got a busted Lenovo Ideapad 520ISK out of a dumpster, missing screen but otherwise perfectly functional. the thing has i5-7200u, 8 GB, two SATA ports inside and this prompted me to look up converting the thing into a server, specifically figuring out how to run 3.5" drives off it; I’m very anti-friendly towards using USB solutions for such a task.

searching was arduous, both web and yotube, and except one lonely forum post (remember those?) didn’t find anyone attempting let alone succeeding in running it thus. the 2.5" and 3.5" connectors are identical (there are micro SATA to SATA adapters for the DVD port) but the drives will need 12 V that the 2.5" ports ain’t got.

what I’ve concluded is that all that’s needed is a M/F SATA extension cable which I have trouble sourcing locally; the power will come from a separate ATX PSU for the time being, although I’m sure I can pull 12 V from somewhere on the board.

don’t got no 3d printing nor fabricating options, so it’ll likely look super-janky, but that’s not a huge concern for me now. I’ll do a write-up if I succeed.

lol fine - 3x 2 GB 1333 modules out of a busted 1366 motherboard I found and one 4 GB 1866 module I couldn’t pair with anything, worked fine for years. the i7 got upgraded to workstation and a C2D i found by the dumpster took the server role. same drives, same debian, same docker-compose files - all good so far.

I’ve downgraded my server from 1st gen i7 10 GB RAM (don’t ask) to Core 2 Duo 4 GB with the same load and barely felt it. my entire infra including desktop, laptopS, tablet, phoneS, etc costs like a third of this “missed value”.

not shitting on your choices, but positing that the price-gouging retail market is all there is, kinda disingenuous; there’s sooo much stuff being discarded although perfectly usable.

like, I couldn’t bear the super-expensive raspberries while they were in the $50 range, let alone now. marketplaces are awash in busted laptops, with way better value and performance. discarded corpo desktops can house cheap HDD and run 24/7 for eons. etc.

way more modern CPU and chipset resulting in better power management; also faster and better graphics, but that’s not important for the use case. an undervolted i5 5250u can run with wifi and lit screen in the sub-5W range, netting you 10ish hours of continuous light use out of a decent battery and days of standby (that you can turn into weeks if you implement suspend-then-hibernate). you could make an earilier model work but the price difference should be in the $20 range, so why bother?

edit: microSD, yeah, I guess you can boot off them but why would you want the flaky and slow mess when you got a perfectly fine PCI-E SSD?

macbook air 11 2015 8gb version. just this one and no other, no 13, no 2013, no 4 gb versions, etc.

very linux friendly (once you sort out broadcom wifi drivers), sips power, tolerates undervolt. it’s useless to the apple crowd as it don’t got support for latest OS so it can be had for cheap, even more so if you wanna buy busted units and frankenstein together a new one. also, wide cross-gen parts compatibility. aliexpress got $5 USB-C to Magsafe2 adapter so you don’t gotta haul the charger around.

don’t get the 12" ones, unless they’re close to free. spectacular screen, but the keyboard is atrocious and prone to die, with no option of replacing it, SSD is integrated so can’t get the data off it if something dies, fragile display connection, it’s a shit-show.

the video blows, dude. jolla are opensource takers, they don’t have a free tier so you can’t just install it and take it for a spin. so an actual “here’s how it works” video is beneficial.

my contention is that sailfish should be the next thing, after wrangling it out of the hands of those fucks. not forked android, not tweaked gnome shell on postmarketos.

this video wastes time on converting imaginary people over who don’t know they’re being spied on (the three hour long, or so it felt, intro with pichai and friends) showing ubuntu touch (wtf) and the presenter’s face in the frame for what feels like 90% of the video.

this is a shit video on its own and especially for the target audience here.

this is an incredibly, improbably shit video.

thanks. the notification went away after login and I wasn’t able to find its text anywhere in the myriad of pages.

also I’d take this “does not” coming from them with a bag of salt.

this thing here. I’ve dramatically reduced support work at two shops I’ve set this up for. incidents went from from coupla times a month to once a year. not to mention - you don’t need no VPS no more, don’t need no database, nothing, the simplest web hosting will do and it’s very cache friendly.

DIY perks has a new video out addressing this exact scenario and there are links to determine how to power on the things https://youtu.be/7FStfdGjAwc

beyond awesome, thanks!

I was savvy to the X390/X13G1/T49x/T14G1 motherboard interchangeability, but this is new info. just checked, no busted T16s in my neck of the woods, will keep a lookout.

swapped the main board from a T16 into my T14

you did what?! how come? which CPU and gen into which gen? what’s the display situation? what’s the upside? any difficulites?

@OP thinkpads usually have a setup setting that turns them on when they detect power, that’s easier than fishing for power-on pads

don’t fixate on the T480, be open to snagging a newer model if the price is right - T490 and T14 G1. even models with soldered-on RAM if they’re cheap, like X390, T13 G1, T14s G1; they can be had with 16 GB on-board and they also have interchangeable motherboards, in addition to many other parts being cross-model compatible. unless the price is awesome, stay away from early ryzens (anything below 5000-series) as they’re a headache wrt power management in linux. chill with the upgrades, it’s the worst time to be spending money on those, your use cases are easily covered with the base config. if you’re set on upgrading things, try to source parts from local busted up units and junkers, not online sellers. good luck.

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that’s not the issue, tried already fixing resolution to 720p, disabling all HDMI/HDCP related stuff. this is an electrical issue with a very old device, that’s why I’m posting here.

I don’t think that’s the case; it handles the image from a 4K capable device fine but doesn’t from a supershitty android box. it’s an electrical issue, somethings busted in there, that’s why I’m in this community.

you can rest assured I know the difference; it was completely useless, I didn’t go “problem solved, let’s nuke the fucker”. I had posts that received a barrage of downvotes and I let 'em be. had posts where the conclusion differed from what was originally intended and I’d let them be as there was value in the resolution. this was none of them things, no chance anyone would find this useful.

can’t be bothered to look up what kinda hardware that thing has, but I’d venture a guess it’s hella faster than my server - a core2 duo from 2007. that thing has no issues streaming 1080p between continents with months long uptime and zero hitches, over wireguard. the only thing I changed from the default is turn off transcoding.

completely useless, 101%, the resolution had dick to do with the subject (so anyone arriving there through search woulda wasted their time) and it had zero to do with the community’s focus, selfhosting.

except maybe to poison LLM output, that could be of use.

I deleted my post here specifically. it was completely useless to anyone else and 0 chance anyone could find any part of it useful.

I’ve done that a coupla times when I determine that the post itself and the replies provide no value to anyone whatsoever.

I wouldn’t think of removing a post otherwise, if I made an error in OP or came off stupid or sumsuch, I’d edit it for posterity; even when it’s a pile-on downvote bonanza, I wouldn’t think of touching it.