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eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?
- Thread starter Hughmac
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eBay in non-U.S. markets is... interesting. Your country is much better than mine (Canada), but I've often seen it where there might be two people bidding on a local listing. And occasionally you get lucky and there is only one person and you get something really cheap. (By and large, Americans don't bid on Canadian listings...)
Selling something no reserve in the traditional eBay weeklong auction model in Canada, at least, can be very risky in a way that I don't think it is in the U.S.
eBay is a curious thing. Sometimes people are fighting over scraps and the price goes sky-high but the other day you can make a bargain like this.
Aside from that I think PowerPC is just in between being usable today and a rare collectors item.
Maybe in 5 years that totally changes.
Just a few years ago you could buy iPod Classics for cheap - nowadays even damaged ones are terribly expensive.
Aside from that I think PowerPC is just in between being usable today and a rare collectors item.
Maybe in 5 years that totally changes.
Just a few years ago you could buy iPod Classics for cheap - nowadays even damaged ones are terribly expensive.
The parcel arrived today and to my great surprise it went better than I expected.
The PowerBook G4 17 inch ran with the charger connected as well as one iBook.
One of the MBPs worked after inserting RAM.
For the two other iBooks as well as the other MBP I have to look into them soon.
The seller stated that they were all with no RAM or harddisk but aside from the MBPs all had HDDs inside them.
The PowerBook G4 17 inch ran with the charger connected as well as one iBook.
One of the MBPs worked after inserting RAM.
For the two other iBooks as well as the other MBP I have to look into them soon.
The seller stated that they were all with no RAM or harddisk but aside from the MBPs all had HDDs inside them.
I played with the idea of placing a bid on this one for a moment, but decided that I don't want to deal with iBooks and process of getting rid of them
Also, eBay is not what it used to be 20 years ago. These days, if something is sold cheaply "in decent condition, should be working, I have no power supply to test it", it is almost 100% certain that it has been fiddled with and most probably will have problems. In my attempt to purchase at least one working PowerBook G4 during past 2 months this was true in all but 1 case.
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I totally agree and this seems to be a scheme in a way.
Either power supplies are magically disappearing after some years of people do not sell them with their laptops because they're broken and won't admit it.
The worst case was when a seller sold a PowerBook for parts only which looked to be in pristine condition from the photos. When it arrived the battery had leaked badly into the PB but that was not stated in the offer.
I'd never sell something not mentioning such a crucial damage.
At the end of the day, many of us end up with several half working machines, that could not be sold because of their condition, if we're honest.
I think we need to set up some sort of parts swap thread. I am sure many of us are in the need of one part or the other and there is someone out there who has that part.
I think we need to set up some sort of parts swap thread. I am sure many of us are in the need of one part or the other and there is someone out there who has that part.
Upon closer inspection of the lot I found out that the other MBP is actually a Core2Duo model which does not boot at all.
I think it might come to life again after a healthy dose of heat.
Also one of the iBook actually works - and it starts into Ubuntu. Unfortunately it seems that the backlight of the screen has died and even connecting an external monitor does not help. As soon as the bootloader loads the ramdisk it switches to the internal screen... is there a shortcut to force output to external screen?
I think it might come to life again after a healthy dose of heat.
Also one of the iBook actually works - and it starts into Ubuntu. Unfortunately it seems that the backlight of the screen has died and even connecting an external monitor does not help. As soon as the bootloader loads the ramdisk it switches to the internal screen... is there a shortcut to force output to external screen?
A recent acquisition: MacBook Pro 2012 13" w/ 4GB & 500GB HDD - boxed - £75 GBP.
The top and bottom feature a number of scratches but it's not a beauty contest and they can be nullified with a bit of restorative work.
The seller helpfully set up a new account for me but they forgot to send me the password and they also neglected to erase the original user account. With some cursory web searching, it wasn't long before I was able to identify the previous owner and the company responsible for providing them with the computer. Really careless behaviour.
No matter. I booted into recovery mode, selected Terminal, typed "resetpassword", created a new password and gained access to Catalina.
Let's pop the bonnet and have a look inside...
It's probably one of the internally cleanest pre-owned Macs that I've ever come across.
Looks like the original owner ran it for years with the stock configuration. Ouch!
For reasons that we're all familiar with, I will not be using a previously owned hard drive - especially not a decade old, 5400 RPM unit. I'll be at odds here with most of the community in that I mainly favour spinners over SSDs because I require large internal drives and the costs of SSD's at the 4TB range are beyond my budget.
Anyhow, I relented and opted for a Samsung EVO 870 500GB SSD. There are many cheapo SSDs to be had but as @Amethyst1 and @B S Magnet have warned in several posts, the reduced price comes at the cost of reduced performance due to the absence of dram cache.
I bumped up the RAM to 6GB with a spare 4GB module that luckily, I never got around to selling.
From Internet Recovery Mode, I reinstalled Catalina from scratch onto the SSD.
Fun time!
Everything seems to be working, including the optical drive and the battery also holds up pretty well too. I'll expand the RAM even further once I find some at a decent price but 6GB will be passable for now - given that I managed to get Catalina to run respectably on a puny C2D MBA with 2GB RAM. There are many tweaks and optimisations waiting to be utilised which will increase the performance.
What will I do with this machine? It will serve primarily as a testing ground for specialised experiments with a view to sharing the data and results with the community. Watch this space.
The top and bottom feature a number of scratches but it's not a beauty contest and they can be nullified with a bit of restorative work.
The seller helpfully set up a new account for me but they forgot to send me the password and they also neglected to erase the original user account. With some cursory web searching, it wasn't long before I was able to identify the previous owner and the company responsible for providing them with the computer. Really careless behaviour.
No matter. I booted into recovery mode, selected Terminal, typed "resetpassword", created a new password and gained access to Catalina.
Let's pop the bonnet and have a look inside...
It's probably one of the internally cleanest pre-owned Macs that I've ever come across.
Looks like the original owner ran it for years with the stock configuration. Ouch!
For reasons that we're all familiar with, I will not be using a previously owned hard drive - especially not a decade old, 5400 RPM unit. I'll be at odds here with most of the community in that I mainly favour spinners over SSDs because I require large internal drives and the costs of SSD's at the 4TB range are beyond my budget.
Anyhow, I relented and opted for a Samsung EVO 870 500GB SSD. There are many cheapo SSDs to be had but as @Amethyst1 and @B S Magnet have warned in several posts, the reduced price comes at the cost of reduced performance due to the absence of dram cache.
I bumped up the RAM to 6GB with a spare 4GB module that luckily, I never got around to selling.
From Internet Recovery Mode, I reinstalled Catalina from scratch onto the SSD.
Fun time!
Everything seems to be working, including the optical drive and the battery also holds up pretty well too. I'll expand the RAM even further once I find some at a decent price but 6GB will be passable for now - given that I managed to get Catalina to run respectably on a puny C2D MBA with 2GB RAM. There are many tweaks and optimisations waiting to be utilised which will increase the performance.
What will I do with this machine? It will serve primarily as a testing ground for specialised experiments with a view to sharing the data and results with the community. Watch this space.
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That's a bargain! The 2012 MacBook Pro is still my daily (mobile) driver and I have to say it held up pretty well over the years. I bought mine brand new in 2013 for 1049€. A few things (or rather flaws) to have in mind when you have this model:
- the hard drive ribbon cable breaks (after approximately 2 years), I've replaced mine 5 times already (yeah, I'm not kidding), since I put some insulating tape over it hasn't happened anymore but the last time I changed it was last year, so I can't say for sure – this is almost guaranteed to happen, I have friends that have/had the same model MacBook and it happened to ALL of them ...
- the RAM socket pins gets detached after some time (tiny breaks), this usually results in 3 beeps at startup or wake from sleep (I kind of fixed it by adding some foam onto the back cover that adds some additional pressure to the RAM slots – this happened to me about 5 years ago the first time and it hardly returned, it hasn't returned since I added additional pressure to the bottom cover
- the optical drive fails (this might just have only happened to me but I doubt it, mine failed after only 1 year and I hadn't even used it that much!)
Does the Samsung just slot straight in, without a caddy....?Anyhow, I relented and opted for a Samsung EVO 870 500GB SSD. There are many cheapo SSDs to be had but as @Amethyst1 and @B S Magnet have warned in several posts, the reduced price comes at the cost of reduced performance due to the absence of dram cache.
Thanks for these tips.
Yeah, the infamously short-lived SATA cable. I came across this issue a few years back when I bought my 2011 13" MacBook Pro. Three years on, the cable is still working - thankfully. Interestingly, the one in my 2012 15" MBP hasn't needed replacing almost ten years on from when I purchased the laptop...
Noted!
The one in my 2011 MBP continues to work fine whilst the drive in my 2012 15" MBP, like with yours, failed within a shockingly short space of time. I'm still annoyed by that given how much the computer cost me as I bought it brand new.
Ok, I'll have a look online and seek out some deals. I appreciate these pointers and yes, this generation of Macs appear to be among the last, truly great machines before Apple shifted to their comparatively disposable ranges with micro-soldered RAM and storage.
It does indeed.
You're supposed to transfer the four 6.0 mm T6 Torx hard drive retaining posts from the sides of the HDD to the new drive but I never bothered doing that and I've not had any problems. If I should, please let me know! @netsrot39
Nice purchase - congratulations!
I still hold my MBP 2012 very dear as it's still a daily driver.
I still hold my MBP 2012 very dear as it's still a daily driver.
My stalwart, now-retired, early 2011 MBP went through the following after ten years of heavy use:
- four batteries (the first was OEM and failed in 2015 or so; the second failed in 2017; the third swelled by late 2019)
- three SATA hard drive/IR sensor flat cables (the third being the current/last and was still working)
- three fans
- three keyboards (first replacement by Apple one-year warranty, so whole top case was new; I replaced the second, the long way)
- two wifi/BT flat cables (those pesky flat cables!)
- two wifi/BT cards (troubleshooting the previous revealed the cable faulted, so I have an extra, working card I’ll never use)
- a countable, but countless number of MagSafe adapters — probably enough to just buy another unibody MBP 🙃
(two-thirds were the [un]doing of my 🐈 ) - a failed RAM slot (2013, onward)
This is an object lesson on why you want interchangeable parts, especially if you happen to fall in love with your laptop, and the notion of swapping it out one week before your AppleCare coverage expires is unappealing, even anathema to you. It’s also an object lesson on how, even as we all laud Apple’s attention to detail in the finished product, the loci of parts which fail often — :cough: staingate :cough: flexgate :cough: Radeongate :cough: — reveal where Apple still rush things into production without the kind of field testing a durable good needs before before it’s ready for public consumption.
That MBP travelled with me across two continents in two hemispheres; four nation-states; three provinces; and nine states. It enabled me to conduct field research and write a masters thesis; a bunch of other scholarship; tech writing work; years of live DJing; a scattering of song remixes; years of archival work; development of a comprehensive web site from the ground up; years of colour work on film scanning; a dog’s breakfast of design and other writing work; the founding of at least one word to enter the vernacular and be recorded by the OED (nope, not sharing publicly here, but I have the trail of receipts and a history on the etymology); and a whole lot of live posting on municipal activities. (Ah, and did I mention how all of it happened in 10.6.8 — the same build — the whole way through?)
The last graf, after re-reading, reads like a flex (maybe it sort of is, idk), but the point is this:
I did all that on the same laptop.
How likely do you think no part in ten years of that kind of heavy use will need replacing? How many of those M2 MBPs selling now will still be in use in ten years, given their lack of parts serviceability,
Nurse walks in: “B S M, it’s time for your meds…”
OK, better drink up my Ovaltine and take out my dentures. 👵
Wow. I’m kind of surprised to see a Toshiba spinner as OEM for mid-2012. Most of 2011s had, as far as I’m aware, Seagate drives. I figured Apple would, at least for the first year of the mid-2012s, stick with those.
Owing how the thickness specs on most 2.5-inch SATA HDDs is 9.5mm, whilst the emerging default thickness for 2.5-inch SSDs has been 7.5mm, you might experience a bit of rattling whilst handling the laptop, such as putting it into a backpack. That jostling might, I fathom, make repetitive contact with the flat cable. So it might be something to keep in mind.
[Very nice find for 75 quid, with box, btw!]
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Given that the logic board is rapidly shrinking to blink-and-you'll-miss-it proportions, it's time Apple and other vendors just sold the logic/main board as a drop-in replacement/upgrade, sort of like the Raspberry Pi compute module, which can drop into the project board and housing of your choice. No need to keep reselling basically the same support vehicles (MBPs/Minis etc) for years on end. Think of all that milled aluminium and perfectly serviceable LED displays being destroyed and just heading to landfill by corporate entities who will not spend the time and money decommissioning them and wiping the sensitive data on them.
Owing how the thickness specs on most 2.5-inch SATA HDDs is 9.5mm, whilst the emerging default thickness for 2.5-inch SSDs has been 7.5mm, you might experience a bit of rattling whilst handling the laptop, such as putting it into a backpack. That jostling might, I fathom, make repetitive contact with the flat cable. So it might be something to keep in mind.
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll look into transferring them to the new drive very soon.
Far too modest!
No, I do not. See this thread.
I use officially unsupported 1600MHz RAM in all my 2011 MBPs for slight speed increase. Why would one deliberately use slower RAM than originally spec'ed (even if it works) escapes me.
eshop.macsales.com
Boost 2011 MBP Performance with 1600MHz RAM
Although Apple sold the 2011 MacBook Pros as using 1333MHz memory, they are, in fact, capable of utilizing 1600MHz memory, just like the current MacBook Pros.
eshop.macsales.com
Oh yeah? Good for you!
(With apologies to Franco Nero, Renny Harlin, Doug Richardson and Steven E de Souza.)
People are allowed to use their property in ways that you do not approve of. Life eh?
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Moving on, I remembered that I've got some other 204 pin SODIMMs laying about so I had a rummage and came up with these:
They're from the Acer that I salvaged earlier this year. Do they work?
Yep! In a matter of days I've gone from 4 to 6 to 8GB RAM - and without paying a penny. I'm still looking for 16GB but this will suffice in the meanwhile and who knows, I might come across even more free RAM.
Apple used to sell logic board upgrades in the 1980s/early 1990s, so in a way, that would be going back in time...
(Random question - does anyone know what the last logic board upgrade offered was? I am tempted to say IIcx/IIci to Quadra 700 but I really don't know. Was there a IIvi/IIvx to Centris/Quadra 650/PM 7100?)
I admit that the logic board upgrade didn't always make sense to me. Some, like SE to SE/30, you get to reuse your CRT, PSU, etc, so that makes some sense.
But... if you have a logic board upgrade where you can't reuse your RAM because it's too slow, the system doesn't have a built-in monitor, etc, what are you reusing? Your case, PSU, floppy drive (if it's not 800K), and... I guess hard drive (and potentially NuBus video card)? I don't know enough about hard drives, but would the hard drive that came with a IIcx be similar in performance to the one that came in a Quadra 700, or would it be a serious bottleneck for the new board's performance?
But I guess it also depends on how aggressively Apple priced the logic board upgrades compared to new full-fledged machines.
(Also, I am suddenly remembering that these machines effectively didn't have virtual memory. So... hard drive performance matters quite differently than it might on a system with virtual memory...)
Yep! In a matter of days I've gone from 4 to 6 to 8GB RAM - and without paying a penny. I'm still looking for 16GB but this will suffice in the meanwhile and who knows, I might come across even more free RAM.
Now queueing Primal Scream’s “Movin’ on Up”…