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eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?

FW boxes & DVD-s are quite rare here. last I bought - came to my current place where I live from Siberia, not far from place, where I was born. ^_^
Btw, my BT keyboard, A1314 traveled from even farther town - it's from Ulan-Ude :D. Sorry for this OffTopic .
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weckart said:
I considered it but I really wanted the 8GB version for longevity and I couldn't find any except the base 4GB model. I plumped for the 2015 MBP instead.
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I picked up the 2012 (the 2012 i7s vs the 2013 and 15s are virtually identical in GeekBench scores) in mint condition + box for £350 a month or so ago! I see '13s on eBay in similar condition all the time! I put a 1 TB SSD in it and it runs really fast now. For browsing almost as fast as my Mac Pro. :)
 
Tratkazir_the_1st said:
FW boxes & DVD-s are quite rare here. last I bought - came to my current place where I live from Siberia, not far from place, where I was born. ^_^
Btw, my BT keyboard, A1314 traveled from even farther town - it's from Ulan-Ude :D. Sorry for this OffTopic .View attachment 1774703
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Hi, I noticed you from Russian Federation. I am from Lviv.. This keyboard - does it have Ukrainian letters as well ?
 
This is turning into an addiction. I spot a Mac related bargain on eBay and I'm unable to ignore it. At this rate I'll have to attend willpower classes once COVID finally abates or ask a friend to block my access to non-priority Internet shopping. I blame all of you for this - how exactly, I do not know but nonetheless I blame you all. :D

Here's what will be my last Mac purchase for the foreseeable future: it's a 4GB 11" 2011 i5 MBA with a 120GB SSD that I found in eBay's "for parts or not working" section. The opening bid was set at £70 GBP along with the option to make an offer. It had been up to for sale by an IT organisation who'd erased the SSD but then found themselves unable to reinstall macOS via Internet Recovery Mode and they abandoned further attempts at troubleshooting the problem.

Images taken from the eBay listing...

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As you might have noticed, there's a darkened area on the left-hand side of the LCD bezel that the seller referred to as shading or an abrasion but providing that the machine can be restored to working order, who cares about superficial matters? :)

I offered £100 GBP, which was accepted and the seller got in touch to remind me that the laptop was being sold as not working. I assured them that I fully understood this and they had it delivered to me the following morning: very efficient!

A good clean with an anti-bacterial wipe quickly removed the darkening on the bezel. The computer was just dirty and it's unbelievable that they didn't realise this but I really shouldn't complain about things that are ultimately to my benefit and result in me receiving a bargain. Check out the MBA in its cleaned up glory:

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Despite what the photo would suggest, the LCD is fine: there's some strange artefact that appeared due to the flash effect on my phone. I suspected that the MBA just needed an alternate route for installing macOS.

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My instincts were right - El Capitan on a bootable USB drive did the trick.

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The Eagle has landed!

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£100 GBP for an MBA i5 with 4GB RAM and a 120GB SSD and without the need to replace any parts isn't bad at all. From what my shakedown tests have shown, it seems to be working fine in all areas. Sometimes you can be wary about things being too good to be true and so it's nice to have your pessimism dispelled. The PSU was included, as was a Speck case.

What will I do with this? I could resell it and turn a nice profit but instead I shall be altruistic. Originally I was going to gift my mother the 2GB i5 MBA that was shown in a previous post but I'll let her have this one instead because it has double the RAM, which opens up the option that she could potentially run Big Sur if DosDude creates a patch. :)
 
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To break addiction is power of will - you simply must will power stop. Meditate, take kind off apple and other things concentrate. This will stop cycle of addiction - like drugs and alcohol. I have friend who lives not far in Lviv from me and I help him stop addiction of alcohol.

this is how you stop it. Good luck to you.
 
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Macbookprodude said:
this is how you stop it. Good luck to you.
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Thanks. :)

Alternatively, I could get married: unless she's a fellow techie, the objections to my purchases would probably be enough to reign me in. :D

Amethyst1 said:
Edit: You could always resell (or donate) the 2GB i5 MBA instead, or use that one as a Linux testbed, or throw Snow Leopard (yes!) on that one, or...
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All of those suggestions aren't bad at all - especially another dabble with Linux... Would Snow Leopard run on the 2GB i5 without workarounds?
 
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Macbookprodude said:
What other interests you have beside Apple ? Do you meditate ? Do you listen to music ?
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I've got lots of interests: ranging from listening to music, to watching films, reading, writing, gaming and much, much more. :)

At the moment I'm working through a PhD that has taken up the past four and a half years and regularly leads to me staying up till all hours, researching, reading and writing: like tonight! I think that alone definitely provides me with more than enough to keep my attention occupied. ;)

I was semi-joking about the addiction and holding my fellow members responsible for seeking out Mac bargains. :) In recent years I've amassed quite an arsenal of Apple hardware but this MBA will be the final machine that I purchase for quite some time to come because I can't justify buying further Macs given that I own G3s, G4s, a G5 and numerous Intel Macs. That's without even detailing my other computers.

Rest assured, I can resist and I shall. However I do appreciate your kind words. It's yet another a reminder of what a nice community we have here. :)
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Congrats on both counts! @RogerWilco6502 :)
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Thanks! We haven't officially proposed, but we do plan on it when we can get more stuff worked out and turn our relationship from a long-distance one into a not long-distance one. :D

As for the dock, I have actually been doing a quite a bit of looking on eBay as of late. I also found a ThinkPad Mini-Dock Series 3 for my T530 and the appropriate RAM expansion to max my T42p at 2GB of RAM. :)

Not from eBay, but from Reddit, but I also got a ThinkPad i1200 for the price of shipping. It's rather beaten up and has a busted hinge as well as a CD drive that is likely bad. It'll be fun trying to install something on that for sure, seeing as it can't USB boot from what I can tell and has no option for external drives of any sort. I knew this going into it though and figured it would be a fun way to challenge my skills. xD
 
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RogerWilco6502 said:
t'll be fun trying to install something on that for sure, seeing as it can't USB boot from what I can tell and has no option for external drives of any sort.
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I'd try an USB floppy drive nonetheless, given this was an optional accessory. :) If that fails, I'd remove the hard drive, prepare it on another machine and put it back in the 1200. What OS(es) do you have in mind for it?
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Would Snow Leopard run on the 2GB i5 without workarounds?
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You need a 10.6.8 install. That will boot but in my experience (with an 11" i5) the internal screen will be very glitchy; these glitches disappear as the system is used though. No idea if Thunderbolt works (it's a different controller than in the fully supported 2011 MBP). Still fun nonetheless - and, as expected from Snow Leopard, fast. :D
 
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Amethyst1 said:
I'd try an USB floppy drive nonetheless, given this was an optional accessory. :) If that fails, I'd remove the hard drive, prepare it on another machine and put it back in the 1200. What OS(es) do you have in mind for it?
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Ah, good idea! I was thinking about doing the latter, but the former hadn't occurred to me. This is actually a joint venture between my gf and me. We're thinking of a triple boot between Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, and OpenBSD. If I can get DOS installed on the computer, then I should be able to pull the hard drive and put Windows 98 install files on it and run the installer in sort of a roundabout way then. 98 is what matters most to my gf, and I'm actually considering fixing it up and making it all nice and giving it to her as a gift. She loves everything about this computer, so I figured it would be a fun little surprise for her.

If I can manage it, I might also be able to find an era-appropriate IBM-branded bag and USB floppy drive. I have my own IBM USB floppy drive, but she wants one as well. :)
 
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RogerWilco6502 said:
If I can get DOS installed on the computer, then I should be able to pull the hard drive and put Windows 98 install files on it and run the installer in sort of a roundabout way then.
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Yep, that's the way. You can do the same with Windows 2000: copy the whole i386 directory from the install source to the drive, and then from DOS on the 1200, run smartdrv (important - otherwise this is going to take ages) followed by lock c: (if using DOS 7; otherwise the next step will crash) and \i386\winnt /b. It'll set up a bootable local install source and the actual installation will commence after a restart.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
Yep, that's the way. You can do the same with Windows 2000: copy the whole i386 directory from the install source to the drive, and then from DOS on the 1200, run smartdrv (important - otherwise this is going to take ages) followed by lock c: (if using DOS 7; otherwise the next step will crash) and \i386\winnt /b. It'll set up a bootable local install source and the actual installation will commence after a restart.
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ooo, ok! Thanks for the tip! I appreciate it :)
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Congrats on both counts! @RogerWilco6502 :)
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My girlfriend - previos post from RogerWilco.
I envy you... I wish I had a gf.. Maybe I come to USA and find nice girl.. though most Ukrainian girls here want to come to USA - and we have the best girls on the planet. This is example of Polish, West Ukrainian beauty. Compared to your girls here in USA, ours are the HOTS.


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RogerWilco6502 said:
Thanks! We haven't officially proposed, but we do plan on it when we can get more stuff worked out and turn our relationship from a long-distance one into a not long-distance one. :D

As for the dock, I have actually been doing a quite a bit of looking on eBay as of late. I also found a ThinkPad Mini-Dock Series 3 for my T530 and the appropriate RAM expansion to max my T42p at 2GB of RAM. :)

Not from eBay, but from Reddit, but I also got a ThinkPad i1200 for the price of shipping. It's rather beaten up and has a busted hinge as well as a CD drive that is likely bad. It'll be fun trying to install something on that for sure, seeing as it can't USB boot from what I can tell and has no option for external drives of any sort. I knew this going into it though and figured it would be a fun way to challenge my skills. xD
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Is your gf from Europe ?
 
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