Given that the controller can already defer refresh cycles, and the logic to determine when that happens sounds fairly complex, I suspect that might already be in CPU microcode.

...which raises the tantalizing possibility that this lockstep-mirrored behavior might also be doable in microcode.

Unlike eBay, with traditional auctions, all the responsibility for "inspection" lies on the bidder -- you're expected to visit the item during the listed inspection times, if there are any, and make your own judgment of its worth. If there's no inspection period, then you're guessing blind with everyone else.

In this case, click through to the GSA Auctions listing, and scroll down to see the "property custodian", give them a call during the hours listed above on the page, and haul your butt out there to inspect the item.

Wifi works perfectly fine inside a shielded enclosure, if both the AP and the client are inside the shield. It should not work across the shield, if the AP is inside and the client is outside, or vice versa. (If that worked, it wouldn't be a very good shield.)

It is entirely plausible, practical, and not even all that hard, to build precisely the environment described up-thread. "Magnetic" paint is not necessary, it just has to be conductive. Ecofoil® Ultra NT® is my favorite shielding material, it's good as a radiant energy barrier (say, to keep your hot roof from radiating heat down at your attic) and as a radiant signal shield. Which makes sense, when you consider that RF is just RF is just RF. Filtered power passthroughs aren't particularly hard (Start with the Delta 20DBAG5 and add some ferrite beads), and if you really want to be snazzy with your data passthrough, use fiber. There are all sorts of cheap-and-cheerful ethernet switches with SFP slots now.

The door seals are the tricky part. Commercial shielded enclosures go all-out with complicated lever-actuated doors that wouldn't feel out-of-place on a bank vault, but I've found that simply sanding the paint off a commercial steel door and covering the bare steel with copper tape, then engaging it with beryllium-copper spring finger-stock around the doorjamb, is sufficient for about 60-80dB of isolation, which is plenty in many environments.

Stuff like that already exists for flash memory; I can harvest eMMC chips from ewaste and solder them to cheaply-available boards to make USB flash drives. But there the protocols are the same, there's no firmware work needed...

Non-helium hard drives are basically limited by their bearing spin hours. If one only spins a few hours a week, it'll probably run for decades. Not so with helium.

But at least in my jurisdiction, I can mechanically modify the car in any way I please, as long as it still has seat belts, brake lights, and bumpers of a certain height. It doesn't even still require a steering wheel; that's not specified in the law as far as I've been able to find. (Now, if I removed the muffler and made it louder than proscribed by law, I could be cited for a noise violation, but only at such a time as I womped on the gas and actually made the noise. The car itself being _capable_ of the noise is not, inherently, illegal.)

This blew my coworkers' mind once as I unplugged the passenger-side airbag while mounting a bunch of new stuff there. Apparently in some places, it requires paperwork and certifications just to unplug a connector? Weird.

Which means they should know better. And some of them do -- I have a few local favorite companies, where I know they'll keep things together, they're good about finding manuals in file cabinets and putting them with their respective items, etc. I'm usually happy to pay their asking price, because they're interested in seeing the items go to good homes and get reused, and take care accordingly.

But, likewise I have some "un-favorites", one who was notorious for sticking price-tags on screens. I might've finally trained them out of this when I told them I'd only pay their asking price for a particular piece of test equipment if they could remove the sticker without damage. They removed it, the already-degrading plastic screen was obviously fucked by the adhesive, they exchanged awkward glances with each other, and I walked away. Maybe they'll keep that in mind on the next sale they run.

Every Thursday around lunch, I open up Estatesales.net and browse the sales for the upcoming weekend. There's typically a dozen or two. I open each one in a new tab, and scroll down through what's typically 100-300 photos per sale. Very quick skim, stopping if I see anything interesting.

I then paste links to specific photos into item-specific category threads in a local makerspace chat: Sewing machines/other fabric stuff, Typewriters/addingmachines/cashregisters/calculators, CRT TVs/VCRs/related, Computers/videogames/peripherals, Tools, Cameras/film/telescopes/projectors/optics, Radio/stereo/DJ/vinyl records, Landline phones. So basically I've done the horizontal browse and sorted it into vertical categories, and anyone who follows those threads for stuff they're interested in, can go to the sale and nab the stuff.

But crucially, estate sales have _everything_, and if the sale folks have reorganized the house, badger them into telling you where the accessories went. If they already threw out valuable cables or something, give 'em hell for it and refuse the purchase, and they'll be more mindful next time.

If you're looking for something specific, show up on the first day. But personally, I just want to keep it from being landfilled, so I show up near the end of the last day. Offer fifty bucks for all the VHS tapes in the house, they'll take it. I got about 3500 floppy disks this way -- other shoppers ended up helping bucket-brigade them to my car as the clerk was closing up shop.

https://internet-in-a-box.org/

https://wrolpi.org/

(For posterity: Mouser and Digikey et alia carry these things and let you search/filter by cell type. They're not cheap.)