Mass Hardware Salvage Methods?

gte024h writes: "I have been approached by a friend working at a mid-sized corporation about a plan to salvage hardware from their "dead" computers to make working computers which would then be donated to a local school. In the past I have salvaged old hardware from them, but only a few machines at a time. With this plan I will initially get about 40 identical machines with perhaps many more later (he says they have a warehouse full). I have no idea what condition these machines will be in but I am pretty sure that out of 40 non-functional machines I should be able to get 10-15 working. Does anyone have experience doing anything like this? Would it be faster to strip the machines and test the components individually, or to troubleshoot each machine whole? Any ideas for efficient testing and such are greatly appreciated."

I know that volunteers from LXNY recently did something similar with a whole boatload of donated computers; anyone with experience care to comment on how to best handle the mixed blessing of donated, but old, hardware?

Comments

What do you want from them?

[Patman]

The question is, do you want parts, or whole systems?
If you're looking for whole systems, boot each one
until you find one that works. Swap parts from ones that
don't boot into the ones that do until you find
which parts are damaged on the unbootables.

If you're going for parts, take all 40 apart. Build
one out of good parts, maybe, for testing purposes.
Test them en masse - hard drive after hard drive
after hard drive, for instance.

Either way, this could be a nice windfall. Don't forget
to save all the little things that come in handy, like
like expansion card covers, screws, power supplies, etc.