Bought a 4 amp power supply off ebay.
When I tested it the supply would reset around 3 amps.
So did a return on it, item defective.
The seller then supposedly sent me a returns label which turned out to be just an address to send to and not a prepaid return label.
So gave up and just paid for return myself.
Tried to input courier and tracking number but neither edit box would allow me to input anything !
Tried to get in touch with ebay and chat box just says try later and there is no option to get a call back.
Poor show.
When I tested it the supply would reset around 3 amps.
So did a return on it, item defective.
The seller then supposedly sent me a returns label which turned out to be just an address to send to and not a prepaid return label.
So gave up and just paid for return myself.
Tried to input courier and tracking number but neither edit box would allow me to input anything !
Tried to get in touch with ebay and chat box just says try later and there is no option to get a call back.
Poor show.
Ebay is over run with China scammers.
Say they have US stock , stuff still gets shipped from China.
The PS kits all use 2c caps - I know this and have a box full of nichicons.
Still , 5-10$ get you the PCB + semi's , cheaper than mouser.
OS
Say they have US stock , stuff still gets shipped from China.
The PS kits all use 2c caps - I know this and have a box full of nichicons.
Still , 5-10$ get you the PCB + semi's , cheaper than mouser.
OS
That said, I just received a nice shipment of 16v/4a desktop supplies for about $1 each from ebay.
😎
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If you buy things on eBay from China (or similar countries), pay with PayPal, that's the safest way to get your money back if something isn't okay. I had some trouble but in the last ~5 years almost everything was solved, either money back, new item or I accepted a lower price.
The delivery (EU/Germany) is often shorter than promised, if it doesn't arrive, ask the seller but since 1-2 years that has not been a problem, since most parcels meanwhile got tracking. To avoid the shipment exceeding the money back time limit, ask them to refund the item and order a new one.
The delivery (EU/Germany) is often shorter than promised, if it doesn't arrive, ask the seller but since 1-2 years that has not been a problem, since most parcels meanwhile got tracking. To avoid the shipment exceeding the money back time limit, ask them to refund the item and order a new one.
Might want to measure the (-) pin to earth ground, with the plug both ways, before using. Don’t want to find out the hard way that a $1 power supply is not isolated.
Many genuine semi's are made in asia / china anyways. I'll test ESR,Hfe and current if I find a deal.
I'll break open a large TO-3 to look at the die.
Then , I'll photograph any "dud" and start a claim with Ebay. Many times I've been able to get item for
free with a full refund if I threaten to do this to the seller.
Watch the Florida or PR capacitor stores - ALL fakes.
I get my (pF) silver mica's 4-5 for $1 from a midwest Ham radio parts dealer. USA midwest dealers are legit (CDE 500V).
Caps are the most likely to be scammed (electrolytic's) , be careful.
Semi's are usually legit , most are made in china by default.
I go mouser for any big order of large Electrolytic's , large semi's (TO-3P / TO-264).
As an example , A standard 317/337 regulator kit (below) is $6-10. Some you luck out with a proper circuit ,
safety diodes , real bridge , sometimes with genuine Nichicon caps. I have 3 of these , they really can do 1A+ and run
acceptably cool. I don't care , I have a genuine cap box with lots of Panasonic/rubycon/nichicon PS caps.
Find your known favorite (legit) sellers , bookmark em'. Return buyers can get even better deals.
I have one seller for Vintage 12-15Kuf supply caps and NP audio , another for my SM caps.
Many for Semi's ,arduino logic stuff. Good led's are hard to find , I've had to do my "trick" (money back) from
many a UV or power LED's.
OS
I'll break open a large TO-3 to look at the die.
Then , I'll photograph any "dud" and start a claim with Ebay. Many times I've been able to get item for
free with a full refund if I threaten to do this to the seller.
Watch the Florida or PR capacitor stores - ALL fakes.
I get my (pF) silver mica's 4-5 for $1 from a midwest Ham radio parts dealer. USA midwest dealers are legit (CDE 500V).
Caps are the most likely to be scammed (electrolytic's) , be careful.
Semi's are usually legit , most are made in china by default.
I go mouser for any big order of large Electrolytic's , large semi's (TO-3P / TO-264).
As an example , A standard 317/337 regulator kit (below) is $6-10. Some you luck out with a proper circuit ,
safety diodes , real bridge , sometimes with genuine Nichicon caps. I have 3 of these , they really can do 1A+ and run
acceptably cool. I don't care , I have a genuine cap box with lots of Panasonic/rubycon/nichicon PS caps.
Find your known favorite (legit) sellers , bookmark em'. Return buyers can get even better deals.
I have one seller for Vintage 12-15Kuf supply caps and NP audio , another for my SM caps.
Many for Semi's ,arduino logic stuff. Good led's are hard to find , I've had to do my "trick" (money back) from
many a UV or power LED's.
OS
Attachments
I have used ebay a lot, especially since Amazon started requiring their shipping service which costs 50% more than UPS surface and 100% more than USPS. I don't need my supplies the same day. When I did at my brother's house, Amazon's best delivery of a bicycle part to brother's house in Houston was 3 day, whereas I was leaving in 2 days. I have been chased off the road on my bicycle by Amazon drivers, so no respect there either. I don't need Amazon's stupid videos streamed into my computer, which locks up if I try to view videos.
Now ebay has decided they make more money jamming video ads into my computer than they would by selling me anything. Locks my browser up completely, I have to turn the computer off to reset it. The gods of commerce have decided anybody without a ****ese appliance under a year old deserves to ride horses and use kerosene lamps along with the people wearing beards straw hats.and long blue dresses. I do not buy electronics from ebay except amplifiers mixers or equalizers for parts or repair. Guaranteed dead appliances. I did buy a great video projector from Ebay in November, at 1/6 the price of BestBuy. Was listed by a company in Hong Kong, but the delivery was from a warehouse in California. Opposite ostripper's experience.
I needed some over the counter drug to dry my nose this month. I usually get 192 Unisom pills from ebay mailed to my box for $22. I had to get a friend to drive me to WalMart, their parking lot & surrounds are a death trap for bicyclists. Got 160 pills for $26. Unfortunately none of the anti-histamins at groceries or drug stores work on me. I've tried about 30 formulas. What works is a substance used to put Europeans Africans and Asian people to sleep, the sedative in the famous Nyquil. It has no sedative effect on me, but dries my nose up without side effects. I'm partially Native American.
I've tried twice to buy a bicycle part from aliexpress. Not available on ebay or amazon. After signing in and answeriing text message from my bank authorizing purchase, aliexpress requires me to check my email for a code at the same time aliexpress site is on my browser. My computer locks up 80% of the time when I try to check my email. Purchase failed again. Maybe I can disassemble the defective clutches in my MAC motors and repair them myself. @^)(*&^)(
Thinking of trying to buy 8 gb DIMM memory from a US vendor again. Tried to buy 2 years ago from B&H foto, received tiny DIMM for laptops, not full size ones. No dimensions shown on their website. )*&^&#$ I had a ****ese HP laptop I bought in 2020. It was stolen by my local unemployed house painter 9/20.
Now ebay has decided they make more money jamming video ads into my computer than they would by selling me anything. Locks my browser up completely, I have to turn the computer off to reset it. The gods of commerce have decided anybody without a ****ese appliance under a year old deserves to ride horses and use kerosene lamps along with the people wearing beards straw hats.and long blue dresses. I do not buy electronics from ebay except amplifiers mixers or equalizers for parts or repair. Guaranteed dead appliances. I did buy a great video projector from Ebay in November, at 1/6 the price of BestBuy. Was listed by a company in Hong Kong, but the delivery was from a warehouse in California. Opposite ostripper's experience.
I needed some over the counter drug to dry my nose this month. I usually get 192 Unisom pills from ebay mailed to my box for $22. I had to get a friend to drive me to WalMart, their parking lot & surrounds are a death trap for bicyclists. Got 160 pills for $26. Unfortunately none of the anti-histamins at groceries or drug stores work on me. I've tried about 30 formulas. What works is a substance used to put Europeans Africans and Asian people to sleep, the sedative in the famous Nyquil. It has no sedative effect on me, but dries my nose up without side effects. I'm partially Native American.
I've tried twice to buy a bicycle part from aliexpress. Not available on ebay or amazon. After signing in and answeriing text message from my bank authorizing purchase, aliexpress requires me to check my email for a code at the same time aliexpress site is on my browser. My computer locks up 80% of the time when I try to check my email. Purchase failed again. Maybe I can disassemble the defective clutches in my MAC motors and repair them myself. @^)(*&^)(
Thinking of trying to buy 8 gb DIMM memory from a US vendor again. Tried to buy 2 years ago from B&H foto, received tiny DIMM for laptops, not full size ones. No dimensions shown on their website. )*&^&#$ I had a ****ese HP laptop I bought in 2020. It was stolen by my local unemployed house painter 9/20.
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You are supposed to buy new computer hardware every 6 months to a year, and pay subscription fees to keep the software secure. Of course using old hardware/OS with the security holes plugged by not enabling all the junk they want you to run is going to result in lockups. They want you to get frustrated and do it their way.
I regularly buy stuff on eBay and Amazon from China, and have had surprisingly few problems. My expectations are much lower than my ultimate level of satisfaction in most cases. (Hard to be disappointed if you have not set high expectations on things that cost a lot less than they should.) I don't buy things that are attractive to counterfeiters like electrolytics. I don't generally buy things that seem to be too good to be true.
I did buy a stereo LED VU meter on Amazon for about $12 or so that did not work. I contacted the seller and informed them that it did not work. I asked for a full refund which was quickly granted. (PIC MCU and I would guess the code was broken - not stereo lol)
I did buy a stereo LED VU meter on Amazon for about $12 or so that did not work. I contacted the seller and informed them that it did not work. I asked for a full refund which was quickly granted. (PIC MCU and I would guess the code was broken - not stereo lol)
I've bought (literally) hundreds of items on eBay from all over the world, including the USA, China, UK, New Zealand, Russia, Ukraine, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Turkiye, Lithuania, the UAE and Poland.
Only one transaction went awry - and that was with an Aussie seller. I didn't notice the problem within the feedback or refund period because the item wasn't used for some time and was wrapped in plastic on arrival. What a prat I was for not opening the item (a second hand but rare car wheel that had a wobble). As the seller was 3,000km away, I had no recourse really.
I'm ruthless about only buying from sellers with a reasonable number of sales; with above ~99% positive feedback; AND equally importantly with no negative or neutral feedback comments that indicate the seller's character may be questionable. If comments look dodgy, I move on no matter how good or rare the item may be.
I've seen such sellers where the negative comments indicate that if things go wrong, the seller gets difficult, especially when they add a nasty comment in response to the buyer's reasonable sounding feedback. I don't bother guessing who's in the right in these cases as I'll never know - I just move on and never compromise if I think there's a dodgy vibe.
Negative feedback can sometimes indicate whether a seller sells counterfeit items too. Some buyers will comment that things are fake. Therefore, I always read the comments. Obviously the amount of time I spend on this kind of due diligence is in proportion to the amount I'm spending. With low cost stuff I might not bother.
Only one transaction went awry - and that was with an Aussie seller. I didn't notice the problem within the feedback or refund period because the item wasn't used for some time and was wrapped in plastic on arrival. What a prat I was for not opening the item (a second hand but rare car wheel that had a wobble). As the seller was 3,000km away, I had no recourse really.
I'm ruthless about only buying from sellers with a reasonable number of sales; with above ~99% positive feedback; AND equally importantly with no negative or neutral feedback comments that indicate the seller's character may be questionable. If comments look dodgy, I move on no matter how good or rare the item may be.
I've seen such sellers where the negative comments indicate that if things go wrong, the seller gets difficult, especially when they add a nasty comment in response to the buyer's reasonable sounding feedback. I don't bother guessing who's in the right in these cases as I'll never know - I just move on and never compromise if I think there's a dodgy vibe.
Negative feedback can sometimes indicate whether a seller sells counterfeit items too. Some buyers will comment that things are fake. Therefore, I always read the comments. Obviously the amount of time I spend on this kind of due diligence is in proportion to the amount I'm spending. With low cost stuff I might not bother.
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I built the two computers that use daily back in 2019, though I upgraded the CPU in this one to a Ryzen 9 5900X in 2021 and fed it a new GTX 4070Ti video card a couple years ago for better 4K at 60 Hz performance. Both of those are W11 compatible and are running W11 with MalwareBytes anti virus installed. They work fine with very few of the usual Windows complaints.
I have several older PC that are used for dedicated purposes, like an audio tester powered by a 2011 vintage Core i5-2500K and a 2014 vintage Core i7-4790K that is used for my Arduino lab. Neither of those have internet access, run W10, and will forever. Hey, the old Core i5 box finally moved on from W7 last year.
I grabbed another used Core i7-4790K cheap on Ebay, popped it into an old unused motherboard, put it in an old box with an SSD, connected up a 2 TB SSD, installed W7 from an old W7 disk, then upgraded it to W10, added a Focusrite Solo and a tube HiFi amp. I use it for a guitar amp with TH-U from Overloud!
I believe Indianajo is running 20+ year old paid-for hardware/software….. For my design work I still am. I don’t expect it to be able to communicate with the rest of the world except by thumb drive. I wouldn’t even begin to try to purchase anything from the web on those machines. Last time I tried to pull up DIYAudio on the XP machine (3 years ago) it locked up. Think I’d trust it with Amazon.com or my 401k even if the site pulled up properly? Not on your life.
I was kind of kidding around - everyone knows the way to solve computer problems is to throw enough money at them. There is no shortage of companies that will take that money. The only way to do it being a cheapskate is to know more about them than the hackers doing all the exploits so as to stay one step ahead. Or pull the effing plug. I had a bunch of buddies that were seriously into Linux. They could make their machines do anything except wipe their butts, and nobody got in uninvited. I never had the time or bandwidth for that.
I was kind of kidding around - everyone knows the way to solve computer problems is to throw enough money at them. There is no shortage of companies that will take that money. The only way to do it being a cheapskate is to know more about them than the hackers doing all the exploits so as to stay one step ahead. Or pull the effing plug. I had a bunch of buddies that were seriously into Linux. They could make their machines do anything except wipe their butts, and nobody got in uninvited. I never had the time or bandwidth for that.
I have gone down the Linux road several times but usually hit a detour, road block, or dead end somewhere and wind up taking the easy route and booting back into Windows. Somewhere in the early 90's built the "last PC" not. It had the best CPU one could buy, a brand new Pentium 1 with a big switch to select one of several boot drives of 5 to 20 MEGABYTES each. The main storage drive was an 80 MB Seagate 4096 which cost about $500 back then. The OS choices were SUSE Linux, OS2 WARP, DOS 3.2 with Windows 3.0, DOS 6.0, and later Windows 95. My last attempt at running Linux was a few years ago, but the music making and video rendering applications were pretty primitive compared to their Windows equivalents. I have that Core i7-7700K machine that I built with all low buck Ebay parts with Linux on it, but I can't remember the last time I turned it on. Maybe I'll try it just to see if it still works.
My spreadsheet that keeps track of things tells me that according to Microsoft, I have 20 "Windows Devices." One of those was the 7700k that got converted to Linux, three have been given to the grandkids, and another will go to grandkid #4 on his birthday. Where some of the others are, I don't know. I did see an old Toshiba Laptop at the bottom of the list that has a Pentium B940, which dates to 2011. I still use that laptop for one purpose. It comes in handy for reading PDF's or watching a video when doing something like fixing a car or soldering and I don't want to risk screwing up a good laptop.
I'm with you. About as many pc's, with OS as old as Win98. They still work fine, a lot faster for the simpler software...
Modern Linux can run on 15-year-old hardware.
I recently got rid of my oldest computer from 2006. It had a 32-bit CPU and 1GB of RAM.
My next oldest computer from 2010 is still in use. It has a 64-bit CPU and 12GB of RAM.
Ed
I recently got rid of my oldest computer from 2006. It had a 32-bit CPU and 1GB of RAM.
My next oldest computer from 2010 is still in use. It has a 64-bit CPU and 12GB of RAM.
Ed
A big problem with ebay is the 30 days money back guarantee.
If I buy pc parts from AWD or Ebuyer I can get up to 3 years warranty.
If I buy pc parts from AWD or Ebuyer I can get up to 3 years warranty.