eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?

[Certificate of Excellence]

$17? I paid a lowly £7 for my 120GB and it wasn't that long ago. How things change. I thought that 120GB drives were going to be phased out as they were getting too cheap to bother with.

They were getting so cheap, I started buying 240gb ssd instead of the 120s for similar if not identical money. I was talking to someone yesterday who said they were buying 120s nib for $13 which is like around 9 pounds. 7 ?!? I never found them that cheap though lol 😆

Now they’ve got us over a barrel.

I did pick up a couple Apple HD5770s from eBay for $20 last week.

 

[weckart]

I picked up 4 MSI 240GB SPATIUM S270 SATA drives for £12 each when Amazon decided to have a pre Black Friday kind of sale. A slight cut above the ususal budget Kingspec/Fanxiang/Patriot offerings. I miss those days. I suppose the suppliers must have been hurting a bit as they can't have made too much on each.

 

[DisraeliGears]

So I celebrated Apple 50 by finding a local G4 Cube

I wasn't quite done tinkering with the G5 iMac, but I'm not really in a major metro and had to jump at the chance for a Cube. It's in pretty fantastic shape except it did not come with the power supply 🙁 I was reading 68kMLA and there were some alternative power supply suggestions there that I'm going to explore.

 

[AdamBuker]

Just got this bad boy that I'm going to hook up to the G5 and run with Logic Pro 8. It's replacing an old analog mixing board running through a Lexicon Lambda. While my current set up works, this will allow me to also have a control surface to control Logic directly. It will make programming automated fader moves much easier. Plus I don't need all the inputs and outputs that my old analog board has. That thing was more suited for mixing live bands than a one-man personal studio.

 

[ToniCH]

Quite a decent looking unit. Need to source a graphics card to verify if the MB works. If not then it might end up being a cool Intel Mac with internal eGPU etc. 😉

And now I found an original GPU for it and also the missing cache dimm. 👍

Next I'll probably need to figure out a hard drive solution for it. I do have some old SCSI-drives in storage but they are often bad after few decades of non usage. Maybe some more modern SCSI-substitute (BlueSCSI or something)?

Also, the floppy drive is missing. I wonder if any old Mac drive will work with this generation of machines (ie. PM 8500-9500 era)?

 

[ToniCH]

While searching for parts to the PowerTower Pro I found a classifieds ad for a box of old PowerMac parts from same period. There were some memory DIMMs I could use and some other stuff too like the floppy drive etc. Among the parts there are also 2 PCI-cards. One is obviously the stock Apple graphics card but the another one was a mystery to me. Well, I was intrigued so I bought the lot for very little money.

Now after serious googling I found the card. Well, this is neat... 😁

Sales pic and what I found:

 

[boswald]

So I celebrated Apple 50 by finding a local G4 Cube

View attachment 2619098

I wasn't quite done tinkering with the G5 iMac, but I'm not really in a major metro and had to jump at the chance for a Cube. It's in pretty fantastic shape except it did not come with the power supply 🙁 I was reading 68kMLA and there were some alternative power supply suggestions there that I'm going to explore.

I still remember the crowd going nuts when Steve flipped it over and pulled everything out by the handle. It made me want one right then and there! I might have to peek around FB and/or eBay for one of my own.

 

[ToniCH]

Made a deal about couple of ZIP-drives which will greatly help with file transfers between my G4 and PowerTower Pro. 👍

Also bought a NIB server grade 146GB 10K rpm SCSI drive for 5€. If it works then great, if not then I didn't lose much. Probably need to format/partition it smaller anyway to have any chance it working in that machine.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I still remember the crowd going nuts when Steve flipped it over and pulled everything out by the handle. It made me want one right then and there! I might have to peek around FB and/or eBay for one of my own.

Ive always wanted one but have been unable to find one for a good price. I don't have the time to work on a dead one and by the time I do they'll probably be close to unobtanium, so my only option is a functioning one which again, where Im at and what I have access to equates to top dollar if I want one on my shelf lol. There are a few Macs that have worked out this way for me unfortunately but luckily most have been found for very reasonable money if not free to me so blessed in that regard.

My latest eBay conquest has zero to do with computing anything. I picked up a mug that was broken a few years back. Finally pulled the trigger on it - Like this one! Not my auction of course 🙂

I had shared this mug a couple times in @eyoungren 's Two of My favorite things threads over the years before it broke (my oldest was 3 maybe so that would have been 5 or so years ago now. Anyhow, glad to have one back in rotation. Such a fantastic coffee mug - thick enamel, classic Cinci running fat head graphic and made in the USA. There are a few variants of this mug and all are from this maker and of that high, robust quality. Coffee drinkers rejoice 🙂

 

[boswald]

Ive always wanted one but have been unable to find one for a good price. I don't have the time to work on a dead one and by the time I do they'll probably be close to unobtanium, so my only option is a functioning one which again, where Im at and what I have access to equates to top dollar if I want one on my shelf lol. There are a few Macs that have worked out this way for me unfortunately but luckily most have been found for very reasonable money if not free to me so blessed in that regard.

My latest eBay conquest has zero to do with computing anything. I picked up a mug that was broken a few years back. Finally pulled the trigger on it - Like this one! Not my auction of course 🙂

I had shared this mug a couple times in @eyoungren 's Two of My favorite things threads over the years before it broke (my oldest was 3 maybe so that would have been 5 or so years ago now. Anyhow, glad to have one back in rotation. Such a fantastic coffee mug - thick enamel, classic Cinci running fat head graphic and made in the USA. There are a few variants of this mug and all are from this maker and of that high, robust quality. Coffee drinkers rejoice 🙂

For some reason the face of the mascot there reminds me of Fallout.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

lol It is of that cultural era. They’ve never changed him.

 

[conmee]

My latest conquest was getting my money back.

I ordered a Crucial 4TB USB-C External SSD that was slightly cheaper than what I found on Amazon but not such a deal as to raise suspicion. As soon as I got the "shipping confirmation" I knew I'd been scammed. A 6oz SSD should not weigh 10.7lbs according to the spoofed UPS delivery info. You'd think eBay could do a better job when it comes to weeding out scam artists using spoofed/false/fake delivery information. So of course, when the package was "delivered" nothing arrived at my house. Had to go through the eBay process which takes about five days.

 

[conmee]

Ive always wanted one but have been unable to find one for a good price. I don't have the time to work on a dead one and by the time I do they'll probably be close to unobtanium, so my only option is a functioning one which again, where Im at and what I have access to equates to top dollar if I want one on my shelf lol. There are a few Macs that have worked out this way for me unfortunately but luckily most have been found for very reasonable money if not free to me so blessed in that regard.

My latest eBay conquest has zero to do with computing anything. I picked up a mug that was broken a few years back. Finally pulled the trigger on it - Like this one! Not my auction of course 🙂

I had shared this mug a couple times in @eyoungren 's Two of My favorite things threads over the years before it broke (my oldest was 3 maybe so that would have been 5 or so years ago now. Anyhow, glad to have one back in rotation. Such a fantastic coffee mug - thick enamel, classic Cinci running fat head graphic and made in the USA. There are a few variants of this mug and all are from this maker and of that high, robust quality. Coffee drinkers rejoice 🙂

This isn't a conquest post, but this mug brought back a vivid memory...

I remember watching this series on a 4.5-inch black and white portable TV that was in the back office of the credit union I worked at throughout college. I was the Assistant to the Regional Manager (not really, I was just the Data Processing Assistant as they called it, I took care of the nightly backups and offsite tape storage). I remember fiddling with the antenna and dialing in the channel. I could have watched the game from the break room which had a "bigger" 25-inch color television, but I had to monitor various processes running on the mainframe. Miss those green and amber Wyse terminals. 😉

 

[DisraeliGears]

Not PPC oriented, but I found a Mac Pro 5.1, 12 Core through gov surplus for $38, so I just started tinkering with that. My office has gotten absolutely ludicrous.

Pictured is the Mac Pro, M1 Mini, G4, iMac G5 (non-eyesight), early Intel iMac, and converted iMac monitor. Not pictured are my two G3s, G4 Cube, early Intel Mini, and eMac.

I'm debating taking the shelf out of the desk, I could probably fit the M1 Mini on top of the Mac Pro in there, but I think the eyeroll from my wife would be physically painful 😜

 

[weckart]

My latest conquest was getting my money back.

I ordered a Crucial 4TB USB-C External SSD that was slightly cheaper than what I found on Amazon but not such a deal as to raise suspicion. As soon as I got the "shipping confirmation" I knew I'd been scammed. A 6oz SSD should not weigh 10.7lbs according to the spoofed UPS delivery info. You'd think eBay could do a better job when it comes to weeding out scam artists using spoofed/false/fake delivery information. So of course, when the package was "delivered" nothing arrived at my house. Had to go through the eBay process which takes about five days.

Why do they even bother? eBay won't release the payment if you raise a complaint.