Chatbox Thread

In a separate note. I love how here we all are able to lean on each other for help and we know how to all solve problems we have. The problem about the forum (any forum, really) is that it's slow. FB OTH is quick turnaround time but people always tend to give you the runaround on answers or complete BS answers.

On that, the format of FB kinda sucks. When you reply to a post, you reply to the person and not their post. So you may not know exactly what others are replying to unless you read it from the top of that segment of thread.

FB as a whole, honestly is a cesspool of all sorts of shit. I hate it now except for MP (the new Craigslist)
I absolutely hate FaceBook and everything it stands for. Car "forums" on there are terrible and impossible to follow. The only good thing about Facebook is that everybody sells stuff there. Unfortunately they make their search engine for MarketPlace so unbelievably terrible on purpose (in my opinion), that is is wildly annoying to sift through. I am thankful to have been around for the glory days of BBS car forums. I still think it is a far superior format than anything else I have come across.
 
I'm perfectly fine waiting a day here to get a reasonable answer as opposed to getting all the dumb shit on FB. I'll try it if I'm in something knee deep and need a quick answer to avoid having to start over again, but I'm usually sad I tried.
 
Well, I'm officially an old fuck! My daughter gave birth to an 8lb 11oz baby boy late last night, both baby and mom are doing great. His dad is too! :)

Joe
Congrats to you and your family!!




I do agree, the FB forum does have a lot of male Karen’s. Pretty annoying. Every now and then you do come across some very informative stuff tho. I’m on a couple 4.6 forums, which are super duper informative, specially with that guy Todd Warren and also Matt Hayes, those 2 guys bring the heat.
 
Congrats Joe!

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In a separate note. I love how here we all are able to lean on each other for help and we know how to all solve problems we have. The problem about the forum (any forum, really) is that it's slow. FB OTH is quick turnaround time but people always tend to give you the runaround on answers or complete BS answers.

On that, the format of FB kinda sucks. When you reply to a post, you reply to the person and not their post. So you may not know exactly what others are replying to unless you read it from the top of that segment of thread.

FB as a whole, honestly is a cesspool of all sorts of shit. I hate it now except for MP (the new Craigslist)

The FB format makes it feel like you’re commenting into the ether, it’s the main factor in why it never gelled with me from the beginning. It’s weird given we all use our silly handles rather than our real names but forums feel less anonymous and more communal.

I don’t even like marketplace that much, which is my main use for the platform. All the annoying things about Craigslist (tire kickers, low ballers, sellers who never respond, buyers who never show up, scammers, fake listings) are all still there but now my real name is out there too for them to look up? It’s even more sketchy!
 
FB as a whole, honestly is a cesspool of all sorts of shit. I hate it now except for MP

Agreed.

My wife and I recently did a “social media fast”
We stayed off all social media for a weekend,
I’ve still been off it, except for marketplace. I don’t really miss it much, I almost feel refreshed.
 
The FB format makes it feel like you’re commenting into the ether, it’s the main factor in why it never gelled with me from the beginning. It’s weird given we all use our silly handles rather than our real names but forums feel less anonymous and more communal.

I don’t even like marketplace that much, which is my main use for the platform. All the annoying things about Craigslist (tire kickers, low ballers, sellers who never respond, buyers who never show up, scammers, fake listings) are all still there but now my real name is out there too for them to look up? It’s even more sketchy!
I never really understood the exodus from Craigslist to Marketplace. Did people think all of the idiots from Craigslist would just stay there and not migrate over to Marketplace? At least the search function on Craigslist works. I recall numerous times searching the entire country for something specific in maybe 15-20 minutes. On Marketplace it takes me 15-20 minutes just to sift through mounds of crap in one region that has absolutely nothing to do with what I searched for.
 
I never really understood the exodus from Craigslist to Marketplace. Did people think all of the idiots from Craigslist would just stay there and not migrate over to Marketplace? At least the search function on Craigslist works. I recall numerous times searching the entire country for something specific in maybe 15-20 minutes. On Marketplace it takes me 15-20 minutes just to sift through mounds of crap in one region that has absolutely nothing to do with what I searched for.

Right? I often find something on marketplace to sleep on and then when I go to search it out later I end up having to scroll for an hour to find it again, even being very specific in my search terms! It also has a bad habit of giving listings from 1000 miles away even though I set distance to 0-30 miles


Craigslist shot themselves in the foot ending personals, all the weirdos and freaks left and they had all the cool stuff for sale 😆

You can find deals there still, I got my current set of wheels and tires there in 2022 for stupid cheap because they weren’t listed anywhere else.
 
Q: Do you guys have any excess hard drives?
- Have you seen how much hard drives are going for nowadays? It's nuts.
- While I typically place just as much value in used HDDs as I do used condoms (they will probably work, until they dont), I was shocked at how many people were gladly paying me $12/TB for 5yo 8TB-18TB drives.

I shut down my experiment with CHIA crypto last weekend and had almost all of my drives sold just under a week later. I still have a dozen 8 and 10TB HDDs which I'm debating about how many I'll keep and how many I'll sell off. I may even decide to list some 1TB drives on FBMP and we can see how much they go for.
I always have one hard drive in my PC and whenever I upgrade it, usually when it gets filled to 66-75% capacity, I relegate the previous drive to my primary backup drive that gets removed from my case and put into a USB SATA dock. The next upgrade after that will move the drive that was in the dock to my eBay queue for sale.

In November, I sold my 12TB Seagate BarraCuda Pro drive for $130. Next up for sale will be my 14TB BarraCuda Pro after I install a 26TB Seagate Exos that will displace the 18TB Seagate IronWolf Pro that's inside my case now.

With the way things are going, the 26TB Exos might be the last cheap(ish) hard drive I buy for a long time. It's a factory recertified drive that I got for $295 in November. Those same drives are now selling for $450+ and the seller I bought mine from is now selling them for $560.
 
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Despite FB Marketplace being the best feature of the platform, I've yet to use it even though I should. I'm just so used to selling on eBay and not dealing with local meet-up logistics. I feel like eBay also grants some sense of accountability, although that increasingly benefits buyers more than sellers these days.

I rarely log in to FB anymore, and when I do, maybe I'm posting home improvements or car mods to my own wall, but I'm not sharing them to groups. I lost interest in that. The dopamine hit was great back in the day, and it's still kind of cool that my HID retrofit is still the most liked group album post in the FB group. However, even though I like a number of people there, along with that also comes some stupid-ass responses like why did I pay $900 for headlights? I don't know, maybe try not being poor? I don't mean that in an elitist way either, but I won't dignify the reaction of someone who puts dual subwoofer enclosures completely unsecured on his back seat, or just randomly talks shit to Rod because he complimented his tow truck driver.

People aside, the real issues there are that the threading and posting format sucks on FB. Matt's DIY on the illuminated mirror switch would be damn near impossible to post there in any coherent manner, and then it would become relatively difficult to search for in the future unless you were to bookmark the post.
 
A little late, but I guess beggars can't be choosers...

https://fox8.com/news/loud-boom-reported-across-ne-ohio-heres-what-we-know/ said:
A loud “boom” was reported across Northeast Ohio just before 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

NASA has confirmed a 6-foot, 17,000-pound meteor traveled 44,000 miles per hour over northeast Ohio. It was 50 miles above Lake Erie when the first flash was detected.

1773796144378.png
 
Right? I often find something on marketplace to sleep on and then when I go to search it out later I end up having to scroll for an hour to find it again, even being very specific in my search terms! It also has a bad habit of giving listings from 1000 miles away even though I set distance to 0-30 miles


Craigslist shot themselves in the foot ending personals, all the weirdos and freaks left and they had all the cool stuff for sale 😆

You can find deals there still, I got my current set of wheels and tires there in 2022 for stupid cheap because they weren’t listed anywhere else.

My personal favorite was “missed connections”

You’d read a story about how someone farted on a train and they were desperately looking to connect with that person. 😂
 
Just something to amuse me at work. I set up a testing sandbox for a project I'm working on. Usually with mock payment data, I just use generic amounts like $10.00 or $11.11, but when I saw the UI for creating a payment link in this platform, I decided to have a little bit of fun with it and now I smile every time I see it.

2026-03-17_22-56-10 1.png

I'm actually glad nobody has asked me about it yet, because I don't typically do inside jokes that only I understand. The last time I came up with mock data for some other work, I made a bunch of references to the Cunk on Earth mockumentary series which several of my coworkers did get.
 
Despite FB Marketplace being the best feature of the platform, I've yet to use it even though I should. I'm just so used to selling on eBay and not dealing with local meet-up logistics. I feel like eBay also grants some sense of accountability, although that increasingly benefits buyers more than sellers these days.
I used to sell a fair bit of stuff on eBay, and for a long time they have favored buyers over sellers, but the final straw for me was they recently changed their terms of service such that every seller must accept returns for up to 30 days, at the seller’s expense! As an individual person selling oddball stuff, I cannot take the risk of it costing me money to try to sell something, not because I misrepresented it or did anything wrong, but just because some random person changed their mind for any or no reason. I would literally rather throw something away than deal with that BS! So I removed every listing I had on eBay, and sent them a nasty email explaining why, which probably just went into the void, but whatever. I also refuse to use facebook at all, so I don’t know what the answer is, but I will never list another thing for sale on eBay!
 
A side quest has begun for my son.

Now that the debacle with the fan is over, he asked me if he could have the old one to take apart and take a look at it. And we'll, step 1 was to figure out how to remove the fan clip.

1000004001.jpg

And step 2 is figuring out how to remove the casing from the motor.

1000004003.jpg
 
I used to sell a fair bit of stuff on eBay, and for a long time they have favored buyers over sellers, but the final straw for me was they recently changed their terms of service such that every seller must accept returns for up to 30 days, at the seller’s expense! As an individual person selling oddball stuff, I cannot take the risk of it costing me money to try to sell something, not because I misrepresented it or did anything wrong, but just because some random person changed their mind for any or no reason. I would literally rather throw something away than deal with that BS! So I removed every listing I had on eBay, and sent them a nasty email explaining why, which probably just went into the void, but whatever. I also refuse to use facebook at all, so I don’t know what the answer is, but I will never list another thing for sale on eBay!
I hear you about eBay. I've used Mercari as an alternative to eBay for buying a few times. I haven't seriously looked into selling on there yet, but I have considered it few times in the last couple of years. I think what dissuaded me was that, at the time, their fee schedule was worse for sellers than eBay's. I think they've since changed it to a flat 10% and it's less buyer-friendly now that they only allow a 72-hour return window.

I've been fortunate in that I've only dealt with two buyers on eBay across 150+ sales over 26 years who have returned things to me for BS reasons. One was a Wii game that the buyer claimed didn't work, and one was an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card that the buyer claimed had a defective DisplayPort. Both of them experienced user error because I tested the items before the sale and after the return and both worked 100% fine. There was another time a buyer filed a dispute, but eBay ruled in my favor because my shipment had a USPS tracking number that showed the package was delivered, and ultimately the buyer didn't have a secure delivery location. Otherwise, I've been lucky to not have any major issues, including selling a set of four wheels in four boxes on two separate occasions.
 
One of my best friends wife’s bday is 10/7. I tried to get us all Metallica tix at the sphere for that show and it sold out. I was part of 3 different presale groups….never got close. Probably gonna hit the resell portals and get reamed.

Saw the eagles there last year. Worth every penny (or nickel now I guess).
 
I occasionally bring random IT-related stuff home from work - usually equipment that's too old to be of use for the client anymore and it's marked for disposal. I collect old ThinkPad laptops and every so often I'll find one stashed away in a closet and bring it home. Sometimes I keep them for myself, but sometimes I sell them off. When I would sell stuff I would usually post it up on feeBay and had relatively good experiences overall.

That luck ran out in 2020 when some fool bought a "vintage" machine from me (ca. 2004, with a single-core CPU, less than a gig of RAM and running the factory-installed pre-SP2 Windows XP). He expected it to boot up and connect to the wi-fi so he could do whatever he wanted out-of-the box as if it was brand-new, and when it couldn't connect to wi-fi he took it to Staples (of all places) who so astutely told him the wireless card had gone bad. (in reality he was trying to connect to a WPA encrypted network with an XP install without SP2, and MS didn't introduce WPA support to XP until SP2) :facepalm:

So this guy, with his "expert diagnosis from Staples" filed a defective item return claim - which caught me off guard because I very thoroughly test every laptop that I come across - so I contacted him to find out what was going on. After a few emails back and forth I was able to correct the issue, but by then he had "changed his mind" and wanted to send it back anyway. At the time feeBay would make the buyer foot the shipping bill if the item was being returned for reasons that didn't include a problem with the item itself, so I asked him if he'd split the return shipping cost with me 50/50 and he agreed, in writing, in the feeBay messaging system. He returned the item, I didn't get any kind of charge for the shipping label, processed his refund, relisted/sold the item to a more appropriate buyer and all seemed well. Until 6 months later.

feeBay posted the return label shipping charge to my account out of nowhere, then when I contacted their "customer service" center the rude offshore-outsourced guy I spoke to told me they would not take any action to help me, despite all the written documentation showing the shipping charges were improper because of the buyer's incorrect return type, because I "was not a top rated seller" because "I didn't sell enough items" on the platform. Nevermind the fact that I had close to a thousand transactions on the platform since I joined in 2006, and feeBay makes no money whatsoever if buyers don't patronize the marketplace.

So, after that lovely conversation I decided not only to stop selling on their platform, but completely boycott them for any goods of any kind.

Since I've never set foot in the FB domain, when I have stuff I want to sell I have to go through Craiglist or the old ThinkPads forum, both of which are slow and hit-or-miss. Overall I've been able to get rid of what I want to though. When I want to buy something I've managed by using Amazon and Mercari. Those platforms/companies aren't really an upgrade but at the very least I can hold true to myself and never give feeBay another penny.

May they bleed a slow, painful death. :zbash:
 
One of my best friends wife’s bday is 10/7. I tried to get us all Metallica tix at the sphere for that show and it sold out. I was part of 3 different presale groups….never got close. Probably gonna hit the resell portals and get reamed.

Saw the eagles there last year. Worth every penny (or nickel now I guess).
You're more of a fan than I. I saw $1300/ticket for nose bleeds. Found $400 tickets in Dublin. Figured I could see the world and Metallica for the same amount😅
 
I occasionally bring random IT-related stuff home from work - usually equipment that's too old to be of use for the client anymore and it's marked for disposal. I collect old ThinkPad laptops and every so often I'll find one stashed away in a closet and bring it home. Sometimes I keep them for myself, but sometimes I sell them off. When I would sell stuff I would usually post it up on feeBay and had relatively good experiences overall.

That luck ran out in 2020 when some fool bought a "vintage" machine from me (ca. 2004, with a single-core CPU, less than a gig of RAM and running the factory-installed pre-SP2 Windows XP). He expected it to boot up and connect to the wi-fi so he could do whatever he wanted out-of-the box as if it was brand-new, and when it couldn't connect to wi-fi he took it to Staples (of all places) who so astutely told him the wireless card had gone bad. (in reality he was trying to connect to a WPA encrypted network with an XP install without SP2, and MS didn't introduce WPA support to XP until SP2) :facepalm:

So this guy, with his "expert diagnosis from Staples" filed a defective item return claim - which caught me off guard because I very thoroughly test every laptop that I come across - so I contacted him to find out what was going on. After a few emails back and forth I was able to correct the issue, but by then he had "changed his mind" and wanted to send it back anyway. At the time feeBay would make the buyer foot the shipping bill if the item was being returned for reasons that didn't include a problem with the item itself, so I asked him if he'd split the return shipping cost with me 50/50 and he agreed, in writing, in the feeBay messaging system. He returned the item, I didn't get any kind of charge for the shipping label, processed his refund, relisted/sold the item to a more appropriate buyer and all seemed well. Until 6 months later.

feeBay posted the return label shipping charge to my account out of nowhere, then when I contacted their "customer service" center the rude offshore-outsourced guy I spoke to told me they would not take any action to help me, despite all the written documentation showing the shipping charges were improper because of the buyer's incorrect return type, because I "was not a top rated seller" because "I didn't sell enough items" on the platform. Nevermind the fact that I had close to a thousand transactions on the platform since I joined in 2006, and feeBay makes no money whatsoever if buyers don't patronize the marketplace.

So, after that lovely conversation I decided not only to stop selling on their platform, but completely boycott them for any goods of any kind.

Since I've never set foot in the FB domain, when I have stuff I want to sell I have to go through Craiglist or the old ThinkPads forum, both of which are slow and hit-or-miss. Overall I've been able to get rid of what I want to though. When I want to buy something I've managed by using Amazon and Mercari. Those platforms/companies aren't really an upgrade but at the very least I can hold true to myself and never give feeBay another penny.

May they bleed a slow, painful death. :zbash:
I'm glad you posted this because I'm in the process of prepping an old ThinkPad T43 for sale, and this is going to be a much more run-of-the-mill listing than the last ThinkPad I offered for sale.

I've previously sold my ThinkPad T500 on eBay, but I positioned that listing as a premium one (in item prestige, not eBay listing upgrades) where I wasn't competing with other sellers on price. Mine was in near-mint condition and I maxed out the RAM, upgraded the CPU, upgraded the keyboard to the T61 version with the stiffer backplate, and included two AC adapters, two batteries, the original keyboard, and the OEM docking station. All that meant it was less likely that someone who didn't know shit about ThinkPads was going to buy the laptop.

I need to reconsider the strategy for selling the T43 I have on hand because I won't be including a battery with it. The two batteries I have are ultradead and cause the laptop to freeze when installed. I've also forgotten if I need to make any disclaimers about the OEM Windows XP image that's currently on the hard drive because I haven't used this laptop in any productive capacity beyond booting and testing it for 15-20 years now.
 
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I recently got back into an old hobby of mine, collecting and playing records, mostly 33’s
This weekend I raided my parent’s house for some records and I definitely got some good ones!

I also got their Technics SA-203 receiver, But it has an issue where I either have to tap on the volume knob or the speaker switch button to get the sound to equal out, I’m assuming it needs some new capacitors.
Does anyone here do that sort of stuff? I’d rather give a forum member my business before sending it somewhere else.
Probably just dust on the connection in the knobs from sitting unmoved for a long time. Sometimes you can blow air into it or connecter cleaner slowly around the knobs while turning them to clear up the connections.
 
So including myself we have three Thinkpad nerds here? :LOL:

Im trying to thin out my collection. I have a few complete somewhat rare systems im going to list on eBay soon. I guess I'm one of the few who really hasen't had any problems there besides the fees being high. I'm sure that will change eventully and I'll get screwed. I just try to keep my expectations really low and assume whoever buys from me is probably an idiot. So far I've been fine. It's best to list everything as returns accepted buyer pays return shipping. Less likely to have a buyer do "not as advertised" and get a free return. It can still happen though and my biggest fear is someone return ships a brick back to me.

The eBay return process actully saved me last year. I bought a 5800x3d that showed up DOA. The seller accused me of damaging it and claimed I didn't know what I was doing. He also told me I had to pay shipping and to mail it to a different address than what eBay had because he moved. I called eBay and they told me to just return it as defective and mail it to whatever address prints out on the auto generated label. I got a refund same day I dropped it off at the post office and the d-bag probably got his burned out chip back, if he didn't I couldn't care less.
 
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If you ever want factory software restores, I'm your guy. I actually started that whole thing because I wanted people to share with me anything they had, in the hopes that I could find the Win98 SE recovery for the A22m which was what my first TP came with. I did finally manage to get that as an HDD image, and the CDs for the A21. Close enough I guess?

Wha'chu got that you want to get rid of? I already have too many but whatever... :)

My current stash:
T480 with T25 keyboard
T25
W520 x3 (one with IPS mod)
T420 w/ IPS mod
T410
T400
T61p 15.4" x2
T61p 14.1"
T61
T601F "FrankenPad"
T43
T42p
X13 Yoga G3
X220 w/ IPS mod
X220T
X301
X41T
X24
X23
X22
G41
A31p
A22m
i1200
TransNote
600
770Z
770
760XD
760EL
701C
755C

It's a sickness hobby. :biggrin:
 
This is the T43 I'm planning to put up for sale:

IBM ThinkPad T43 Type 2668-CTO
Intel Pentium M 760 2.0 GHz
1GB DDR2 RAM
80GB HDD
14.1” 1400x1050 LCD
64MB ATI Radeon X300
Intel 802.11abg Wi-Fi
CD-RW/DVD combo drive

After I offload the T43, the only ThinkPad I'll have left is my W520 which also got the royal treatment like the T500 did, and I'll probably be willing to let that go soon as well. I currently use the W520 as my HTPC, but I recently built a proper HTPC desktop to replace it because the W520 isn't capable of outputting 4K120 for my next A/V receiver and TV.
 
I sold a few so far, this is what I have left that is in nice shape. Most of them were projects that I upgraded. Goal is to sell most of them, going to keep my 600x,t23,t420s and t60 frankenpad.

I gave up on finding that t61 14.1" 4:3 screen assembly, so I put it's motherboard into a t60 15" and made a frankenpad

600x- modded with 850mhz mmc2
t420s- i7 2640m and 1080p IPS mod
t61- 15.4" wsxga+ mint original condition with factory HDD and image
(x3) t23- forgot specifics but clean
t23– 1.2GHz, sxga+
T60- frankenpad, mint, 15” with t61mobo
z61t – 14” WXGA+ titanium lid, 2.33GHz

My current project is a T60 with the original box and packaging, replacing a bad motherboard in it. Trying to get it back to mint in box condition
 
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I don't have a Z series... might be willing to take that off your hands. Feel free to PM when you're in a position to move it. :)
 
I absolutely hate FaceBook and everything it stands for. Car "forums" on there are terrible and impossible to follow. The only good thing about Facebook is that everybody sells stuff there. Unfortunately they make their search engine for MarketPlace so unbelievably terrible on purpose (in my opinion), that is is wildly annoying to sift through. I am thankful to have been around for the glory days of BBS car forums. I still think it is a far superior format than anything else I have come across.
im on the opposite side of that coin. I like it way better than the old forums. it reminds me of the way birdcalls was originally before all the bbs stuff.
 

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