Lots of Projects for $22.50

Here you go. Put it another way, here's my catch of couple hours at Santa Cruz Flea Market:

1. Seemingly dead/broken video Samsung Galaxy S after connecting to a charger (inadequate LG charger, current is too low). $15, restoring battery charge as we speak. Need cheapo Torx 4...6 screwdrivers and a cheapo high-amp charger with better (>1500 mAh which is stock) battery. Some good silicone sealant, 95 %  ethyl alcohol to wash some dead bugs away, and the replacement back won't hurt too.

2. Super Computer X6-7A. Little poor "laptop" is dead as a door nail, too, and also comes without a charger . I got one right there, only from a different dealer for $0.75 by a reliable brand called Radio Shack, only with a wrong bit: the supercomputer thingie needs a 2.5 mm plug. In theory, this supercomputer runs Windows CE 6.0 in 128 MB of RAM on ARM-VT8500 and has a whopping 2 GB SSD. Some small Ubuntu+XBMC installation will be under investigation as soon as I could boot that Win CE on it. I bet it will beat that joke of a computer called Raspberry Pi. X6-7A by a Chinese claim is a supercomputer after all, or what?

3. Bunch of very good books. So, it was very good day.

OK, full 6 hours of charging have brought this SGS i500 Fascinate to life. Yeah, it's a poor man's $15 Android phone  with outrageously bad Android 2.2.2 by Verizon and locked to boot. Unlocking is illegal in US since recently, so I will omit this *#83786633 Fascinate unlock code, and hopefully nobody would follow my steps. Some unofficial Android 4.2/CM10.1/AOKP ROM is under investigation as we speak. The main brake is that un-bricking this Fascinate is quite unclear to me. Using ODIN was also hit and miss experience with that Irish Gingerbread I put on my SGT P1010 back in the day.

How stupid is this anti-un-locking legislature?

Next step would be putting AOKP ICS or JB on it. I need Adobe Flash player working full swing, so it might not be JB at all. Besides, Google Now voice is working with ICS just fine, and a poor Samsung Fascinate's S5PC110 chip of Pandigital Novel descent, this $15 toy may overtake Nook Color with lots of interesting functionality. Bluetooth works fine so far, but GPS is not.

(Live TV of about 480p quality over SopCast on Fascinate)

5 MP camera is nothing to write mom about. But what do you want from a $15 phone?

Decent playback of 480p stream:


XBMC shows parse error at installation. It will take upgrading this Fascinate to some Jelly Bean ROM, to make it completely smooth. All JB ROMs are based on some unofficial CM10 or CM10.1 builds. Why this very decent piece of hardware lacks an "official" CM10 support is unclear.

Now, with existing flash failure reports, it takes a genuine "OEM Samsung" data cable to feed this Fascinate (Verizon's Samsung Galaxy S variety) right with Superuser and ClockworkMod via ODIN. Somehow getting these installed from external SD card and operate with a "three-finger salutes" from within a phone was declared unreliable, especially for Fascinate.

Fascinate was claimed as hard to brick though, but de-bricking procedures are tedious and definitely require the use of data cable.

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