best cheap/free scores 1.1

[SteveNielsen]

As far as I know the foam degrades and falls apart on all foam roll edged cones and that's not particular to any make of speaker. I've had a few different brands over the years and they've all done it one way or another. I've seen some split apart, others chunks fall out, others flake off and others turn to dust. Or perhaps those are different levels of age and degradation?

[xelectech]

Originally Posted by momaka

3rd hand knowledge is still better than none, I suppose.

. I just need to replace the hot glue I used to hold down the foam surround to the basket - it makes annoying sticky noises. Might try silicone or wood glue. I know there are proper glues out there for that, but again, these were really crappy 4" speakers. I won't be doing that with the CV drivers, of course.

I once used Super Goop to reattach the paper on a base speaker - It sounded pretty decent and would still take a fair amount of volume.

[Bungz]

I picked up a lot of "dead parts" on eBay locally for next to nothing (£20)

XFX 790i Ultra SLI DDR3 motherboard (Nvidias last chipset Hurrah afaik)
Q9500
Zalman Nvidia edition Heatsink.
4GB of OCZ SLI DDR3
Nvidia 285
Corsair HX1000w PSU.
Grubby CM 830 Nvidia Special Edition, bloody huge thing that the Mrs was moaning like hell about

All works. Flawlessly.

Case has already gone for more than I paid for the whole lot, happy days!

[xelectech]

Originally Posted by mariushm

@xelectech do read those backblaze blog posts while keeping in mind that the hard drives they buy (consumer) aren't really suited / "optimized" to be used in custom cases like the ones Backblaze uses.
They have custom built cases and insert more than 20-40 drives in the case, very close to each other so there's plenty of vibrations and probably also more heat than normal (their cases have fans but still)

NAS and Enterprise drives have tweaks to handle vibrations better (or a higher level of vibrations).

xelectech: Ok, I see

-

If you really want to see what drives fail you can check these articles at hardware.fr

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/944-...osants-13.html (Older articles here: http://www.hardware.fr/tag/757/taux-retour.html )

The actual hdd page is here: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/944-6/disques-durs.html

xelectech: Is there a way to read 'em in English?

The numbers are still not quite representative for several reasons.

* They use a database from a large French seller of computer components and they go through all the hard drives returned for RMA to them, but obviously they can't know of how many drives customers returned directly to manufacturers.
* In addition, in an attempt to be as impartial as possible, they only count the drives that fail after 6 months of purchase but in reality a lot of drives fail in the first 2-3 months of use as can be seen in the Google study guide, and a few drives are probably returned by users in the first few days as DOA (dead on arrival) or with problems due to shipping or user stupidity.
* And then, they only count the drives failed in a six month interval from that point.
* And then, they list only models that were sold in at least 500 pcs or 200 pcs


So for example, in the link above you have drives bought between 1st of October 2014 and 1st of April 2015, that were returned to them as faulty before October 2015 (6 months to 1 year of operation).

Still, you can go through the older articles (they publish one of them every 6 months or 1 year or something like that) so in theory you could build yourself an idea about how hard drive manufacturers improved in time, or what models have an increased failure rate or not.

I guess my interest is more or less academic, as I have a collection of used drives, (mainly scrapyard finds) all probably at least 5 years old, with hours from the low 20ks
to an hitachi with over 58k.

But, eventually I'm going to have to buy a new hard drive, so hopefully when that occurs
I'll be informed enough not to buy a 'piece of turd'

[ratdude747]

Scored a cosmetically shot Hitachi 47F710e CRT-based projection TV (1080i with HDMI) curbside. The owner told me (when they pulled in) that it was working yesterday. However, it has since rained a bit today. Good thing the vents are in the back.

To haul it I had to take it apart:



Once it quits raining for a bit and it's had time to dry out, I'll rebuild it and see if all is good. Perhaps an upgrade for my dad's basement workout setup?

Yes, I am this crazy.

[goontron]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

Scored a cosmetically shot Hitachi 47F710e CRT-based projection TV (1080i with HDMI) curbside. The owner told me (when they pulled in) that it was working yesterday. However, it has since rained a bit today. Good thing the vents are in the back.

To haul it I had to take it apart:



Once it quits raining for a bit and it's had time to dry out, I'll rebuild it and see if all is good. Perhaps an upgrade for my dad's basement workout setup?

Yes, I am this crazy.

Its blooming insane! not crazy. Then again, indiana...

[momaka]

Nice score!
IIRC, those older Hitachi's are pretty reliable. No you're not crazy - a good big TV is a good TV. No one says it needs to be a flat panel. My local CL is full of projection and DLP TVs right now, BTW. Usually at least 10 posts per week.

[ratdude747]

Reassembled it:



No missing screws, no extra screws. Yay!

Moved it to the basement, so far seems to run! Auto-convergence ("magic focus") works fine... WOOT!

Yeah she's fugly as can be, missing 2 casters and all, but it runs!

Edit- I'll have to see but it may need this kit (yet to see how dull the video is)

http://www.tvrepairkits.com/xcart/hi...epair-kit.html

The video did seem a little dull but I wasn't running an adequate video signal to tell.

[stj]

did you get the remote? '

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by stj

did you get the remote? '

Sadly no...

The picture is bright enough I guess... but not the crispest. Then again, neither is my 39" Sony FD trinitron (when fed with HDMI from my laptop. Still, not bad for free. TV audio is good too!

[momaka]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

TV audio is good too!

You bet!
Unlike the thin TVs nowadays, this TV actually has enough space inside for decent speakers.

[RJARRRPCGP]

I want to get one of that type!

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by momaka

You bet!
Unlike the thin TVs nowadays, this TV actually has enough space inside for decent speakers.

...but they couldn't go too far as the magnetic field produced by large speakers would screw with the convergence. So far as to warn about it in the manual.

---

Working on updating the firmware. Says it needs an MMC card, of which I have only one that can be written to that is missing. The actual slot is SD, so I;m hoping an old 2GB card pulled from one of my cameras will work.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by SteveNielsen

As far as I know the foam degrades and falls apart on all foam roll edged cones and that's not particular to any make of speaker.

You're completely right here.
In fact, this is not limited to speakers only. I've had foam ear pads on headphones crumble too, among other things. I think the material is just not very stable in general.

Hence why I am trying to think of other creative methods to fix these speakers. The paper surrounds I make will surely last longer, but they have far from stellar damping properties (speaking of which, here are some pics I just uploaded: http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpos...&postcount=255 ). I might try latex-impregnated cloth next (also found on some cheaper speakers).

Originally Posted by SteveNielsen

I've seen some split apart, others chunks fall out, others flake off and others turn to dust. Or perhaps those are different levels of age and degradation?

No idea
The Realistic Nova-18 speakers I have, their foam surround turned to dust as soon as I removed the speaker grilles and touched the woofers
Looked like one piece before that .

[xelectech]

Originally Posted by xelectech

Excellent score at the scrapyard yesterday - found laying in the mud a 'puter with an Asus P5n-e SLI, 4 gigs ram, dvd burner, c2d e6750, 500 watt Antec psu; cost 3 bucks, had only been run over once (just kidding). It also had 2 320 Gb WD hdds, but they wouldn't let me have those...

I think I know the reason it was at the scrapyard now - after running memtest for a few hours and testing it all out for a few more hours I decided to install a zoneminder distro
on it.

All went well until it was time to reboot into the new OS - nothing happened, the system was dead as a hammer; Jumping the green wire to gnd. on the PSU doesn't make it come on either so I tried another PSU on the system and it booted right into the distro.

Everything looks more or less normal inside (it's an Antec EA-500), I'll make a new thread If I can't find the culprit right away.

[SteveNielsen]

I bought an Antec 500w psu new several years back and got a good deal with a rebate and it wound up costing me only about $5 as I recall, however it only ran for about 2 years before it croaked on me. Somehow during a rushed move it got tossed into the recycling pile and I never got around to opening it up.

[Compgeke]

HP DL320 G6 for $32 at a gov surplus auction. Has an E5504, 6 gigs ram, 2x 160 gig HDD, standard B110i (no extra license packs), 2 GbE PCI-e card (along with two onboard) and the advanced iLO 2.

Threw in 16 more gigs ram and it'll get a W3503 eventually, just want to run some benchmarks on the stock CPU.

[kc8adu]

this pile.ssd and cpu are new.

[weirdal1968]

My best find was a Vizio M550NV 55" LCD TV. Saw it leaning against the dumpster fence. The previous owner had tried to open it but they missed two screws by the inputs. Did they bother to replace the screws? Of course not! It sat outside for half a week and two thunderstorms. Carefully loaded it into my Ford Focus wagon on top of a large table to support it on the drive home. Dried it out with two large fans and powered it up. It was stuck in a bootloop thanks to a EEPROM failure. Sent it out for repair (~$85) and now she works great!

I've also found a Toshiba Qosmio 18.4" gaming laptop but it needs to have the GFX chip reballed.

[iamcyber]

Goodwill has some good finds, but you have to check often. I've picked up 3 blue ray players, 2 HD web cams, multiple pc keyboards and a portable HAM radio. All on different trips for $5 to $15 each.