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Obsolete Hardware Piling Up
loosenut writes: "The SF Chronicle has a lengthy article about the disposal or recycling of old computers, many with toxic components. If you are like me, you probably have a couple of 486s and Pentiums sitting in a closet somewhere. What is to become of these ancient beasts?" Read to the end of the article and it notes that Europe is planning to force manufacturers to recycle their products at the end of the product's lifespan.
Computer companies age soon going to have to provide some sort of incentives for tradein of old machines before we're overrun with the obsolete beasts of yesteryear. In some cities such as where I live it's hard to dispose of monitors, the city simply won't take them and does no provide any suggestions. You can't imagine how many ancient 12", 14", and 17" monitors are in my basement. Luckilly they do take old worthless computers so I (and more importantly, my wife) were able to get rid of the old 386, 486, pentium, and early pentium II machines.
The computer world simply travels far too fast to keep up with the disposal of machines that have outlived their usefulness, we need a better program to handle these old clunkers.
If you send away an old computer to a school they might initially do a small saving compared to buy new equipment, but in the long run I believe the school will suffer enormously from having a diverse range of out of date hardware. The service costs must get enormous since all computers are very different and old parts keeps breaking down and have to be replaced so things will have to be reinstalled. All computers will also have to be configured individually since some are too old and slow to run the same OS and programs as the latest ones. I can understand the benefit of a big company donating a large batch of almost identical computers to a school though, but I also believe that donations to schools just are second grade sollutions, government should push in enough money to keep the schools with a healthy machine park since the kids are our future and investing in their knowledge is a good investment. Graciously providing schools with old equipment that is "just enough" might in worst case actually counteract its purpose since it then might get harder for the school to demand money for new equipment.
The second idea of keeping them around as routers and firewalls is also something I see as doubtful in the long run. Compare for example the power consumption of an old 486-66 with a modern dedicated router without any moving parts. Add to that other factors as the likely breakdown frequency, space requirements, noise generation, air flow needs and risks like causing fires due to old dusty hardware that will run very hot if a fan breaks down and I doubt that it's a saving in the long run.
Giving them to schools and institutions in third world countries or just playing with them yourself or giving them to a relative who might need a second word processing computer to use when the kids play on the family's main machine might still be a good idea though, but I doubt many of the suggestions given here.
I've got a 6 year old 486/33 Thinkpad running RedHat 4.0 that's been my printer server for the last 4 years. It will be retired in a couple months (donated to Goodwill Computers in Austin TX) to be replaced by a state of the art Pentium/133, 32M RAM, 13.5 GIG IDE disk, running Debian. I expect that machine in that configuration to provide completely satisfactory service for the next 6-8 years as a printer server, file server, and eventually network firewall. Once it becomes a firewall, I'll probably put OpenBSD on it.
To be truthful, my two major apps are vi and g++, and that machine was NEVER inadequate for those tasks. The only reason that I have a superfast Celery 300A was to run Jane's USAF.
To make even better use of old hardware, that P/133 machine won't have a monitor. It's going to be configured with a serial line console, and my Compudyne 25Mhz 386SX laptop running MS-DOG and a term program will sit right on top of it. I bought it in 1992. With a bit of creative thinking, I finally found a new use for that thing.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I still haven't found a good way to dispose of the monitors and power supplies though...
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I'm all for the enviromental attempts to save the usefulness of the old PC's. But the material disposal of things we've already made is hard to get away from, eventually. It's a bridge we will have to cross, because that old 8088 is only going to run for so long.
If you have an old PC (or whatever) in your house, and you find a use for it (and can afford the power to keep it running.. not trivial here in CA) then kudos to you for the reuse part of the environmental equation. As to donating them to someone else.. they are going to suck a lot of power, and will eventually have a hardware failure. How long are old Pentiums designed to run? What will be the failure rate of the older hardware? I'm sure it's longer than the planned lifecycle today, but still it's not infinite.
As to the "give em to schools" option.. I would argue that schools need newer and better machines to teach people on, nothing sucks more than having to learn to tolerate Windows on an old POS computer which barely runs Windows itself and won't leave much room left to run anything useful. Additionally schools don't have much money for competent tech support/administrators and older machines generally require more of that.
Compatibility problems would be more frequent and troubleshooting is also bound to be more difficult.. since the hardware is old and not manufactured anymore.
For Example: Just the other day I was working on an old 486 PC w/modem (14.4) and forgot that you have to change a jumper to change the com port it runs on. Probably took me 2 hours to figure that out. How many people who didn't have a 486 in the first place are ever going to be able to fix shit like that?
let's spend some thought and find a useful and environmental way to junk em before, it's a bridge we're going to have to cross.
Just my $.02
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
I WANT COPIES OF MS DOS 1,2,3,4,5 WIN 1.0 (exists?),2,3; NT 1,2,3,4
There was no NT 1, 2, or 3. NT started with version 3.1 (there was also a 3.1AS). The versions of NT went 3.1, 3.5 (very short-lived), 3.51, 4.0, Win2K. Also, and trust me on this, you don't want a copy of MS-DOS 4.x <g>. It was the worst of them all. As for Windows 1.0, look here:http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?View Item&item=1241862826.
I'm not sure if this is really relevant - but (once you've got Linux or BSD running on old hardware it seems to make sense to run them as X terminals.
I've been involved in a project where we are using a number of low end Pentiums without much ram as X terminals to a more powerful machine with plenty of ram running StarOffice and displaying on each of these old machines.
It seems to work well at the moment, we are still in the testing stage, but it looks like the management of the machines will be much easier than the current Windows systems elsewhere.
I've also tried this same project with these machines running a stripped down version of Windows 95 and using Microsoft's Terminal Services client as the shell=. In our office, (since most people have Server on their machines) this provides a quick and easy way for them to access their machines from just about anywhere.
I am working on a scheme to get such hardware to schools in southern Africa, especially Zimbabwe.
If you would like to get involved, drop me an email.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
This is Slashdot. You'll be lucky if anyone bothers to read the start of the article.
Rather than "recycling" them, why not set up a scheme to distribute them to places like India which are crying out for the technical resources to train their huge potential developer base?
You could grade every old PC for power, then load it with free software - e.g. a 386 becomes a simple file server, a decent Pentium gets XFCE and can be used as a developer desktop. Then distribute them to the voluntary sector in the developing world.
David
Freedom of speech won't feed my children
I don't know about you, but I could always use a few spare machines as terminals, webstations, etc. With 32 MB RAM, even a 486/100 is quite usable under X with a slim kernel (read: don't compile in everything under the sun) and a light window manager such as blackbox. Mozilla 0.9 is too slow to use, but Konq works fine. Setup NFS and NIS properly and administration is a breeze.
freeboxen.com - awesome site - people will pay you to get rid of your old stuff. Free parts,
nm, scratch that, it seems to be down, kind of permanantly.
2.)
local hs/college computer club / whatever
- set up a beowulf of 486's or pentium 100's.
- hundreds of things to do - linux
- computers for the poor with win 95 (because you got the licenses for free) / linux (fsck licencing)
- keep the 8086, sell on ebay in a few years, or practice soldering/desoldering.
3.) (shameless begging)
For really cool, working stuff (200mhz up computers), I'll take it off your hands - really! I'll even pay for shipping! Well, the boards anyway. I'll take any working dimms for free too! Any HDD's greater than 1 gig are great too!
I WANT COPIES OF MS DOS 1,2,3,4,5 WIN 1.0 (exists?),2,3; NT 1,2,3,4
Ideas:
486 as a firewall / internet router and / or windows 3.1 demo machine, play gorrilas.bas with ms qubasic on dos 6.2
- learn about motherboard repair, get a logic testor, a mboard repair book.
286 - put Commander Keen 1 + 2 on it. Run demo in endless loop or untill you rip out the pc speaker cause the sound effects are bleedin' annoying.
8086 - put really, really old abandonware on it.
- calculate pi to x million digits,
Of course, you need a screen for this - so you keep 4-8 lbs of lead out of the landfill and get a nice space heater in one wonderful deal!
Hmm, old software.. some un named person in my college formats the hdd's of the new dell 700 mhz machines and places Dos 3.1 on them. Managed to install Desqview on a box as well (with dos 5). Funny as hell to see the software and the sysadmins pissed. Runs really fast too (except for desqvies, which sorta ran)
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Why did it run well after all those years? Simple, one thing I was very picky at was memory consumption: this means, if I don't need the service, I just don't run it. The Run, and Services key in the registry were closely watched by me. Cleaning up the registry regularly helped too. Don't install every shareware proggy you come accross, etc.... Probably this memory paranoia came from my old DOS days...and the registry paranoia quickly came after my first W95 reinstall. Besides, I never came across a program that didn't want to run on 95 so "upgrading" to 98 was never an option. (NT4 neither, because I realise the hardware couldn't have supported it beyond SP3)
The problem with factory defaults is that they are a common denominator of what Marketing (?) thinks will be usefull. ) I have seen newly bought preinstalled PC's with 64Meg RAM (this was some years ago) that had a memory usage of 80Meg in idle! (That is: directly after bootup) :-)
Ever noticed how many icons most people have in their icontray? (and that is mostly the top of the iceberg) Realplayer, why do I want that running all the time? Same for that ICQ webdetect agent: come on, I know when I'm online. Oh, and one big spoiler...needed for nothing at all: in Start-> Startup folder you'll find Office Startup (OSA.EXE), now honestly, I don't care that Word starts up in 1 minute or 3 minutes....I have to wait anyway, let's use it to make some tea.
Besides, if you wondered what happened to the P120? It is happily running it's old days as a Linux experimental machine.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Okay, there is some hardware that is unworkable in the Internet age. A 4.77 MHz PC/XT with dual floppies and a green-screen counts as "unworkable" and should be junked.
But a LOT of what is being junked these days are things like VLB 486 machines, low-end Pentiums. They should go to schools, community centers, and churches. I know, there are lots of arguments against this:
The answer to all of these questions is YOUR VOLUNTEER TIME as a computer expert. I give my time locally to a number of small computer centers and networks which are not for profit. Here are my answers to the concerns above:
Regarding #1 (Repair and maintenance): Yes, a power supply fails every now and then in "my" networks, or a video card goes bad, or a monitor. But part of what we're talking about is the glut of older hardware. It's not a big deal for a Slashdot user to swap out a power supply, a video card, a monitor -- and older hardware of this type is in ample supply. Yes, a school will have trouble justifying $400 in repairs to get an old 486 PC fixed, but the average Slashdot user can cannibalize three old 486 PCs into one working one that will help 10-20 kids in a matter of 30 minutes or so without needing spare parts or incurring expense. It's a matter of having the correct knowledge to get this older stuff working.
Regarding #2 (Slow): A 486/25 may be too slow to run Internet Explorer 5.5 under Windows 98 for streaming media -- it's true. But put Windows 3.1 and Netscape 3 (you can still download it at Netscape.com) on a 486/25 with 8-16 megabytes of memory and it's about fast enough for WebMail. Stick it in a corner of the community center and write "For E-Mail Only" on the front of it. Donate or get somebody to donate a little of their time to help people learn to use WebMail. Then try telling a little Russian grandmother that's just made contact with her children in Russia for the first time in 15 years that the machine is too slow to be worth anything. She'll tell you that it was worth something to her to have this public e-mail machine there.
Regarding #3 (faster machines for cheap): Cheap is not the same as free. You can tell a school that they shouldn't bother with a stack of 486/66 machines because they can get Pentium II 233 systems for only $100-$200 each. Or you can donate a day and help them get 10 of those 486/66 machines running enough for kids to type a report or two and visit a few simple Web sites -- even if slowly -- costing the school nothing. If they don't have the cash, they don't have the cash. Telling them just how little cash they really need isn't all that helpful.
Here are some examples from my own experience:
A local church wanted to get three computers in a small network for their members to do Web, e-mail, family history and a few other things. They had someone in for an estimate and nearly died. So, they decided to try for just "a computer" (that's right, one) but decided they still couldn't afford it. Over the course of a weekend, I was able to get for them six PCs (mostly 486/66 machines) at $5.00 each from a local university who was basically tossing them. A bunch of 640x480 VGA greyscale monitors were free from the same place. "Useless" was written on top of each of them in black marker. At work, a pile of 10b2 ethernet cards and a bunch of coax had been laying around in a closet for a long time. I asked, and I got them. We booted up the machines, cleared out the cruft and just left Windows 95 behind. Installed the network cards, wired them all up, stuck a 56k modem and Linux and masquerading on the last one and 'ta-da' -- a six user network with basic Web, e-mail and applications. Slow? To me, dog slow. To them, a godsend. They didn't have anything else. One weekend.
Another anecdote: I got wind of the fact that a local government office was paying to have a moving company haul a bunch of 486 and low-end pentium machines out into the desert and smash them to bits because they had depreciated into oblivion. I contacted the agency and was able to get the machines and a bunch of color 640x480 and 800x600 monitors donated. Some of them needed work. Out of about 20 machines, about 11 good ones were assembled, mostly by swapping power supplies, drives, monitors, etc. Took the better part of an afternoon. A local surplus software company donated a bunch of Windows 3.1 and vintage 1995 "multimedia encyclopedias" and other early multimedia titles, including a few storybooks-on-a-CD. The systems went into a local school in a poor neighborhood who only had to foot the bill for a few sets of headphones for the kids. Those kids don't care that the machines won't run Office 2000, Netscape, or Quake II. They're happily using Compton's 1995 and Grolier's 1994 encyclopedias to write reports with Windows Write and print them to an old beat-up HP LaserJet II. All it took was knowledge and time to turn "old junk" magically into "classroom computers." My investment: a Saturday, a few blank floppies, a little sweat and nagging a couple of my friends to come and help out.
Yes, I've returned to both of these places once or twice to make repairs, but it's no problem. I have access to plenty of spare parts and each repair usually only takes an hour or two at the most -- if that long. True, there is no money in these budgets to repair older systems if they break down, but as long as someone with knowledge and old spare parts from our present glut is around, no money is needed when something goes wrong.
The point:
Part of what decides whether old hardware is useful or not is whether those with the knowledge to make it useful are willing to do so. Giving two Saturdays a month or just say the morning hours of every Saturday, you as a knowledgable Slashdot reader can make a lot of people happy by connecting them to the information age. This especially applies to those of you living in metropolitan areas where those on the "more ghetto" side of town often aren't fortunate to have access to computers or to have been the beneficiary of a made-for-TV Microsoft commercial about giving computers to poor folks.
Saturday LAN parties are great, but smiles are great too.
Just start asking around -- make it known that you're a computer professional and you're willing to give some of your time to your community to make technology happen for those who can't afford it. You'll be swamped with needs in no time -- needs that you can help to fill if you're willing to give a little time and to work on old hardware.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Schools are very happy to receive your "old" Pentiums. :-)
Call your local primary school and ask when they will come pick it up
This take-back-your-old-products sheme is allready in place for refridgerators in many European countries.
I'm no environmental fundamentalist, but I like this kind of nature care better than (say) Ozone speed limits .
120 chars is not enough!
There are lots of companies out there that recycle old computers.. They tear them down and recover all the rare metals and such (No sense trying to recycle silicon since it's not exactly hard to make and its hard to rebuild. However, the gold bonding wires (the wires that connect the metal pins on the package to the silicon wafer inside. The company that I work for recycles all chips that are damaged or not working properly (and sells as many of them as they can to people that don't need fast or reliable parts) This same process is used on PCB's, and other common components. The relative cost of removing a part and trying to reuse it (a Rpack for example) is too high for real world situations. Instead they simply recover the precious metals and call it a day. In time, just like cans/paper recycling, the process will get refined and improved and they may be able to catalog parts for reuse (a 5V regulator hasn't had many major changes in the last few years.. to reuse a regulator from a 486 in a power supply for a TV or something will not cause problems. (Recent ATX supplies require faster/better regulation, which means that an older regulator won't fit the required properties and such.)
So, any bright ideas as to how these things can be efficiently recycled or used?
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?