eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?

[weckart]

After a bit of a break from buying more retro hardware, I got these three this week. A Thunderbolt display, which I got for £34. I wasn't looking for one and this was an impulse bid, which turned into a lucky buy. It has a worn TB cable but I have a couple of spare long ones and the iFixit guide to swapping those out looks straightforward. As a bonus, the Magsafe jack had a Magsafe 2 adapter still attached. There is the tiniest scuff on the bezel near the Apple logo which isn't really visible unless you shine a bright light on the bezel, otherwise it works perfectly. It is the perfect accompaniment to my Trashcan Mac, which I got recently to replace my Mac Pro 5,1, which has stability issues with anything past Catalina. I particularly love the fact that I don't have to faff around with awful OSD menus if I want to change the brightness a touch. I can never remember which buttons do which function and it always takes an age, so much so that I took to using software dimmers to adjust the brightness.

Also, because I love the original Mac Minis, I picked up a couple. The first was the 2009, which came boxed with all the goodies and adapters. It is the 2.26GHz model with memory already maxed out to 8GB. That set me back £35 including delivery. The seller threw in an optical fibre cable for some reason but the best discovery was the 1TB Samsung SSD installed. I missed that nugget in the description.

The final Mac Mini was the 2006/7 with the awful GMA950 graphics chip. Not my favourite iteration but I got one for sentimentality's sake as my own one has a dead memory slot, so it is stuck at 2GB of RAM. This came with some extras, like the Belkin Mac Mini Hub and the small Firewire cable to hook up with. Those short FW cables are like gold dust. The whole package was £25 but I got more (or less depending on your viewpoint) than I bargained for. First, the discs inside were for some later iMac plus a set for a Mighty Mouse, which was not part of the auction. The Mini itself was a 1.42GHz G4 model. Very dusty and grubby but some alcohol and a Magic Eraser had it looking like new in no time. Luckily it worked fine and the previous owners were kind enough to leave all their data and accounts on the machine, last touched in 2010. Now, given that the A1176 Minis are currently ticking around the £10-£20 mark tops and G4 Minis are averaging around three figures in the UK (don't ask me why), it would be churlish of me to complain.

Overall, I think I did ok. You win some and then you win some more.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Congrats on your bargains.

I had a look on eBay and those prices for the Mac Mini G4 are absurd. £499 GBP and they haven't even bothered to upgrade the machine beyond its stock RAM/storage spec. Those listings are fishy because obviously no-one is buying it at that price. Surely not?

You mentioned the Trash Can Mac Pro. I've seen one for sale at £100 but it requires a new GPU and for what the replacements cost on eBay, you could basically buy another Mac Pro.

 

[tsialex]

G4 Minis are averaging around three figures in the UK (don't ask me why)

The MacMini G4 1.5GHz is very much sought after since this model is the fastest PowerMac Mini and can run AmigaOS and MorphOS.

Not that it's worth it, but that's why people want it and the insane prices.

 

[TheShortTimer]

The MacMini G4 1.5GHz is very much sought after since this model is the fastest PowerMac Mini and can run AmigaOS and MorphOS.

Not that it's worth it, but that's why people want it and the insane prices.

All of the ones on eBay UK with insane prices are 1.25 to 1.42Ghz models.

This is the most expensive one (that I could find on eBay UK) and it's a 1.42 model.

 

[tsialex]

All of the ones on eBay UK with insane prices are 1.25 to 1.42Ghz models.

This is the most expensive one (that I could find on eBay UK) and it's a 1.42 model.

People who want to run AmigaOS really want the 1.5GHz with the 64MB Radeon 9200.

Vendors are trying to exploit interest in the top-end model.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Vendors are trying to exploit interest in the top-end model.

By hiking up the prices for the lower grade models?

 

[tsialex]

By hiking up the prices for the lower grade models?

A rare model is in high demand, sellers are just trying to pass off the cheaper ones as the same.

Amiga users are used to abusive prices anyway…

 

[weckart]

A rare model is in high demand, sellers are just trying to pass off the cheaper ones as the same.

Amiga users are used to abusive prices anyway…

Aha. That would make sense. Does the 32MB of extra VRAM make all the difference? The Minis are fairly easily overclocked to 1.5GHz by moving a resistor. I have done it to two of mine just to see if it worked.
The drawback with the Minis are that RAM is stuck at 1GB but presumably that is plenty for any Amiga based system.

 

[weckart]

You mentioned the Trash Can Mac Pro. I've seen one for sale at £100 but it requires a new GPU and for what the replacements cost on eBay, you could basically buy another Mac Pro.

Yeah, that one is probably for spare parts. There must be a few dented ones knocking around and the graphic cards are very prone to failure, particularly the D700s, so assuming only the processor is missing a ton is not a bad price if you want to hang on to your ailing Trashcan for any reason.

 

[MarkC426]

The MacMini G4 1.5GHz is very much sought after since this model is the fastest PowerMac Mini and can run AmigaOS and MorphOS.

Wooow…
I didn’t know this was a thing.

Back in the day I was in the Atari ST camp (still have one, which I recently revisited).

 

[Amethyst1]

You mentioned the Trash Can Mac Pro. I've seen one for sale at £100 but it requires a new GPU and for what the replacements cost on eBay, you could basically buy another Mac Pro.

I’ve been looking at Trash Cans recently and they’re known for thermal problems — the better the GPU, the worse. The D300 seems less likely to die but isn’t 100% safe. And if the dead GPU holds the SSD that’s two problems.

Still, the form factor is interesting, and being able to replace CPU, RAM, SSD and GPUs (with another possibly dying one LOL!) is nice. And it runs Mavericks.

@weckart — what are the specs of yours and how has your experience been?

 

[weckart]

Mine was a 3.5GHz 6 core, D500, 32GB RAM. It had the base 256GB AHCI SSD. I swapped the CPU for an eight core 3.3GHz E5-2667 v2, which may be slightly better than the E5-1680 v2 and is usually a lot cheaper. 8 core seems to be the sweet spot with these machines but it depends upon your use case. I am not going to be doing any large scale film editing or rendering so more cores are probably overkill and there would be a larger hit on single core tasks. I was given a free 2TB NVMe a while back so only needed to get the cheap adapter to put it in.

So far, it's noticeably quieter than the Mac Pro. You can hear the barely audible whirr of the fan in a quiet room and it usually stays at the idling speed. One thing I noticed with this is that leaving the screen alone for a while and not making any input will cause temps to rise slightly and the fan to kick up a tad. Nothing major - from 45ºC to 50ºC and a couple of hundred RPMs on the fan, if that. Not sure why doing less is more work for the TC but it's the only thing I have noticed. Otherwise, Sonoma is uneventful on this, which can't be said for the cMP.

These are typical temps. The PCIe switch diode is the only thing that typically runs hot on this. At least it isn't as bad as the FB-DIMMS on the first generation MP. Needless to say, I am very happy with it so far.

​

 

[ojfd]

A rare model is in high demand, sellers are just trying to pass off the cheaper ones as the same.

Amiga users are used to abusive prices anyway…

Do they have accelerated driver for Radeon in AmigaOS? If not, then it's just a seller created hype.
Extra 32MB of VRAM won't make user experience any better if screen redraws are slow.

Also, as @weckart said, move one resitor and there you have your 1.5GHz. In real life you won't even feel any difference between 1.42 and 1.5GHz.

 

[tsialex]

Do they have accelerated driver for Radeon in AmigaOS? If not, then it's just a seller created hype.
Extra 32MB of VRAM won't make user experience any better if screen redraws are slow.

Radeon 9200 is fully accelerated with AmigaOS 4 - the 9200 128MB PCI is a very common GPU, maybe the best for 2D usage, for installing with Mediators and several post Commodore models like the AmigaOne X1000.

 

[EmilioCube]

Recently, someone had a NewerTech single 2GHz 7448 for 3500 bucks and now there is a Sonnet Duet 1.8GHz for "just" 1.25k: INSANELY CHEAP!!!
Not related to PowerPCs (but still cool ):
For my Fujitsu Laptop I got from a teacher (4->16GB, 256GB HDD -> 512GB SSD, HD 4600 -> GT 720M) I found a i7-4810MQ (the last Intel mobile CPUs to be replaceable) for just 25 bucks.
Considering it now boots Win11 in 7.5 secs and is 2.5 times faster than the i3-4000M it really was a deal.

 

[EmilioCube]

Just got a 500MHz Sawtooth CPU plus original heatsink for 10 Euro (including shipping for 5,5 Euro heh). I guess you cant go cheaper...

 

[EmilioCube]

And hey, the NewerTech 2GHz upgrade got priced down by 710 Euro! I am sErIoUsLy considering to buy this absolute rarity...

 

[opeter]

Just got a 500MHz Sawtooth CPU plus original heatsink for 10 Euro (including shipping for 5,5 Euro heh). I guess you cant go cheaper...

Because nowadays it's not worth much.
Sometimes I wonder, what goes through some people's minds, when they try to sell their G3 or G4 machines for 300 € or more.

Vintage Apple PowerMac G3 Retro Tower! 400MHz 512MB 80GB SuperDrive MacOS 9 | eBay

ABOUT: For your consideration is another piece from my collection of retro gaming systems, a Revision B 400mhz Power Macintosh G3 "Yosemite" tower, a system perfect for MacOS 9 retro gaming! • UPGRADED Apple OEM SuperDrive DVD-RW w/ OS9 compatibility (from a G4 Quicksilver).

tinyurl.com

 

[B S Magnet]

Because nowadays it's not worth much.
Sometimes I wonder, what goes through some people's minds, when they try to sell their G3 or G4 machines for 300 € or more.

Vintage Apple PowerMac G3 Retro Tower! 400MHz 512MB 80GB SuperDrive MacOS 9 | eBay

ABOUT: For your consideration is another piece from my collection of retro gaming systems, a Revision B 400mhz Power Macintosh G3 "Yosemite" tower, a system perfect for MacOS 9 retro gaming! • UPGRADED Apple OEM SuperDrive DVD-RW w/ OS9 compatibility (from a G4 Quicksilver).

tinyurl.com

There’s your hint: nostalgia + trophy + money to afford spending for a trophy.

The seller is targeting that angle.

 

[Matz]

A lightly used Apple Magic Keyboard for my recently purchased 6th Gen M2 iPad Pro 12.9.

About $80 including shipping and tax. Works really well.

 

[iBookmaster]

This is not from eBay but, Other World Computing for anybody interested. They have an older Mac Pro for $209.00. Shows original price was $2999.00

Used & Refurbished Apple Mac Pro (2013-2019) from OWC

Save money on a used 2013 Mac Pro professionally refurbished and inspected by Apple Certified Technicians. View our unbeatable prices online.

eshop.macsales.com

• 3.5GHz 6-Core Xeon E5-1650v2 processor
• 16GB memory
• 256GB Solid-State Drive

 

[TheShortTimer]

This is not from eBay but, Other World Computing for anybody interested. They have an older Mac Pro for $209.00. Shows original price was $2999.00

Used & Refurbished Apple Mac Pro (2013-2019) from OWC

Save money on a used 2013 Mac Pro professionally refurbished and inspected by Apple Certified Technicians. View our unbeatable prices online.

eshop.macsales.com

• 3.5GHz 6-Core Xeon E5-1650v2 processor
• 16GB memory
• 256GB Solid-State Drive

There's better to be found on eBay. This one is cheaper and has double the drive size.

 

[iBookmaster]

There's better to be found on eBay. This one is cheaper and has double the drive size.

Very nice. Other World Computing is a very reputable place to buy though. Still a good price for a retailer. Just thought I'd share it in case somebody didn't want to take more of a chance on a seller on eBay. Thanks for your link!

 

[TheShortTimer]

Very nice. Other World Computing is a very reputable place to buy though. Still a good price for a retailer. Just thought I'd share it in case somebody didn't want to take more of a chance on a seller on eBay. Thanks for your link!

You're welcome.

Yeah, you're right that OWC are reputable but you can nearly always find a cheaper deal elsewhere. The risk with eBay is mitigated quite a bit by checking their ratings/reviews and ensuring that the eBay Money Back Guarantee is displayed on the listing as it enables you to enlist their assistance if the seller behaves badly, misrepresents the item etc.

 

[iBookmaster]

You are so right. I have never gotten a bad deal on eBay but, I don't buy all that much on there. I am currently waiting on another G4 iMac 1.25 Ghz from usedmac.com. I have never bought from them but, hoping it's going to be good. I called about buying it and asked if they put new displays in them because many are real dim. The guy said you can't get a new display for it (17 inch G4 iMac). I don't think that's true. So, I said if I wanted a brighter display and sent it back, you would just put another used display in it? He said yes but, all the computers we sell are what is considered to be good quality. We will see. He also told me it would be a week or so before shipping it because they don't sell many old computers like that and it has to be configured the way I bought it. The only thing I configured other than the way it was originally listed was max ram. I am going to put a SSD in it myself. Anyway, I really don't expect a retailer to beat all prices on eBay.