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eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?

Not PowerPC related but somewhat Mac related:

Two of my latest conquests: an AMD Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Vapor-X 3 GB for 48 bucks including shipping and a Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 550 for 67 bucks including shipping.

I initially bid on the HD 7950 with the intention of putting it into my hackintosh (which is a work in progress). The hackintosh is a mATX case with a Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H and a Sandy Bridge i5 processor. To my surprise that particular HD 7950 has two 8pin power connections (instead of the regular 2x 6pin power connectors) and I also found out that the VaporX 7950 is one of the power hungriest cards out there of the AMD 7000 series (up to 320 watts when on full load from what I read online). The PSU in my hackintosh is a +15 year old ones with only 550 watts of power delivery. Also my case does not have the best airflow and the HD 5870 that is currently in it already gets kind of hot (and requires significantly less power). So the logical thing to do was to replan and pair it with my second acquisition which is a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU box from Sonnet.

The breakaway box unfortunately came without a power cable (easily remedied) and also without a Thunderbolt 3 cable (not easily remedied). I only have two devices with thunderbolt; a MacBook Pro from 2012 with TB2 and an iMac 5K from 2017 with TB3. Since the iMac 5K has an 8GB RX 580 inside I don't think attaching a HD 7950 makes a lot of sense but the box can come in handy for my MacBook Pro and I already own all the necessary cables in order to connect it to said Mac (Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter & Thunderbolt 2 cable). I really saw the breakaway box on eBay coincidentally. The box was at 58€ when I found the listing and I reckoned that is pretty low for what they usually go for. It wasn't a must have item for me so I just bid 1€ more seconds before the auction ended and eventually won the acution :D. I really hope the box benefits me when I use it in conjunction with my MBP 2012 13".

I think I did pretty good with my last two purchases on eBay but the hunt for other Mac stuff continues 😛
 

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Tratkazir_the_1st said:
7950 is a smoothing-iron :). Doesn't something like RX480 (and later) better? Don't know prices at ebay for them.
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Apple's recommendation for a replacement was the RX580. The RX570 might be a tad slower than the HD7950 and the RX4xx series, I think, were more power hungry than the RX5xx replacements so possibly not much of difference from the HD7xxx. I had to do a Pixlas mod on my Mac Pro 5,1 to get my RX9 280X (HD7970) to run reliably. Quite a noisy card, even just when watching YT videos.

From what I can see locally, the RX580 goes for around £150/€170 used. Still much more expensive than the HD7950, which can be flashed for the Mac Pro.
 
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netsrot39 said:
The breakaway box unfortunately came without a power cable (easily remedied) and also without a Thunderbolt 3 cable (not easily remedied). I only have two devices with thunderbolt; a MacBook Pro from 2012 with TB2 and an iMac 5K from 2017 with TB3. Since the iMac 5K has an 8GB RX 580 inside I don't think attaching a HD 7950 makes a lot of sense but the box can come in handy for my MacBook Pro and I already own all the necessary cables in order to connect it to said Mac (Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter & Thunderbolt 2 cable). I really saw the breakaway box on eBay coincidentally. The box was at 58€ when I found the listing and I reckoned that is pretty low for what they usually go for. It wasn't a must have item for me so I just bid 1€ more seconds before the auction ended and eventually won the acution :D. I really hope the box benefits me when I use it in conjunction with my MBP 2012 13".
Click to expand...
 
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SOLD as seen (Free).
Which is it sold or free.......🤪

Where is the listing, doesn't look like eBay.
Why would they be free, even if you got £50 each for spares...
 
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MarkC426 said:
SOLD as seen (Free).
Which is it sold or free.......🤪

Where is the listing, doesn't look like eBay.
Why would they be free, even if you got £50 each for spares...
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Facebook Marketplace.

FREE is a silly euphemism used on there - it very rarely means free at all, as is the case here - the guy is looking at an offer for the lot.
 
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Mentioned elsewhere, but I'll post it here too because I'm still grinning about it: A new PowerBook 5300cs. Actually new and still sealed.... or was until I extricated it and put it to use as a daily driver. Cost was $200, which was either going to be too much if it had not been actually still sealed, or somewhat cheap if it was.

Turned out to be a 1997-build, 16-18 months after production ended, for the extended repair program. It likely spent most of its life in the stockroom of a repair shop, but it works like a champ.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Facebook Marketplace.

FREE is a silly euphemism used on there - it very rarely means free at all, as is the case here - the guy is looking at an offer for the lot.
Click to expand...

That used to work me up no end whenever I browsed through Facebook Marketplace with endless items listed as "FREE" only to investigate further and discover the clarification that it wasn't actually free. If it's not free then don't describe it as such just for clickbait and it seems that Facebook have no issue with the practice because its carried on for years.
 
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TheShortTimer said:
That used to work me up no end whenever I browsed through Facebook Marketplace with endless items listed as "FREE" only to investigate further and discover the clarification that it wasn't actually free. If it's not free then don't describe it as such just for clickbait and it seems that Facebook have no issue with the practice because its carried on for years.
Click to expand...
It's such a bizarre logic as it always seems to be used on big ticket items.
Do sellers really think that buyers who click on something purely because it's advertised as a freebie would then cough up £300 once they're looking?

"Oh, I didn't know how much I really needed an expensive, vintage Yamaha FM Synthesiser until I clicked..."
 
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Dronecatcher said:
It's such a bizarre logic as it always seems to be used on big ticket items.
Do sellers really think that buyers who click on something purely because it's advertised as a freebie would then cough up £300 once they're looking?

"Oh, I didn't know how much I really needed an expensive, vintage Yamaha FM Synthesiser until I clicked..."
Click to expand...

The groundbreaking DX7 immediately comes to mind (An older sibling had one in the 80s.) Have you seen the documentary I Dream of Wires? It's a fantastic watch and I caught it on Sky Arts not too long ago when they had a theme night around electronic music.

 
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TheShortTimer said:
The groundbreaking DX7 immediately comes to mind (An older sibling had one in the 80s.) Have you seen the documentary I Dream of Wires? It's a fantastic watch and I caught it on Sky Arts not too long ago when they had a theme night around electronic music.
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Yes, I've seen that - and a whole bunch of others that are similar :)

I've never owned a DX but I've used 2/3 Operator FM Synthesis on mini key, entry level keyboards - I find it very complex to program, not intuitive.

I'm at home with analogue synthesis - my first working synth was a Korg MS-10 without instructions or an internet for help, so I had to teach myself what every dial and socket did :)

Korg.jpg
 
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A day after I won the auction for a Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 7950 on Ebay, I won another auction for a Gigabyte AMD Radeon HD 7950. I saw the latter one by coincidence and managed to get if for 37€ including shipping. My initial plan was to flash the Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 7950 to a Mac ROM and use it in my Mac Pro 2,1 but I noticed 2 problems (after the fact): 2x8pin required (very power hungry card) and the card layout isn't that similar to the Mac version of the HD 7950. I eventually found this post by @LightBulbFun and decided to go for the Gigabyte card since it has 2x6pin like the Mac version and also the same layout. I just flashed it today and it works great with my Mac Pro 2,1.

Some words on the attached picture: This is how the card came. No ESD packaging and just some air bubble packaging inside a box. When I got the parcel I noticed that the card was rattling around inside the box. It was very loose inside the parcel. I feared for the worst but after checking the card visually I couldn't find anything wrong with it. Luckily I came to the same conclusion after testing and flashing the card. I got lucky but it is always a gamble with the packaging methods of eBay sellers 😅
 

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speaking of Mac Pro things invading the PowerPC forum :)

some of you who follow me know I have been doing some PCIe cards in G3/G4 shenanigans

and in all of this a Quadro FX 4500 found its way into my G5 Quad, however I realised I had missed placed my spare Mini 6 pin to 6 pin power cable for it

so rather then do the sensible thing and order a replacement cable for £3.50

image.png.8c84241714e17dfe4a9cde31f7991af4.png


I bought an entire MacPro3,1 that so happen to come already configured with the cable I need, as you do 😁

image.png.4b84ce28722980333b2e488f3e229fb0.png


there is slight method in the madness in that I have been wanting a MacPro3,1/Xserve2,1 to fill that hardware gap in my collection and finally be able to conduct MacPro3,1 experiments that I have been wanting to do, like I want to have a bash and see if I can get E0 stepping CPUs working at long last :)

and so I decided before I bought a 6 pin cable id have a quick look on ebay for any cheap 3,1's with a Mini 6 pin to 6 pin cable while I was at it and low and behold :)

I genuinely did buy this for just the MacPro3,1 and the cable I did not even realise it had an SSD in it too until it got here, should make for a silly fast Tiger machine :)

in the meantime I quickly booted it off my Firewire all PowerPC OS X's SSD and it seemed to work well :) (just need to reseat the GPU by the looks of things, but that will be coming out for a 2600 XT (or a Quadro FX 5600 if I can get my mits on one) for tiger fun anyhow)

image (5).png



I even managed to fish out some 800Mhz FB-DIMMs in my parts stash and bump it to 8GB :) (meanwhile my MacPro1,1 has 64GB LOL)

image (6).png
 
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MarkC426 said:
Wooww...I didn't know you could get a FW SSD (or is it a custom build)....:oops:
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It could be
  • a CompactFlash card in a FireWire 800 CompactFlash reader
  • a SATA SSD in a SATA-to-FireWire 800 enclosure
  • a SATA SSD and a SATA-to-IDE adapter in a IDE-to-FireWire 400/800 enclosure
  • an IDE SSD in an IDE-to-FireWire 400/800 enclosure
So there's plenty of options. There are no SSDs with native FireWire or USB interfaces as far as I'm aware.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
It could be
  • a CompactFlash card in a FireWire 800 CompactFlash reader
  • a SATA SSD in a SATA-to-FireWire 800 enclosure
  • a SATA SSD and a SATA-to-IDE adapter in a IDE-to-FireWire 400/800 enclosure
  • an IDE SSD in an IDE-to-FireWire 400/800 enclosure
So there's plenty of options. There are no SSDs with native FireWire or USB interfaces as far as I'm aware.
Click to expand...
I think I may of posted about it somewhere, but its one of these :)

www.amazon.co.uk

OWC Mercury On-The-Go 2.5" Portable FW800 + USB 3.0/2.0 Drive Enclosure Kit

Mercury On-The-Go Oxford FW/U3 OWC compatible
www.amazon.co.uk

plus one of these :)

www.amazon.co.uk

Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD - Up to 560MB/s - CT500MX500SSD1

Start your system in seconds, store up to 2 TB of data, and upgrade with an SSD you can count on. Join more and more people who are keeping their family videos, travel photos, music, and important documents on an SSD, and get the near-instant performance and lasting reliability that comes with so...
www.amazon.co.uk

with 10.0.4 10.1.5 10.2.8 10.3.9 10.4.11 and 10.5.8 imaged to it :) plus some free space on the end for anything else I might need to stick on it

the USB 3.0 part is great for fast imaging and file transfer on a modern machine and the Firewire 800 interface is great for booting all my Uninorth and later PPC macs as needed :)

the only annoying issue, is it does not like to play nice with the Sawtooth's OF only showing up 1 out of 10 or so, works well with the rest of my Macs tho
 
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Recently picked up a slot loading Indigo G3 and a Bondi Blue of some sort.
I do want to make some mods to the SL iMac, like install a fan, get someone to solder in a 7410 running at 600MHz, put a DVD-ROM drive in... etc etc
I may also need to recap that machine, but taking these apart is a pain in the a$$. The tray loader would be a fun one, too. Not sure what I'd do to that one just yet, though. Do any video card upgrades exist for them since they have that mezzanine slot?
 
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My bargain turned out to be a surprise.
I snagged up what I thought was the dual G4 1.42Ghz Firewire 800 MDD for 35€. You could clearly see the model sticker with the specs on one of the photos. It also included a chunky boy of an expansion pci card so I thought it was worth it despite having already a few of the model line excluding this very last one.
Turns out at one point they had changed the motherboard to a non-Firewire 800 version with the single 1.25Ghz processor.
A little disappointed but at least it’s working.
Will get some photos up later. Maybe you can help me with finding out what model that PCI card is what seems to be a capture card.
 
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