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eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?

retta283 said:
Wow! Incredible, awesome find. I'm always hoping to find a 21" model of this. Those would decimate my back trying to collect them but it'd be worth it if I ever stumbled into one.
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There's one for sale in Sydney now, I was tempted, but since my desk can hardly fit the 17", I don't think I need it. They sure are backbreakers.
 
mectojic said:
When it rains, it pours...
After searching for 2 years for a functional one, I got not one, but TWO 17-inch Apple Studio Display CRTs from a seller on Facebook. For the absolute bargain total price of $50 AUD ($30USD). They both have some occasional flicker from the flyback, but definitely not unusable at all.
So happy to have these awesome CRTs, especially for my B&W!View attachment 2235327
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Very cool, congrats.
 
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I just picked up this beautiful iBook G3 for 50€.
It’s a 2002 model with 700Mhz and 14” Display.
Came with charger, box, software and documentation. Original battery is in working condition, too.
I just love the translucent shell and the packaging design!
 

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A few months ago I got a first-gen HomePod because I wanted to expand my living room set to have a stereo pair. Found one for $199 that seemed totally new. Came in original box and still had active AppleCare for a few months. It even still had the protective film on the top button. The seller said it had been in a guest room and rarely if ever used.
 
I just got the bargain of an absolute lifetime: I found and bought a POWER9 16-core (02CY231) for $175 on eBay. Even the list price of $190 would have been great, and going by the value of the 18-core, I'd say it's a ~92.5% discount. Shaking.

I should say that the 16-cores are probably worse for most desktop tasks due to the paired cache, but since I'm also planning on doing multithreaded stuff like rendering video on it, it should work out fine.​
 
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Not sure it's really a bargain, but just bought a 867MHz titanium G4. We'll see when it arrives what condition it's in, and vintage laptops somewhat scare me in a way that vintage desktops do not, but... it's a titanium G4 and it can boot OS 9.

It needs a RAM upgrade; I am almost tempted to upgrade the optical drive but that's probably silly. Wifi is likely hopeless. What should I do for storage? Keep the 40GB hard drive if it's functional? Some mSATA thing?
 
lepidotós said:
I just got the bargain of an absolute lifetime: I found and bought a POWER9 16-core (02CY231) for $175 on eBay. Even the list price of $190 would have been great, and going by the value of the 18-core, I'd say it's a ~92.5% discount. Shaking.

I should say that the 16-cores are probably worse for most desktop tasks due to the paired cache, but since I'm also planning on doing multithreaded stuff like rendering video on it, it should work out fine.​
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In what machine are you running it?
 
VivienM said:
Wifi is likely hopeless. What should I do for storage? Keep the 40GB hard drive if it's functional? Some mSATA thing?
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My G4 PB 1ghz uses WiFi no problem (airport card).
I upgraded my PB with an mSATA SSD, very straightforward.
 
Romain_H said:
In what machine are you running it?
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Saving up for a Blackbird. Specifically went for the -231 (the listing had -230 as well, a higher power variant) because it fits in the TDP window of the Blackbird. Getting parts piecemeal; so far I have the RAM, PSU, case, graphics card, and now CPU. Still to get are better fans, storage, sound card, cooler, and the motherboard itself.​
 
lepidotós said:
Saving up for a Blackbird. Specifically went for the -231 (the listing had -230 as well, a higher power variant) because it fits in the TDP window of the Blackbird. Getting parts piecemeal; so far I have the RAM, PSU, case, graphics card, and now CPU. Still to get are better fans, storage, sound card, cooler, and the motherboard itself.​
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Interesting project indeed. What's your workflow?
 
lepidotós said:
Saving up for a Blackbird. Specifically went for the -231 (the listing had -230 as well, a higher power variant) because it fits in the TDP window of the Blackbird. Getting parts piecemeal; so far I have the RAM, PSU, case, graphics card, and now CPU. Still to get are better fans, storage, sound card, cooler, and the motherboard itself.​
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Will a 16 core processor work with the Blackbird? The specs sheet linked to say 8 core max. Any more may result in downclocking, instability or a failure to work altogether.
 
VivienM said:
Okay - I thought the original airport cards and OS 9 were limited to WEP; how have you managed to get the G4 to play nicely with wifi?
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Misconception. OS 9 (and early OS X) only had WEP support, separate from any hardware implementation, and later OS X releases added WPA compatibility.

However, the AirPort original only has 802.11b speeds; very slow.
 
Not an eBay bargain, but Amazon.....:p
Was searching for a 'proper Pro external SSD solution' and found the Lacie 1 big SSD series.

Originally saw for sale at £457 (retail at most online stores £1200-1400).
I hesitated and the price went up to £800 then £1700...:oops:

So I watched over the past couple of weeks as the price slowly came down to £480, so grabbed it.
Next day was back up to £1600.

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Wow! One has to be doing something very important with the Mac to justify 480, let alone 1600 quid for an external drive. ;)
It also shows how big the margin for retailers is..
 
ojfd said:
Wow! One has to be doing something very important with the Mac to justify 480, let alone 1600 quid for an external drive. ;)
It also shows how big the margin for retailers is..
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I initially got a couple of Samsung T7's for my Mac Studio, which are great, but they are 'portable drives', so really not designed for constant desktop use (in my opinion). I have seen all different options people have adopted with 'cheap' enclosures. But I wanted an ACTUAL desktop SSD to go with my desktop Mac.
 
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Well I bought a broken iMac G5 iSight edition with DDR2 Memory instead of the ddr in the origional…none working…had a bad display and it just so happened that someone gave me a junk iMac g5 a few weeks ago…swapped the display and she was good to go. Now I have a G5 iSight….from what I’ve been told there really hard to find because Apple didn’t sell many of them before the switch over….im probably gunna use it as a file server for my other PowerPC Mac mini and PowerBook and maybe play around with leopard server…still contemplating putting Debian on a 2nd partition since it has x600 graphics and plays nicely with mesa drivers. Anyhow hope everyone is having a good day :) oh and I only paid $30 with shipping!
 
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theriault.ryan said:
Well I bought a broken iMac G5 iSight edition with DDR2 Memory instead of the ddr in the origional…none working…had a bad display and it just so happened that someone gave me a junk iMac g5 a few weeks ago…swapped the display and she was good to go. Now I have a G5 iSight….from what I’ve been told there really hard to find because Apple didn’t sell many of them before the switch over….im probably gunna use it as a file server for my other PowerPC Mac mini and PowerBook and maybe play around with leopard server…still contemplating putting Debian on a 2nd partition since it has x600 graphics and plays nicely with mesa drivers. Anyhow hope everyone is having a good day :) oh and I only paid $30 with shipping!
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Should be easily upgraded to 4GB of RAM - search for discussion.
 
Oh really? I’ll have to look into it. I was so dead set on a power Mac g5, but I just have so little space and the 17 inch gives me that g5 fix without the large tower. Good enough for me although I have to put it into reduced cpu mode because it gets hot….like really hot….just gives clear reasoning why Apple switched to intel….these G5 cpus run toastyyyyy
 
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I haven't posted there for probably months (even though it feels like years to me... But I digress.) but I think I've made a dumb mistake and bought a semi-gutted MDD dual 1GHz.

By semi gutted, I meant that there's a laundry list of parts missing, I'm guessing this was the beginning of a sleeper project that was abandoned later on.

Here is what is missing in no particular order from the seller's pictures:
  • ODD/HDD carriers
  • Hard drives and SuperDrive
  • Power Supply
  • A truckload of screws
  • The lower drive carrier fan
  • RAM
Thankfully, all of the other bits and bobs are still there, and it appears to have some goodies included:
  • CPU card and heatsink
  • SCSI card
  • USB 2.0 card (I think it is, but I couldn't tell from the pictures)
  • Modem <-- something I would like to experiment with, or get a CircuitTalk G4 to put it in place
  • Case and all the parts (speaker, front panel, side panels...)
  • Speaker grille

To be fair, this is probably the riskiest venture I embarked on, but even if it doesn't pan out.. I have a backup plan just in case.
 
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