Parts man wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

This has been a weird week in tech.

Started off by finding an Acer Predator with a 500GB HDD and an i7 3770 in the bed of a rusted out 89 Silverado at the car scrapyard. Bought it for 5 bucks, motherboard was fried (it was missing the PSU and RAM so no surprises there considering it also set in the rain for who knows how long) but I sold the CPU for $70.

I sure hope you did a full test of the CPU before selling it and not just a post test or something.

Passed the Dell preboot stress test 3 times. That should be good enough.

3770s must be on the "rich people discard pile," I got three of them recently and it blew my mind. Just how... why... how...

Got a stack of mini ITX motherboards with minor bent pins that were thrown out but appear OK otherwise, will have to see if that's the case. 5 is a "stack", right?

Nothing really retro this week except maybe a couple of PS2 motherboards, but that's only kind of sort of retro.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Parts man wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

This has been a weird week in tech.

Started off by finding an Acer Predator with a 500GB HDD and an i7 3770 in the bed of a rusted out 89 Silverado at the car scrapyard. Bought it for 5 bucks, motherboard was fried (it was missing the PSU and RAM so no surprises there considering it also set in the rain for who knows how long) but I sold the CPU for $70.

I sure hope you did a full test of the CPU before selling it and not just a post test or something.

Passed the Dell preboot stress test 3 times. That should be good enough.

Ok then...

I found a 500GB Hitachi IDE hard drive. The platters are heavy though. It takes an age to spin up. Otherwise it erased just fine, has passed all the diagnostics I can throw at it and it isn’t producing any smart errors or worrying noises. Performance is good too. That’s going in the useful pile for use in a future project.

Merovign wrote:

3770s must be on the "rich people discard pile," I got three of them recently and it blew my mind. Just how... why... how...

Got a stack of mini ITX motherboards with minor bent pins that were thrown out but appear OK otherwise, will have to see if that's the case. 5 is a "stack", right?

Nothing really retro this week except maybe a couple of PS2 motherboards, but that's only kind of sort of retro.

I think all are towers on the "I'm an average middle upper class american" discard list.

Everyone with money (and no tech knowledge) seems to think anything that's not an Ultrabook is obsolete.

I grabbed a Toshiba laptop out of a scrap pile yesterday.

i3-2110M (2.10GHZ, 2c/4t), 4GB DDR3, Failed 500GB HDD, HD3000 graphics, and a 1368x768 TruBrite LED display.

It wouldn't post because the hard drive was completely fucked. and I mean COMPLETELY fucked. Made a very loud clicking noise constantly, very obvious it suffered a major mechanical failure. It also had a broken hinge that likes to cause part of the case to pop up so I'm thinking fall damage. V and Spacebar don't work on the keyboard, and the mouse button requires more force than is reasonable sometimes. It was also incredibly disgusting, I basically had to resurface some of the plastic with a razor, it was truly hazmat grade. Anywho, once I disassemble and clean the keyboard, it should be good enough for use since I tend to use an external mouse with my laptops anyways. Pretty decent little laptop for $0 USD. Apparently it's HD3000 graphics are faster than my HP Elitebooks HD3650 and if that proves so in my own tests it'll likely replace that laptop as my daily driver laptop. It even came with an extended battery. The Elitebook is finally succombing to years of my abuse, with broken hinges, plastic, and a bad track point.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Everyone with money (and no tech knowledge) seems to think anything that's not an Ultrabook is obsolete.

Well as long as they throw them at me I guess it's okay. I got an i3-8100 with one of the bent-pin mobos - that's an *8th gen* i3 quad-core. Dang people, it's almost as fast as the 3770.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I grabbed a Toshiba laptop out of a scrap pile yesterday.

i3-2110M (2.10GHZ, 2c/4t), 4GB DDR3, Failed 500GB HDD, HD3000 graphics, and a 1368x768 TruBrite LED display.

That's a good find. I got a first-gen i5 17" HP a while back and the battery even works well enough. Most of the laptops I get from people are hosed, a surprising number of the HDs test good though, I wipe them and they go on the shelf.

I got an i3 Sony but the Blu-ray drive is broken and they're serious bank, and a mint Lenovo with a bad motherboard (I will set it in the corner and see if a super-cheap mobo shows up on eBay).

I guess I looked long enough the universe decided to let me find some stuff. Works for me!

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

386_junkie wrote:

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

here

386_junkie wrote:

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

A lightweight laptop, usually lacking in features, expandability, ease of repair, and common sense.

An example is a device soldered together at every possible opportunity, lacking a socketed CPU, using RAM integrated onto the mobo, no optical drive, some form of limited capacity integrated SSD, a non replacable battery, all in a device so thin you worry about slicing your hand off when you pick it up.

A lightweight laptop, usually lacking in features, expandability, ease of repair, and common sense.

🤣 🤣 +1

Well as long as they throw them at me I guess it's okay. I got an i3-8100 with one of the bent-pin mobos - that's an *8th gen* i3 quad-core

Absolute lunacy! Clearly these people are utterly clueless as to what they have. I've just deployed 24 i3-8100 systems about 2 months ago at one of my clients. They're stupidly fast for Office and the Web that they're being used for. I'd very happily use one of those CPUs for my main gaming rig..

386_junkie wrote:

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

[sarcasm]The opposite of the "old" ThinkPad, Ultra books are wafer thin enough so a wee bit of wind sends it flying[/sarcasm]

In short, a disposable laptop, if Netbooks were not enough...

386_junkie wrote:

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

MacBook Air clones 😎

orcish75 wrote:

Absolute lunacy! Clearly these people are utterly clueless as to what they have. I've just deployed 24 i3-8100 systems about 2 months ago at one of my clients. They're stupidly fast for Office and the Web that they're being used for. I'd very happily use one of those CPUs for my main gaming rig..

Weeeellll since I need to fix the bent pins on the mobo I haven't tested it yet. It *could* be bad. My track record on working "junk" parts is about 95% though.

I actually have a supermicro motherboard I can probably test it on, actually. It's running an i3-6100. Network appliance. Also tossed out like a moldy sandwich.

Vynix wrote:

386_junkie wrote:

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

[sarcasm]The opposite of a ThinkPad, Ultra books are wafer thin enough so a wee bit of wind sends it flying[/sarcasm]

In short, a disposable laptop, if Netbooks were not enough...

Don't overrate ThinkPads, certainly not the new ones. There's a reason I still use my battered old x220 as my daily driver - the new ones may still have the matte black coating, but under that they're indistinguishable from other ultrabooks. Ultra flat, ultra monolithic, ultra non-upgradeable. The latest generation even ditched the fixed Ethernet port 🙁

It's been edited then 😀 (well yeah the new ones are no longer the ThinkPads as we knew and loved them... I wonder if Lenovo will ditch the ThinkPad brand entirely)

dionb wrote:

Vynix wrote:

386_junkie wrote:

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

[sarcasm]The opposite of a ThinkPad, Ultra books are wafer thin enough so a wee bit of wind sends it flying[/sarcasm]

In short, a disposable laptop, if Netbooks were not enough...

Don't overrate ThinkPads, certainly not the new ones. There's a reason I still use my battered old x220 as my daily driver - the new ones may still have the matte black coating, but under that they're indistinguishable from other ultrabooks. Ultra flat, ultra monolithic, ultra non-upgradeable. The latest generation even ditched the fixed Ethernet port 🙁

I heard some people mentioning that several modern thinkpad models are just glorified ideapads (Lenovo's consumer line which i heard is known to suck baddly) with the just the brand and seemed to be cheaply built comapred to older ones

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

386_junkie wrote:

Whats an "Ultrabook"?

A lightweight laptop, usually lacking in features, expandability, ease of repair, and common sense.

An example is a device soldered together at every possible opportunity, lacking a socketed CPU, using RAM integrated onto the mobo, no optical drive, some form of limited capacity integrated SSD, a non replacable battery, all in a device so thin you worry about slicing your hand off when you pick it up.

I had no idea laptops were going disposable... and I was only just coming around to the idea / prospect of using those PCI slots on a Digital Server I found a few weeks back.

Given your choice words... I feel sorry for their existence.

Coincidently, I found this Ideapad Y460 in a scrap pile a while ago, but I just got it out recently to see if it'd be worth fixing up. It's also an i3 but "only" a 330m (dual core with HT) - still decent IMHO. I guess "those people" have collectively decided now is the time to throw their i3s in the trash. I dunno.

It's actually a really nice machine. It has switchable HD5650 graphics (by "switchable", I mean with an actual switch on the front! Never seen that before), JBL speakers, both VGA & HDMI outs, a working optical drive, a line-in jack, gigabit ethernet, SD reader, and even a cardbus slot.

It came to me without RAM or a HDD, but I had 8GB DDR3 lying around, so I stuck that in & it fired right up off a live DVD. Unfortunately the screen is dead, but from what I can tell that's the only thing that doesn't work; everything seems to function fine on an external monitor. Even the battery still charges & works. Here it is running Unigine Valley like a champ on the discrete GPU:

I left it like that for half an hour and it was rock solid. It did get a little hot, so I'll tear it down and blow out all the dust & replace all the thermal paste with some fresh Arctic Silver.

Fortunately the display panel is pretty easy to replace and new ones can be had off Ebay/AliX for under sixty bucks, shipped to me. There's even an upgraded 1600x900 panel that's a direct drop-in. Definitely glad I scooped it.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

I heard some people mentioning that several modern thinkpad models are just glorified ideapads (Lenovo's consumer line which i heard is known to suck baddly) with the just the brand and seemed to be cheaply built comapred to older ones

I had another IdeaPad before this one; there's nothing really wrong with them. No, they're not "oldschool Thinkpad" build quality but they're on par with any contemporary Acer or HP or whatever. At least they don't typically have melting rubber coatings. 😜

To be honest, I think the Thinkpad Mystique is a little overblown; some models were fantastic, others weren't so good, just like any other laptop. I have a few of them and they're all pretty solid, but not out of the same league as their better contemporaries.

I've been going through multiple dozen T4x0 and T4x0p machines that are classified as "ultrabooks".

They are the best workhorses, if you need portability.

Only thing i wish is that they should have continued with T4x0p series. The T480 doesn't have a "p" variant, so there's no 14 incher anymore with HQ processor in it... 🙁 The T470p was a godsend.

Update: it turns out the display was ridiculously easy to get out, so I yanked it & made sure it had the same connector/dimensions as the one I was looking at on Ebay. It did, so I ordered it... $33+12.75 shipping and I even got the 1600x900 upgraded one. Not bad.

There are some signs this thing spent a lot of time in a hot, humid environment, so that may be what did the screen in. I definitely have to pull the bottom half apart and clean everything. Still seems to be working fine though.