best cheap/free scores 1.1

[TechGeek]

HP Pavilion 500 (with failing 2TB Seagate) along with some Saitek flight sim gear. Blew out the password on the Winh8 install and confirmed that everything worked.

[pfrcom]

Originally Posted by Topcat

so what better than Mint!

Until you need to do a right click

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by pfrcom

Until you need to do a right click

Yea, I noticed that....... Any fix for it? When working with laptops on the bench, I alwyas plug a mouse in.

[dragos2009]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Today's freebie was a Macbook 13" (model MC516LL/A). It's a C2D @ 2.4GHz, 2gb RAM and a bad 250gb hitachi HDD.

I tossed 8gb (2x 4gb DDR3 modules) and a SSD in it. Even though it came with the original install disks, I don't really care for OSX....so what better than Mint! I've read any UEFI boot version of Windows (Win8 and newer) can also be installed on this....but I didn't try.



Box & goodies....





...and up & running!!



This post of course created from it....not sure what I'll do with this...it's not worth much....but it was fun to tinker with for a couple hours!

you can install windows 7 64 bit on it aswell did it on one and it works wonderful, hella fast too

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by dragos2009

you can install windows 7 64 bit on it aswell did it on one and it works wonderful, hella fast too

I couldn't get it to boot from the USB media, no UEFI. Might try using a DVD...just for grins.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Topcat

I couldn't get it to boot from the USB media, no UEFI. Might try using a DVD...just for grins.

You need to make it a GPT formatted stick, not MBR. Using Rufus to make the USB media, right?

Same thing for later versions of windows... GPT sticks for UEFI installs, MBR sticks for "legacy" installs. No universal solution other than wipe and reformat the stick.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

You need to make it a GPT formatted stick, not MBR. Using Rufus to make the USB media, right?

Same thing for later versions of windows... GPT sticks for UEFI installs, MBR sticks for "legacy" installs. No universal solution other than wipe and reformat the stick.

Yessir, well aware...and that would do it....but as usual, shortages of USB sticks around here. I just booted off the optical media though. S2K12 R2 also runs on it. The only things I couldn't get to work were the isight thingy and the bluetooth.....two things I could care less about....and then of course the touchpad doesn't work right either in windows or mint.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Yessir, well aware...and that would do it....but as usual, shortages of USB sticks around here. I just booted off the optical media though. S2K12 R2 also runs on it. The only things I couldn't get to work were the isight thingy and the bluetooth.....two things I could care less about....and then of course the touchpad doesn't work right either in windows or mint.

(Semi off-topic rant on how worthless my laptops are and how expensive the "old" ones I wish I had are)

And after all of that, it's still probably worth more than any laptop I own... To think at one point I was going to get a 2013 gold macbook pro 15" (retina display) when "the used prices were in budget" and triple boot it to make the ultimate (for ratdude) ultrabook. LOL, WTF was I smoking... Silver ones are (finally!) down to $250 and up for one with a good display (but a broken hinge!)... I doubt a single one of my personal laptops is worth more than $150, the most valuable being my venerable Dell Latitude E6430 with a low voltage quad i7. Heck, some of these macbook pro's have lesser CPUs than that! (both are ivy bridge, FWIW).

Any more, the laptop on my "would like to get if I could get a good price" would be a Dell Precision M6800 with a 1080 screen... used one at work for a bit (Boss's hand-me-down "floor use" laptop, I legitimately liked working with it), but even now they're still $300+ in partially parted beat to hell shape (and the best 1080 I found is $360, and that's with no HDD/caddy or battery cover!). Apparently old Precisions hold value like macbooks apparently!

[pfrcom]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Any fix for it?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/...-mac-trackpad/

I mustn't have read past the first two methods from that link

Real PITA using two fingers, I'll have to check out their alternatives

[stj]

just use a $ store optical mouse.

i have one in every laptop bag - i cant stand touchpads

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

LED tester came in, yup, backlights toast. At least it's a cheap (enough) repair, although a bit tedious. Will go to my parents if it works out (better fit for their usage than mine).

LEDs came in on Saturday... repaired it yesterday and set it up at my parents' house, worked great!

Did a quick test at home before trucking it out:



...sadly the Iris4000 GPU in my Ivy Bridge i7 can't do 4K, so that was on 1080... compared to the 480i CRT it replaced, real 4K or not it's a massive upgrade for them! Not bad for $60 in LEDs and a $5 remote.

[Topcat]

^


Good save!!

[brethin]

Bought 2 Onn 4k devices from Walmart, they are damn good for $29 each, the remotes are kickass.��

[grss1982]

Was just browsing YouTube and the algorithm just recommended this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6XFDAfLuk

Instantly reminded me of this thread. Still blows my mind this is a thing in U.S. Dumpster diving here in my part of the world is not going to net me the same stuff. LOL

[Topcat]

Back to this macbook...It came with OSX 10.6.3....through some experimenting, I got it to upgrade to 10.10.5, I wanted to see how well Waterfox would run on OSX. Mozilla always seems a bit wonky under Mint/Ubuntu....but I have to say, it's very nice on OSX; running Waterfox G3.2.4.1

[BigTroll]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Back to this macbook...It came with OSX 10.6.3....through some experimenting, I got it to upgrade to 10.10.5, I wanted to see how well Waterfox would run on OSX. Mozilla always seems a bit wonky under Mint/Ubuntu....but I have to say, it's very nice on OSX; running Waterfox G3.2.4.1

Nice glad you went back to OSX and I have always ran waterfox on my older macs with ublock origin and had great performance, whats so funny is recently last night I just fixed my A1342 unibody like yours. I let mine sit over a year because the battery stopped holding a charge, then 2 weeks ago I went to plug it in and the battery immediately bloated moving the trackpad up etc luckily i got it out before it deformed the case permanately and last night I just put in a new battery.

The 320m is a awesome integrated gpu, you can go up to 10.13.9 high sierra on your mac if you want. glad you finally made the switch to a real computer.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by BigTroll

The 320m is a awesome integrated gpu, you can go up to 10.13.9 high sierra on your mac if you want. glad you finally made the switch to a real computer.

I kicked it up to 10.12, the highest it can go without an apple account. It runs really nice actually. I brought it home today to tinker with it over the weekend....as a matter of fact, this post spawned from it!

[BigTroll]

Originally Posted by Topcat

I kicked it up to 10.12, the highest it can go without an apple account. It runs really nice actually. I brought it home today to tinker with it over the weekend....as a matter of fact, this post spawned from it!

Nice! there is a cool program you can download called coconut battery, it will tell you the cycle count and health of your battery

[stj]

apple account??
you mean it uses cloud login?
if you do then fuck apple!!!

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by stj

apple account??
you mean it uses cloud login?
if you do then fuck apple!!!

Yep, pretty much. I could download the DMG files for upgrades through 10.12. Any higher, they want you to download it through their 'app store'; which of course requires an account.