... but it is what it is. What annoys me more is I've noticed that designs from the last 15 years and forward have started to rely a lot more on rubber parts in the design... which makes them even more highly susceptible to failure. But I digressed pretty far here. The point is, rubber will fail eventually... so it's a good idea to design with that in mind to make it the part more easy to replace.

Hope the person that contacted you does show up so you can fix your turntable. If not, you might have to "McGiver" it a little.

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

Yes, when I have something like that, old enough and with enough metal parts, and highly considered collector's item today, I have to try to fix it.

Exactly.
If you see something old that appears heavy and well-made, always ask yourself: will someone actually make something like this today? If you think the answer is NO, then it's probably worth saving... or at least breaking down for the scrap/spare parts (but I usually reserve that only for stuff that can't be fixed.)

[goodpsusearch]

Originally Posted by momaka

Yes, rubber parts should be considered consumable, more or less, especially past 15-20 years, though YMMV. It's really more of a shame that manufacturers don't usually regard these as consumable (on modern electronics anyways) and therefore don't include instructions or design the device to be easily taken apart in order to get to the part to change it. Case in point: water fill valves. I have very hard water where I live, and it's also highly Chlorinated in the winter and the spring seasons. This takes a heavy toll on any rubber parts in a water system. So I usually have to change toilet fill valves every 3-6 years. The worst part is (pun intended) that the part that breaks is usually just a simple (but complex-shaped) rubber ring/plug in the valve mechanism. Therefore, when that goes, the whole toiled fill valve mechanism has to be replaced... and it's really not that hard to get to the part, despite the thing not being considered "user serviceable". So it's a big waste to change a whole mechanism simply because of one failed rubber part... but it is what it is. What annoys me more is I've noticed that designs from the last 15 years and forward have started to rely a lot more on rubber parts in the design... which makes them even more highly susceptible to failure.

The toilet mechanism in the house that I live has been installed on 2017 and is now leaky. I have to call my plumber anytime soon as it will get worse and worse with time. I don't like messing with water when fixing stuff. Actually I hate it.

Your story reminded me when I still lived with my parents and the rubber seal of the toilet tank failed to perfectly seal the drain hole so we called plumber and he just installed the rubber in the opposite direction! LOL

He said OK you are good to go for the next 6-8 years.

Originally Posted by momaka

The point is, rubber will fail eventually... so it's a good idea to design with that in mind to make it the part more easy to replace.

Hope the person that contacted you does show up so you can fix your turntable. If not, you might have to "McGiver" it a little.

Direct drive turntables for the win! No rubber, no trouble!

I actually found an MK2 at a ridiculously low price and couldn't help but buy it (250€ including a Kenwood equalizer as a free gift)

It has 1 light burnt, looses some rpm at the quartz lock position and the switches to select 33rpm or 45 rpm speed are very had to make contact

When I feel confident I might open a thread to service it. But at the moment I am too scared to touch it.

It's like this:
https://www.djshop.gr/content/images...-1200-mk2.jpeg
but without plastic cover and with some cosmetic marks/wear

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by momaka

Heavy burn-in, you mean? In that case, could we see some pictures (with the screen On and Off) before you send it to electronics heaven?
If it's really that bad, then it's finished its mission in life as a monitor.

That said, consider pulling the boards out to keep as spares. The flyback and HOT (but especially the HOT) probably still have some value. Heck, if you get all of the electronics off the tube, and depending on what kind of tube it is (Trinitron/Diamondtron or Shadow Mask), you may be able to directly put this on another monitor that may otherwise have unrepairable board issues, but has a good tube (some Philips CRT monitors come to mind here.)

Yea, it is that bad. I'll get some pics soon, its not very high on the priority list, I've got a bunch of printers and other things to go through. I used to scoff at printers, but lasers sell...so I've been refurbishing those. As of late, I've gotten a lot of low page count newer (less than 3yrs old) lasers...They don't hang around long. Ink printers go to the recycler....but I'll get you some imagery of this CRT before scrapping, promise.

Originally Posted by momaka

Wow, someone must have paid top dollar for that machine back in 1999. LCDs were not commonplace back then... and generally prohibitively expensive for most folks.
FWIW, that LCD looks surprisingly good in terms of colors. Most of the old LCDs I remember, at least from late 90's / early 2000's laptops, were pretty cringe-worthy in terms of image - poor viewing angle, poor brightness, a ton of pixel lag... you name it. (They did last, though, unlike modern stuff. )

Someone paid a lot of money for this, and yea it does look nice (surprising for LCD's of that era). If nothing else, this will be a good show piece....I don't have any practical use for it....but you know me; I can't junk it.

Originally Posted by momaka

Eh, don't be so harsh on Windows 98. It does have it's place and time - generally a better choice for retro gaming PCs, on which one might intend to run DOS-based games too. But for an office/desktop/work PC, yeah I'm with you - Windows 2k or XP if it can take it.

Eh, yes and no. True/pure DOS games, I ran native DOS. A lot of the transitional DOS --> Windows games could be made compatible; such as quake. If no acceleration, there was a 32-bit executable called 'winquake'; which would allow it to run under NT4. If accelerated, of course the GL executable was 32-bit. NT4 could be pretty fickle with games....but I was clever....they ran. If it was 9x compatible, I could make it run on NT. By the time W2K rolled out, it was easy peasy. FPS-wise, it performed the same either accelerated or unaccelerated on DOS and NT4 with the same hardware. I remember testing this back in the day to disprove that logic.

Originally Posted by momaka

Any updates now?

I got it working....kind of. Monitor is fine. PC works, but needs recapped.

Originally Posted by momaka

Yes, but the bigger question is: can you find or do you have a use for it?
If you can answer YES, then it's probably worth doing.

Core 2 Duo/Quad stuff may be considered "worthless" by most folks today, but that doesn't mean that they are. If you just need a PC for very infrequent use to go online for things like paying bills, sending emails, typing word documents, and etc. (i.e. "light" usage), you don't really need a whole lot of processing power... and a C2D/Q will do just fine. Heck, high-end C2D and C2Q can still handle Youtube acceptably well.

Must be the hardware whisperer in us....can always see the inner beauty & still make it function/earn its keep!

[whatamidoing]

Originally Posted by momaka

Core 2 Duo/Quad stuff may be considered "worthless" by most folks today, but that doesn't mean that they are. If you just need a PC for very infrequent use to go online for things like paying bills, sending emails, typing word documents, and etc. (i.e. "light" usage), you don't really need a whole lot of processing power... and a C2D/Q will do just fine. Heck, high-end C2D and C2Q can still handle Youtube acceptably well.

You know, I recently build a machine out of scrap parts to use as a "testing"/messing around without dirtying my main computer.

It's an Asus M2A-VM HDMI, with 6GB of DDR2 and an Athlon X4 640 that i paid a whole 10€ from China. I'm still running the onboard X1250 graphics (hey, at least it's not an nForce). I say all this so you understand that any half-decent C2Q build will run rings around it.
The only thing I bought new for it is a Patriot 128 SSD, chosen using the industry standard of "Price + postage, lowest first"

Well, every time I use (and especially these few days I use it quite a bit) I'm amazed at how well it runs. I'm watching stuff on Youtube while 7zipping stuff and despite heavy paging sometimes it still doesn't lag or stutter. The OS is bog standard Win 8.1 with classic shell, so no fancy carefully compiled linuxes or anything.

The main issue there might be with Core2 today is that so many of them were built on cheap G31/G41 boards with only 2 DDR2 slots that practically limit you to 4GB ram maximum (Yes, there are a few 4GB Dimms that work on Intel, no I'm not paying 60€ for a module)

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Yea, it is that bad. I'll get some pics soon, its not very high on the priority list, I've got a bunch of printers and other things to go through.
....but I'll get you some imagery of this CRT before scrapping, promise.

Hey no worries, I'm in no hurry whatsoever. Even if you post them a year from now, I'll still be greatfull.

Heck, I'm so far behind on so many opened/pending projects, that I sometimes just want to take everything into a giant dumpster and start over again - really agonizing when you're this close to finishing a project, and then something small comes in a way that halts all progress... and lately, it seems every single thing I've been trying to repair has been like that.

Originally Posted by Topcat

If nothing else, this will be a good show piece.

Indeed it will.
Keep it running, and in 10 years, it might even have a really good "collectible" value, if it doesn't already.

Originally Posted by Topcat

A lot of the transitional DOS --> Windows games could be made compatible; such as quake.

Indeed.
The problem is when there are games that launch and work fine on 2k/XP NT kernel, but have a few bugs that can't really be fixed with any patch. For example, Need For Speed 3 and 4 have specific issues that randomly happen under 2k/XP... in addition to some modding tools developed for those games (I still like to mod the crap out of these sometimes, while other times running them completely bone-stock.) I think there were a few other games from the 90's with issues on 2k/XP... but for the most part, it's not a wide-spread issue. For me, however, since I like those early Need For Speed series, I prefer to run them under a 9x OS, as they are problem-free then. And as an added benefit, I can run DOS titles natively too.

Otherwise, you're right - Win 9x is ages behind 2k and XP... and definitely nowhere as useful for any kind of work anymore, aside perhaps as a toy/experiment in a retro gaming PC... and nostalgia.

Originally Posted by Topcat

Must be the hardware whisperer in us....can always see the inner beauty & still make it function/earn its keep!

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

I don't like messing with water when fixing stuff. Actually I hate it.

I'm no pro either... but in the US, a house call for a plumber for an issue like that can easily be $100+. So unless it's something I really can't do, I'd rather attempt it myself.

As a bonus, our house also has tree roots growing somewhere in the sewer line (not sure if on our side or the county... but would rather not find out if it's on our side, as the county or our HOA might have us re-do the line, and that will for sure be at least several $1000's.) So every once in a lucky while, it blocks up. It's done it enough times that now I've bought a motorized snake and just deal with the thing when it happens - rain or sunshine (but usually always the coldest winter day, it seems - Murphy's law, I suppose! ) It doesn't happen too often, though - used to be once a year, but it seems I've been able to keep it in check lately by using root treatment chemicals (Copper Sulfate) more regularly, but in smaller amounts. In any case, at least I don't have to call anyone to unclog my own crap for me... literally!

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

Direct drive turntables for the win! No rubber, no trouble!

Yes!
But more noisy, if you ask all of the audiophiles (audiophools? )

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

I actually found an MK2 at a ridiculously low price and couldn't help but buy it (250€ including a Kenwood equalizer as a free gift)

That's a very nice -looking turntable!
My dad recently dusted off his Sony TT from the 80's, after I dug it out for him and tested it.
As for me, I never really got into turntables and vinyl. MP3's are just too convenient! (Well, not if you ask the young kids nowadays - they usually don't even know what an MP3 is. All streaming from online from their phone nowadays.)

Originally Posted by whatamidoing

You know, I recently build a machine out of scrap parts to use as a "testing"/messing around without dirtying my main computer.

It's an Asus M2A-VM HDMI, with 6GB of DDR2 and an Athlon X4 640 that i paid a whole 10€ from China. I'm still running the onboard X1250 graphics (hey, at least it's not an nForce). I say all this so you understand that any half-decent C2Q build will run rings around it.

Oh, I know that.
The AMD AM2 Quad-Cores are quite behind most C2Q stuff... and yet, even the AM2 X2 chips can still be useful.
I actually have a similar PC set up for my parents as an HTPC box, but with lower specs (Athlon X4 635, 4 GB of RAM, 250 GB rust-spinner WD Blue, and onboard HD4350.) Runs fine for what they use it for (mostly online video streaming services.)

Also, my "night" PC to mess around with / watch YT this fall/winter, has been an old Athlon X2 6000+. As outdated as it may be, it can still (but just barely) handle 1080p YT video if it's only 25 or 30 FPS and lower-bitrate stuff (or 720p @ 50 FPS.) Just have to give the YT scripts a few seconds to load before starting the video to avoid stutter in the beginning. Otherwise, that systems works quite well with latest Firefox Quantum and the same decently-quick 250 GB single-platter WD Blue 7200 RPM as the other system above.

Originally Posted by whatamidoing

The main issue there might be with Core2 today is that so many of them were built on cheap G31/G41 boards with only 2 DDR2 slots that practically limit you to 4GB ram maximum

Yup, 4 GB with slightly heavier browsing on a modern browser will quickly make the system run out of memory, as I have found lately too - that is, when using Chrome/Chromium or Firefox Quantum browsers.
If using Pale Moon for the majority of the browsing, but FF for the stuff that needs the performance of multi-core support, one can still get by OK with just 4 GB.