A dirty non-responding Blackberry Curve 9300 with 2 GB SD card forgotten in it cost me $4. Additional $4 for C-S2 spare battery to replace a presumably very dead battery in the phone, a broken Blackberry charger for a $1.50, and I'm ready for adventures.
Cleaning should be made with lintless cloth dripping with high-octane (90-95 %) ethyl alcohol, especially if there's a chance of previous water damage. However, if the phone was thrown away after being dropped into a sea water, there's very little chance it could be resuscitated if one doesn't open it and extract the battery immediately then process with alcohol bath.
Charger that I bought was having a broken cord, so I tried my very reliable charger from BB Playbook instead. It's not your rapid charger, so it took like 3...4 hours for the phone's red light starting to blink red. In about 6 or 7 hours Curve has started to load its firmware, at last! It was at about 20% of battery charge at that moment.
Phone was password protected, so after a very clumsy procedure of wiping it after 10 (!) attempts with bad password it was wiped clean and has started a new life.
Wiping the phone couldn't wipe the extracted SD card, so here's apparently a portrait of original user:
Everything works just like it should. Whoever got used to his/her Curve and don't see it booting on fully charged battery and/or on charger may consider replacing screen ($16) and if the trackpad is erratic the replacement can be had for about $12. Replacing mobo may raise the ante to about $35 more, but a sober calculation that takes an amount of labor into account shows that a whole used T-Mobile Curve can be found at about $90 at your local Craigslist.
In other news, while there's no serious Fedora or Linux Mint LXDE on Chromebook project I'm starting my own project around Motorola Lapdock. At this stage, here's what's needed:
1. Well, the Motorola Lapdock itself, 11.6" "Bionic" or 10.1" "100" variety at about $50...$60. There are specimens for $20 at eBay with broken/dead screens, I'd recommend getting these and go for a 11.6 inch 1920x1080 LED LCD replacement at about $50 a pop if bought 10 pieces or more. Can be a great project in itself.
2. Atrix 4G or HD, or Photon, or Bionic, or HTC One X for less than $40 (apparently, with cracked screen). Other phones can be accomodated too, if only with some nudging:
UPDATE: For cracked Atrix, this mod can make some sense:
Keeping Atrix and not going full monty (picking the most powerful mini PC HDMI dongle) is also interesting because there's a very enticing Gentoo Linux build by Gentol is being developed here, or Debian inside WebTop by SystemR89. It can be Ubuntu, too, especially Ubuntu Phone OS after February 21st:
3. Leaving Atrices alone, Zeals GK802 mini PC, can be modded with extra heat sink it apparently begs for, and it should be bought for less than $96 they ask for it. Here's what it might be needed for:
Sure, it's just MK802III dual core RK3066 based mini PC dangling here and not the quad core i.MX6 based GK802 Zealz dongle, but you've got the idea. One of those days, when they start stamping out those Mini PCs with Allwinner A31 or -- better -- Rockchip RK3188, the expensive high-end phone to power such lapdock won't be needed here. Dell promises some HDMI/USB dongle running Android 4 in what they call Dell Cloud mode for about $50. It better be based on something like Exynos 5 or Tegra 4 chip and drop its initial very inappropriate moniker "Ophelia", or it would be another fail. All in all, the task is to attach a most powerful Linux mini PC a $50...$100 can buy to the Lapdock. It's a pity that all the current ARM computers fare not much better than some Raspberry Pi or Arduino boards when compared to what Intel can offer at their mid- to lower end. Odroid project promises something smashing for a 3rd year in a row, maybe this Odroid X2 board could deliver a bit -- when priced below $100:
For $199, you can also discard any idea of using with Motorola Lapdock that Cotton Candy I was writing about earlier. Unless you have bought one already. You'd better mirror Playbook OS 2/BB 10 on it, because Ubuntu, or even Puppy Linux is still a behemoth for TI OMAP4430 chips those Cotton Candies employ.
4. Intel Core 2 Duo laptop mobo with HDMI out and some laptop dock to house it under Motorola Lapdock at about $50. Just forget about all those Raspberry Pies and Arduinos, OK?
5. Intel Core i3 (or i5) Intel NUC box or bare naked kit for less than $150. Apparently OED/OEM product is meant, not the overpriced Intel NUC.
6. Clambook for less than $100. It won't happen, short of fire sale. And so far, it looks like a fine example of vaporware since last June.
All these steps might take years to get an affordable DIY netbook, but the fire sale of Motorola Lapdocks is quite inspiring still.
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