A passed up conquest I may regret

#1 Mon, 7 Jul 2008 - 12:56 68kMLA

I nearly pulled the trigger on Sawtooth last night but thought better of it. It had a Sonnet upgrade in it and the final price was below what I would have put in for my maximum bid, but the seller said the machine doesn't power up and the hard drive was removed so it was being sold for parts. My original idea was to buy this for the CPU upgrade to put in my D.A., but if it isn't powering up, the CPU could be fried and who knows what else might be wrong with it then the whole thing would have been a waste of money. Someone tell me I did right not to buy it. [V]

#2 Mon, 7 Jul 2008 - 19:03 68kMLA

I agree -- if he couldn't guarantee the processor upgrade you could have been hosed.

#3 Mon, 7 Jul 2008 - 19:50 68kMLA

You did right, Quadraman, don't worry. It's ok. For what it's worth, I would have done the same.

Cheers

Rick

#4 Mon, 7 Jul 2008 - 21:09 68kMLA

Any machine that doesn't power on and is being sold as parts should always be regarded with suspicion - the seller may say that to cover the fact that it was zapped in a power surge, had an unfortunate incident with a fish tank or something similar. It's not wise to invest any great amount of money in something like that as it could well be a lemon.

So don't fret, something better will come along eventually.

#5 Mon, 7 Jul 2008 - 23:43 68kMLA

Anything thats non working I would asume is junk, if I took a chance on it it would be because it was free.

#6 Tue, 8 Jul 2008 - 00:43 68kMLA

Seems third-party G4 upgrades are quite prone to high failure rates, going off the amount of dead/overheating/flaky units sold on eBay. Sounds like you did the right thing!

(looking over at Powerlogix Pismo G3 900Mhz upgrade sitting on desk!)

JB

#7 Tue, 8 Jul 2008 - 00:49 68kMLA

Anything thats non working I would asume is junk, if I took a chance on it it would be because it was free.

I got a great deal on an Power3 RS/6000 because the vendor did not know how to drive the boot menu system and assumed it was stuffed.

#8 Tue, 8 Jul 2008 - 03:11 68kMLA

I have snagged quite a few systems that were "dead" that had few is any problems. Thing is I get those free or for the cost of shipping, I won't pay ebay prices for something that may in fact be junk.

#9 Wed, 9 Jul 2008 - 15:42 68kMLA

I'm kinda glad I didn't buy it now. I was able to pick up a couple of things I really wanted instead. I got a G4 550ZIF upgrade and a Mach64 ISA video card for an old 386 machine I got a while back that was mixed in with a load of P2 and P3 machines that wouldn't boot because of a defective video card. Mach64 ISA cards are really hard to get and expensive but this one was cheap probably because the seller was a liquidator and didn't realize they have collector value.

#10 Fri, 11 Jul 2008 - 01:08 68kMLA

You absolutely did the right thing. If something does not even power up the only risk worth taking is to strip it for parts then and ther or drive it home for free--or something very close to free. Space at home is to valuable to store trash.