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next up is a #thinkpad T490s. busted screen, no SSD, battery present. i5-8265u and the max 16 GB on-board. in the before times, soldered-on memory was a drag; nowadays with prices rising daily, having practically free RAM is neat. case is heavy on scratches and with the fucking stickers, madonn' takes as much time to get them off as does fixing the thing up

speaking of fixing it up, this thing needs a 40-pin narrow touch screen, with no mounting brackets, which are a) rare and b) expensive. the cable can be swapped out for a 30-pin so it can fit way cheaper panels, though. however, I already got the panel from the T14s and we'll see if it works

working on panels ova' here is a breeze -- cough fuckapple cough -- the thing can be opened with no tools to speak of and the panel isn't even screwed in, weak double-sided tape holds it in place

the T14s panel fits and the connector is also 40-pin. potential snag though, the sticker on the back of the panel says 30-pin, which it evidently isn't? this looks like an aftermarket unit, so this might be why touch didn't work on the T14s. no matter, I find touch useless anyway. and...

it lights up, no issues. verily, no touch is detected either by UEFI setup or in the OS so we good here. wouldn't even notice as I abhor the fucking things, but the trackpoint and its buttons ain't working. I feel enough people don't use the thing so it can be sold as is. short of one USB-A port everything else works, the battery is in excellent condition. quick boot with the borrowed RAM and SSD to test it and take some pictures for the ad and then take 'em out again

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just to remind me of how awesome working on thinkpads is, here's a batch of #macbook pro A1502; 13-inch retinas of the 2015 vintage with the bog-standard 8 GB RAM, no storage and every, single, one has a bulging battery. and not only are they bulging, *every* cell is swollen! never had that before, usually it's only some of them. not that it makes any difference, they're all coming out

just to make working on the things more shitty, almost all of them got some stupid plastic protector shell that's fucking impossible to take off without breaking. tried it every which way, if one half does give and come off without cracks, the other half is like I ain't going nowhere what

nothing interesting to report here, after tons of alcohol and twisting and breaking all my expired debit cards, the things are out. grim chances on scoring good batteries for those, as well as magsafes; SSDs I got coupla. final flying ointment (h/t Chris Moltisanti, loyle to his capo), the 2015s got the unremovable staingate so they gotta go out as-is, all five of them

to finish the festivities, there's one 2013 model and one A1425 from 2012; those can get the staingate removed but they don't need it, go figure. the latter one had the then super-expensive 500 GB SSD and it didn't get snagged by the junkers because it was hidden away in a tray. slim chances on selling the thing as it fits only L2012/E2013 retinas; seem to remember those things burning undogly amounts of power

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