eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?

[MBAir2010]

Fair enough.



Might be a good idea… The serial and model numbers will enable you to check online the year of manufacture and the original specification. It's worth taking note of @weckart's observation that a previous owner has dismantled the machine before and that the drive might have been removed.

the drive is there, and thanks for the info forgot about the serial number
jeez, im staring at the erase, restore and format buttons that wont click....
they obviously screwed up something partition wise, then pawned the mini

 

[TheShortTimer]

they obviously screwed up something partition wise, then pawned the mini

Probably couldn't correct it or couldn't be bothered to go through the processes of correcting it. This is how I landed an MBA earlier this year. An IT company erased the SSD and then found themselves unable to reinstall macOS, they gave up and put the MBA on eBay for sale.

I bought it and succeeded where they failed.

 

[MBAir2010]

Probably couldn't correct it or couldn't be bothered to go through the processes of correcting it. This is how I landed an MBA earlier this year. An IT company erased the SSD and then found themselves unable to reinstall macOS, they gave up and put the MBA on eBay for sale.

I bought it and succeeded where they failed.

how?
i tried booting a usb mountain lion but went to utilities instead
great thread, MacBook airs are great!
wow what time is it there across the pond, I say 2AMish?

 

[TheShortTimer]

how?

This is the method that I've used to create a USB installer for El Capitan and that's how I restored it to the MBA.

For older versions of macOS you could use the process that I've detailed here.

i tried booting a usb mountain lion but went to utilities instead

Was there no option within the Utilities page to reinstall macOS?

great thread,

Thanks.

MacBook airs are great!

They are indeed! They're much better machines than many people realise - myself included till recently.

wow what time is it there across the pond, I say 2AMish?

04:22 AM now. What can I say? I'm a veritable night owl.

 

[MBAir2010]

well some sleep helped
the ssd drive is not connected to the logic board, and there are 2 slots that are tough to clamp down on.
once that clicks....if ever
I' might be good to go!
part 2:
yes it works!
but nene did not leave a password.....
no problem, Mojave is better and i would be a hypocrite if i did not use anything else!

 

[Amethyst1]

BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha

This is the first device given to developers in 2012 — and it not only looks like a miniature PlayBook, the OS this shipped with (which is hopefully still on it!) is also a stripped-down version of the PlayBook's OS and quite different to the actual BB10. I've wanted one of these buggers for ages. It's gonna be some weeks before it shows up but who cares?

Update: I should™ have done my research first. The pre-release OS has an expiration date, so I may be stuck with either an early version of BB10 instead... or a paperweight. D’OH!!! ?

 

[weckart]

Update: I should™ have done my research first. The pre-release OS has an expiration date, so I may be stuck with either an early version of BB10 instead... or a paperweight. D’OH!!! ?

Can you turn the clock back to spoof the date, sort of like with the Mac OS X Open Beta or does it need to sign into the server?

 

[lepidotós]

$106.88 total including shipping and tax for a PowerBook G3 Lombard @333mhz, a copy of Mac OS 9.0, SimCity 2000, and a vast assortment of other software; in addition, I'm getting a CF to IDE adapter, a 16GB card, and a Siemens 1021 wifi card.
Probably a better deal than the $150.49 for a PowerBook G4 that wasn't even maxed out... $160.51 when including the extra gigabyte.​

 

[Amethyst1]

Can you turn the clock back to spoof the date,

I'll know when it's here. Presumably, the worst case would be if it already had the correct date at first boot, fired the timebomb and invalidated the pre-release OS. RIM are only offering autoloaders for released versions of BB10, but if I wanted those I could just have gotten a Z10 instead

The thread I linked to in my previous post mentions a way to circumvent the message so I’ll hope for the best.

 

[666sheep]

Not ebay, however quite a bargain I think: 22 or 23" ACD (ADC plug) fully working and even the "third leg" isn't broken. Pro keyboard + Pro mouse, both black. All for equivalent of $50 shipped. Will know the exact ACD model when it will arrive.

 

[MBAir2010]

$12 fan for my souped up mac mini!
which is on hold util that prt arrives.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Can someone advise a 1st generation ipad for anything ?

 

[Amethyst1]

Can someone advise a 1st generation ipad for anything ?

Yep.

Spoiler

As a gun target.

 

[weckart]

Can someone advise a 1st generation ipad for anything ?

I have a 1st gen Mac Mini. It still has iOS6 on it as I resisted the urge to put the slow and buggy iOS7 on it after reversing that mistake on my iPhone4. It's ok as a museum piece to see what iOS looked like before it became flat and dazzling white - iOS6 and earlier sported something akin to a permanent dark mode. As for usefulness, not much. The 512MB of RAM is limiting for today's apps, which won't install on such old hardware and the currently installed apps mostly won't run as they need to update.

You might still be able to run the original Angry Birds and similar apps as long as they have been installed, otherwise you can try to see if a jailbreak still works and then whatever Cydia still brings up might still run, although probably not much either, if anything.

 

[Amethyst1]

@weckart: The first-generation iPad has just 256 MB of RAM and is limited to iOS 5.1.1. I mostly agree with your conclusions. I'd say it makes a decent digital picture frame, offline video player or something like that due to the IPS LCD. Basically anything that doesn't involve third-party apps or browsing the web.

 

[TheShortTimer]

This is the Belkin F4U055 - a Thunderbolt dock with, as you can see, a pretty impressive array of ports that includes FireWire 800!

It's perfect for my i5 2011 MacBook Air and regrettably, I missed out on one late last year because I'd hesitated over the price.

When I saw this one appear in my search results, I didn't hesitate to select the buy-it-now option for £40 GBP - which was slightly cheaper than the one that I'd missed out on. I could have bid on it but my instincts told me that the bidding would probably culminate with the same price (or possibly higher) anyway so I went for it.

A Thunderbolt cable is included too, which is great especially when you consider that many of the units for sale on eBay don't include one. Some of them don't even include the PSU and are being sold for the same price as this one - or even higher!

 

[Macbookprodude]

I have a 1st gen Mac Mini. It still has iOS6 on it as I resisted the urge to put the slow and buggy iOS7 on it after reversing that mistake on my iPhone4. It's ok as a museum piece to see what iOS looked like before it became flat and dazzling white - iOS6 and earlier sported something akin to a permanent dark mode. As for usefulness, not much. The 512MB of RAM is limiting for today's apps, which won't install on such old hardware and the currently installed apps mostly won't run as they need to update.

You might still be able to run the original Angry Birds and similar apps as long as they have been installed, otherwise you can try to see if a jailbreak still works and then whatever Cydia still brings up might still run, although probably not much either, if anything.

So, compared with our PowerPC macs, the Ipad 1st generation is dead.

 

[Amethyst1]

This is the Belkin F4U055 -

Congrats. I’ve also had one of these. This is the second Thunderbolt dock released, so you’ve got a piece of history there too.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Congrats.

Thanks.

I’ve also had one of these.

I remember the thread now. What happened, did you get rid of it in the end? Was the USB 3.0 performance not good enough?

This is the second Thunderbolt dock released, so you’ve got a piece of history there too.

Hopefully it's not bad history! There was someone on eBay selling a NOS unit for £90 GBP - I passed because at that price point, you might as well spend a bit more and purchase an actual computer with those ports.

 

[lepidotós]

If I can go off topic a little, I've been slowly drip acquiring all of the parts to build a Raptor Blackbird; $40.95 for the case (a Rosewill Line-M), $216.63 for the Radeon RX 570 GPU, $34.26 for the storage (an Intel 520 SSD I was going to install in my iMac G5 until someone mentioned it won't work in it), $47.66 for 32GB (2x116GB) of 2133MHz RAM, and $54.36 for the power supply, a 550w 80+G. All I have left to buy are the motherboard, processor, heatsink, and side panel case fans. Tallying it all up, I've spent $393.86 on the project and want to estimate my grand total to be $2,850. Not exactly a bargain, but I saved on every component -- RAM, for instance. 2x16GB 2133 would normally cost about $70 before taxes. For a more powerful computer than the current base-spec Mac Pro (currently priced at $6,000) and one that respects freedoms better, I'd say it's a decent deal.​

 

[weckart]

I remember the thread now. What happened, did you get rid of it in the end? Was the USB 3.0 performance not good enough?

I'm curious as how this Belkin dock performs. I remember talk of the first iteration having heat issues and I did buy the Kanex TB to USB3.0 dongle for my iMac 2011, which had a short, fixed TB lead because it was unpowered and ran very hot - enough for any USB cable plugging into it to get uncomfortably hot.

 

[Amethyst1]

What happened, did you get rid of it in the end?

Yep. I sold it to someone who cheaply yet “desperately” wanted USB 3.0 on a 2011 Mac mini (IIRC).

Was the USB 3.0 performance not good enough?

It was just half of what my setup was capable of (130 MB/s). The Belkin TB2 dock I also purchased (but have since sold as well) provided the full speed... but dropped FireWire 800 in return. Still, it was much better than USB 2.0.

Hopefully it's not bad history

Well, it’s better than the first TB dock ever released which was just a giant bug with a bit of dock inside…

 

[TheShortTimer]

I'm curious as how this Belkin dock performs. I remember talk of the first iteration having heat issues and I did buy the Kanex TB to USB3.0 dongle for my iMac 2011, which had a short, fixed TB lead because it was unpowered and ran very hot - enough for any USB cable plugging into it to get uncomfortably hot.

I recently acquired a Kanex dongle and it's great for my 2011 MBP which already has FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet but the Belkin will provide those ports along with USB 3.0 (albeit with performance caveats) to my 2011 MBA. If you like, I could post the results of USB 3.0 data transfer comparisons between the two but I suspect that the Kanex will emerge victorious.

Yep. I sold it to someone who cheaply yet “desperately” wanted USB 3.0 on a 2011 Mac mini (IIRC).


It was just half of what my setup was capable of (130 MB/s). The Belkin TB2 dock I also purchased provided the full speed... but dropped FireWire 800 in return. Still, it was much better than the uselessly slow USB 2.0.


Well, it’s better than the first TB dock ever released which was just a giant bug with a bit of dock inside…

Fair enough. Even with the shortcomings regarding USB 3.0 it's still worth it at £40 GBP for the availability of FireWire 800 feature a Thunderbolt device, not to mention Gigabit Ethernet.

 

[Amethyst1]

the availability of FireWire 800 feature a Thunderbolt device, not to mention Gigabit Ethernet.

Plus audio in and out, and the option to glorify a humble DisplayPort display (or a non-DisplayPort one with an active adapter) to a glorious Thunderbolt Display.

I suspect that the Kanex will emerge victorious.

As the previous owner of the Kanex, I can guarantee it will.

 

[Hughmac]

This is the Belkin F4U055 - a Thunderbolt dock with, as you can see, a pretty impressive array of ports that includes FireWire 800!

It's perfect for my i5 2011 MacBook Air and regrettably, I missed out on one late last year because I'd hesitated over the price.

When I saw this one appear in my search results, I didn't hesitate to select the buy-it-now option for £40 GBP - which was slightly cheaper than the one that I'd missed out on. I could have bid on it but my instincts told me that the bidding would probably culminate with the same price (or possibly higher) anyway so I went for it.

A Thunderbolt cable is included too, which is great especially when you consider that many of the units for sale on eBay don't include one. Some of them don't even include the PSU and are being sold for the same price as this one - or even higher!

My solution to firewire 800 on my 2011 i5 MBA is the Apple A1463 thunderbolt cable...

I also have the USB ethernet cable

Cheers

Hugh