I dumpster dived for a PC in a gaming case, but it definitely isn't gaming. The only thing I can really tell about it is that it has a GT 640. There was a Sony Vaio laptop there I should have taken too, it came with Vista preinstalled... it might still be there if I go back.

I already have a Sandy Bridge tower with a GT 640 I keep around for Vista, but if this one is either Ivy Bridge or Socket 478 or 775, I'll keep it around. If it's neither, well, I'll probably part it out to sell. Maybe see if the PSU has stout 3/5V rails to use for my K7V board.

In other news, Blender 3 is confusing and slow.

I got myself a Samsung SM-T280, and flashed LineageOS 14.1 on it without Gapps. The sellert left a 64GB SD card in it so I consider it a discount, since the tablet was on the pricey side for it's age (around 53 USD), though it is in like-a-new condition.

Got a socket 1150 motherboard, sold as broken. GA-Z87-HD3

After inspection it had 2 broken traces, going from shutting down to power cycling.
The only cpu I have, I needed a working m/b to test it. All the others I had I sold them as they were worth $$ at the time 😀

I think it's just a cpu issue now. Fingers crossed.
----

Soldered a new SATA port on a AM4 board and it now has 6 working ports.

lepidotós wrote on 2023-01-08, 19:45:

I dumpster dived for a PC in a gaming case, but it definitely isn't gaming. The only thing I can really tell about it is that it has a GT 640. There was a Sony Vaio laptop there I should have taken too, it came with Vista preinstalled... it might still be there if I go back.

I already have a Sandy Bridge tower with a GT 640 I keep around for Vista, but if this one is either Ivy Bridge or Socket 478 or 775, I'll keep it around. If it's neither, well, I'll probably part it out to sell. Maybe see if the PSU has stout 3/5V rails to use for my K7V board.

In other news, Blender 3 is confusing and slow.

I got more info about it. It's a CyberPowerPC something-or-other (serial begins SC3000) from 2012, with 8GB memory, a Phenom II, and a seemingly labelless 600W PSU. That changes things; as my Sandy Bridge tower has the IME vulnerability while he Phenom II doesn't have the PSP and the board advertizes I can shove an FX 8-core into it that blasts the i5-2400, I would rather use this PC to run games on while waiting for box64 to be out for ppc64le than the 2400.

I also ended up buying a Surface Laptop 3 15" i7 to hackintosh. 15" 3:2 is just ideal to me IMO, I would have gone Framework but they're only 13.5" -- don't get me wrong, not a bad size at all, either. Just... 15" is pretty roomy while still being easily portable. Probably gonna run Ventura, though I want to buy a 512GB drive for it to dual boot with Slackware, too.

My current laptop (Acer Aspire 17", Pentium N3540, 4GB/500GB HDD) is just... not suitable for more than just web browsing. I'll hand it down to someone who just needs a Chromebook probably, running probably antiX since I don't have a W10 or 11 license.

I just finished installing a GTX780 in an older sytem i'm building, i can already imagine the sag that will happen over the years so i started building an antisag device and also modding the case to install it.

lepidotós wrote on 2023-01-10, 09:34:

My current laptop (Acer Aspire 17", Pentium N3540, 4GB/500GB HDD) is just... not suitable for more than just web browsing. I'll hand it down to someone who just needs a Chromebook probably, running probably antiX since I don't have a W10 or 11 license.

You could try giving the PC version of Raspberry Pi OS a test drive on it.

edit: btw, think it's official name is Raspberry Pi Desktop .. trimmed debian with the Pi look and feel... meant to set it to download last night, forgot.

I wanted to test some Phenom II on a motherboard I recently acquired, a socket AM3+.
The seller sold it as broken as it wouldn't POST, but it worked perfectly when I tested it.

It wasn't anymore and it kept stopping at the same point. I tried to press somewhat on the cpu and it would cycle further in the POST process.
I pressed to much and it shut down, I guess because I broke some solder joints. Cpu is cold and no signs of life.

Now I'll try to reflow the socket to check if it was bad joints. Gotta understand how to proceed.

If this isn't a funny hobby 😀

Nexxen wrote on 2023-01-20, 00:21:

I wanted to test some Phenom II on a motherboard I recently acquired, a socket AM3+. The seller sold it as broken as it wouldn't […]
Show full quote

I wanted to test some Phenom II on a motherboard I recently acquired, a socket AM3+.
The seller sold it as broken as it wouldn't POST, but it worked perfectly when I tested it.

It wasn't anymore and it kept stopping at the same point. I tried to press somewhat on the cpu and it would cycle further in the POST process.
I pressed to much and it shut down, I guess because I broke some solder joints. Cpu is cold and no signs of life.

Now I'll try to reflow the socket to check if it was bad joints. Gotta understand how to proceed.

If this isn't a funny hobby 😀

Part of the fun is breaking and fixing stuff, i know that all too well...

Been trying to troubleshoot a Wi-Fi issue with my iPhone 13 that started happening after upgrading to iOS 16. Basically the phone loses connection to the Internet intermittently (even though it's still connected to the Wi-Fi), which causes things like sluggish webpage loading and every online access taking way more time than it should. Every other Wi-Fi device in the house works perfectly. I got so aggravated today that I decided to get to the bottom of the issue, and I'm even more pissed off now. It reminded me how exasperating it is to try finding helpful advice on Apple forums and communities, due to certain fanboys being unable to accept that their beloved company can mess up from time to time. Take this thread for example:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254213720?page=1

Basically the same thing I found in many other threads/forums, with several people noticing the same problem after the iOS upgrade, only for 2 fanboy "experts" to pop up with their troubleshooting suggestions. It goes something like this:

• Apple drone #1: "it has to be a DHCP bug in your router, iOS is the greatest software creation of mankind and its networking code is absolutely perfect!" Sure dude, a lot of random routers of different brands all across the world have the exact same issue and it only manifests itself with iOS 16 Wi-Fi client devices. Seems like the most likely scenario 🙄
• Apple drone #2: "Are you sure you aren't using a VPN?" NO, I AM NOT USING ANY FUCKING VPN, STOP REPEATING THAT IN EVERY POST!!!

I'm not even the person asking, but reading those posts made me want to punch those guys through the monitor. And they repeat the same bullshit every two posts!!

Anyway, from what I can gather the only 100% sure way of fixing the issue is doing a clean restore of the phone. Backing up and restoring won't work as it will also "restore" the bug. So that means reinstalling all the apps, configuration, and who knows what else. FML.

Chasing intermittent wifi problems on windows is hell too. Especially things where it seems like nuking and repaving works for several days straight, then it goes back to happening multiple times a day again. Desktops and laptops I often end up switching the hardware out if I've got another one, like some combos just hate each other. Not that that option is viable here sadly.

Finally resoldered a new LAN chip that died on a 1156 m/b.
Had to do it twice as on the first run I didn't tin well enough the pads and many legs were loose. Trying to solder them one by one was just too time consuming.
Second run I made them pads fat with tin and had just two legs to touch up with a fine tip.

Put solder on the legs with missing pads (torn when I desoldered the LAN chip with only a solder iron, no air).
I'll put some copper wires tomorrow, I don't want to screw things when too tired.

Finally housed both of my i7 2600k and Phenom X6 1055T.

The yellowed KME CX-6058 case houses the X6 1055T/R9 280x/ 8GB DDR3 build, and the JNC case w/ sidepanel houses the i7 2600k/R7 265/16GB DDR3 build.

I finished the soldering but LAN is still dead, other components are dead and I call it.
Too bad it'll need a PCI Lan forever 😀

I dunno where to put this but it happened on modern hardware.
I ran 3DMark2000 at 1872x1248 on my Surface Laptop 3 i7 to get... 4302 3D marks. And a few graphical glitches, but those are to be expected.

3DMark2000 doesn't work very well on modern o.s. like many Directx6 based games requiring some compatibility fix to improve frame rate or compatibility. I tested these problems a lot on an old GMA PowerVR GPU. After Windows7 which had already the compatibility tool that should help things didn't improve at all with Win8.x and later. Not real full screen isolated 3D rendering, missing DirectDraw, too many things running on background GUIs on modern o.s. which is 3D accelerated too.. to find the right balance is to make many tests for a single specific title which might not work on others.

As "modern" tech activity I repaired lately an old 26" LCD TV which I bought in the early 2000 and have a great analog signal logic and still works having both VGA and DVI-D. Then I wanted to buy a good brand modern low end DVD/BlueRay external player to connect to this TV that has only analog sound inputs. So I had to find a player (not easy considering prices) with some audio output (SPDIF for example) and an externally powered DAC to stereo to use an old still working 5.1 (using only 2.1) analog amplifier for both the disc player and the mini-itx PC. As speakers I used the classic old DTT2500 speakers to get a 2.1 sound and while the original amplifier/decoder stopped working decades ago, this cheap home theatre analog system still work very well and not too much powerful for these speakers (while heavy with big heatsinks on the mosfet amplifiers). At the end the sound quality is incredibly good compared to these modern cheap expensive PC USB powered systems. I could have solved using a HDMI audio splitter and an older disc player but I don't like these cheap adapters often having a basic low power audio quality. The SPDIF DAC seems like a better solution .. too bad most modern home disc players did lost analog outputs to go for the HDMI connection and the Bluetooth.

The only downside is that the final watt requirement is anyway high, like 100W for the TV, 50W for the sound amplifier, 10W for the disc player, 30W for the mini-itx PC.

I tidied up my small, yet functional office space (closet in my room) since there was so much clutter. All of my retro computers are in a safe spot and they'll have their own corner once I get more clutter out of my room in the future. Got my AirPort Extreme Wireless AC and Time Capsule Wireless AC boxes back online, my Pi-Hole (Chromebox running Debian with Pi-Hole to rid of advertisements, yet some appear still and my plan is to install pfSense on it and use that as the ad blocker system) back online, and I got my HDTV setup behind my work laptop so I can watch TV as I'm working.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-01-09, 08:33:

I got myself a Samsung SM-T280, and flashed LineageOS 14.1 on it without Gapps. The sellert left a 64GB SD card in it so I consider it a discount, since the tablet was on the pricey side for it's age (around 53 USD), though it is in like-a-new condition.

This low end tablet was released in 2016 and internal storage is 8GB, and was retailed around 170 USD at release and is saddled with very, weak SOC processor. I know this, as one of my friend got one around that time and now their tablet is slow and old. Not much of any value now, I consider this obsolete even now due to how heavy the apps are, in a way, you should had paid less.

Usually your phone provider if you have a good relationship and have decent plan (2 or more phones) on it, you may able to get a newer tablet for free. This how my mother got nice one.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-03-12, 21:06:

This low end tablet was released in 2016 and internal storage is 8GB, and was retailed around 170 USD at release and is saddled […]
Show full quote

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-01-09, 08:33:

I got myself a Samsung SM-T280, and flashed LineageOS 14.1 on it without Gapps. The sellert left a 64GB SD card in it so I consider it a discount, since the tablet was on the pricey side for it's age (around 53 USD), though it is in like-a-new condition.

This low end tablet was released in 2016 and internal storage is 8GB, and was retailed around 170 USD at release and is saddled with very, weak SOC processor. I know this, as one of my friend got one around that time and now their tablet is slow and old. Not much of any value now, I consider this obsolete even now due to how heavy the apps are, in a way, you should had paid less.

Usually your phone provider if you have a good relationship and have decent plan (2 or more phones) on it, you may able to get a newer tablet for free. This how my mother got nice one.

Cheers,

Maybe in Canada, but in my region, this was the best deal after half a year of searching. It is obsolete, but I only need an ebook reader and for that purpose it works. Anything cheaper would have been damaged/even older and no option for custom rom.

I've been upgrading several Optiplex 3040s for my mom's work. A couple of which had failing Seagate hard drives so... that was fun trying to back up. Also these machines require DDR3L instead of just regular DDR3. I wish I had known that before opening one of the packages of new RAM I had bought from Amazon... Oh well.