Slashdot Mirror
What Do You Do With Old Computer Parts?
yoyoma writes "I am planning to rebuild our desktop computers. What do other slashdotters do with old computer parts? I would prefer to donate them. These are some old parts that I will end up with: two GA-686LX motherboards with PII 233, greater than 224 MB RAM (the new computers will take DDR), some video cards (Matrox) and possibly two ATX cases with 300 watts powersupplies (looking for quieter, smaller cases). Decent enough, but they will have no hard drives, floppy drives, or CD drives. TecsChange, and this other place accept donation of parts. Has anyone done this? What about the receipts for tax purposes?"
Can I post my address here?
Put them in a big box and hold on to them.
Give them a new life in the attic.
And then someday, maybe sooner than you think, you might be glad of that noisy power supply.
What, me worry?
I put OpenBSD on them.
Your local school district would probably be happy to receive the parts. Anything older than that probably wouldn't be useful, but these sound similar to a number of systems (200+) that we donated to the San Francisco Public Schools after our last round of upgrades.
I don't know for a fact that the schools can give you receipts for tax purposes, but knowing my employer it seems a good bet.
Wait... you mean you still haven't joined the ACLU?
Donate to a local school; they can use the help.
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
There is a store (in Cincinnati, at least) called "Computer Renassance" (bad spelling, I know) that buys old computer parts. It isn't hundreds of dollars for the old stuff, but its cash.
Plus, its nice to buy some old stuff (like 200Mhz motherboard/chip) for linux boxen from the store for cheap...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Most of my old computer parts are sitting in storage should a day arrive when we have enough to build a test box, should we want to test anything.
I would consider donation, except that there's not much to donate that's very useful -- we have no spare hard drives, because any HD lying around is invariably tossed somewhere -- usually into the fileserver to give it more storage capacity. We have a few sound cards and some old video cards, but I'm not even sure what works anymore (I tried putting together a bare-bones Linux box from an old PII400; no video at post). Typically stuff sits around until I want to upgrade the NAT router (in case I want to run a local game server or something) which usually happens when someone upgrades their PC (our last upgrade occurred when an Athlon 500 was replaced with a 1.4Ghz...then the 500 took the place of a PII450 and the PII450 replaced a PII233 NAT router).
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Where do I get things like maybe a dual P2-300 for f'ing around with SMP without paying "I love eBay and I'm addicted to overbidding" prices, buying old things new, or buying new tech?
-Nev
Whatever happened to the one website, either freeboxen.com or freeboxen.net? It was like a ebay kinda site where people put up lists of hardware they didn't need any people could request it. All they typically had to pay was shipping.
The only old computer parts I have are fried by power surges. I lost an ethernet switch to a lightning storm last week.
No, I don't know why I keep them around. Maybe Katz can explain it in his next article.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I cannibalize like mad. Power supply fans are often good for supplemental case ventilation... provided the reason the PSU is dead is something OTHER than the fan was crap and it overheated.
For complete systems, though, I generally send them to places that ship them off to disadvantaged areas (like Cuba). You don't run up against snooty "What? A PII is way too slow" from there, that's for certain.
ME!!! :
you can donate them to ME. I need parts, I broke/unemployed ;(
People will buy anything there... at least get yourself a few bucks to buy more toys with.
So its tiny market share is largely old crappy systems that nobody wants any more? Sheesh....
...and get back to practicing on your Strad. Rostropovich is catching up fast.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I keep all of the old hardware I swap out. Eventually I have enough to build another system, or very nearly so with a minimum investment of floppy/cables/mouse/keyboard. Another machine added to the server farm and/or Seti/RC5/Folding effort. Or barring that, another machine for the kids to bang on. :)
der dee der.
Quick tax rebate, Microsoft style: Take your old Windows 95 discs, back them up onto CD-Rs, and donate them. Claim $199 each.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Sell 'em! Good God man, tax deduction? Much more problems that it's worth. Keep in mind that you can only write off a percentage of the total value. Hardly worth the effort if you ask me. IF you feel benevolent, then just give them to the local charity or whatever.
Otherwise, sell them to some geek on Ebay, charge a fair price and people will pay you to ship to them.
WTF? Over?
Start making Beowulf clusters :)
42 + 1 = 42
Really, what else is there to do?
go here: Linux Terminal Server Project
314-15-9265
I dread the day motherboard manufacturers will finally kill ISA slots though ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
There's one of those around here too, in Richmond VA.
Imagine a beo....
Seriously, though, a bunch of slow machines could be hooked together to create a nifty beowulf cluster. Something to brag to your friends about!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I WISH I had a pII 233...these "spare" parts you speak of are better than my current machine...you should donate them to your local "poor geek" fund....=)
How Jaded Are You?
My friends recently got several (over 10) old compaq laptops (486 style with monochrome display's). They made a sweet video of many ways to destroy them, some of which include burning with gas and rolling over with a truck. We will have it compiled into mpeg pretty soon, and if anyone is interested in getting a copy, gimme an email. :)
override11@home.com
No I didnt spell check this post...
As for destinations - I give local schools and libraries first shot at them.
Just my .02
I'd like to say something noble, like "donate them to a worthy cause", but c'mon dude, if you're any sort of geek at all, you know you're just gonna toss them into a big cardboard box!
My computer is a crappy little HP thing that crashes daily. Someone donated a hard drive, some RAM and a CD-R to me, but this HP case is so small I don't think they will fit, and anyway all the components are MS specific so I can't learn Linux yet. :( So now I'm looking for a case to build a new machine. Anyone in Houston able to help??
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
I like to hang old computer parts on the wall. For a while I had a fully functioning system hanging on the wall.
My evil scheme for world domination is to melt down all those old computer parts and take the gold (and other precious metals). That, and they're really very fun to play around with.
My company donates all it's old computers to schools and they use them. a 233 is sufficient to do word processing and browsing the net. It is also a tax deduction. You can also sell the parts to refurb companies or recylce them..
http://www.backthruthefuture.com/
http://www.techrecycle.com/faq.html
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
I have a few suggestions on where you can put them, but you probably don't want to hear it.
Your friend,
--Shoeboy
Have you even THOUGHT about eBay?
Typing "computer recycling" in google led me on the FIRST LINK to:
The national directory of computer recycling programs
Scrolling down, I found the second link:
The computer recycling center
You can take it from there....
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Ok, this sounds like a stupid question...but considering batteries, and engine oil have to be disposed of properly (can't just throw them in the trash)...what exactly do you do with broken hardware that has all sorts of hideous heavy/rare metals and other compounds in it? Can you just toss it?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I've made good money selling 32 pin SIMMs I had from the days I was working at a computer assembler : I had a bagfull of 256K and 4M SIMMs and up until about 2 years ago, they sold at crazy prices. Same for EDO DIMM modules. So if you do nothing else, put those 224M RAM of yours in an antistatic bag and enjoy the return on investment in 2 or 3 years. It's not that RAM gets more expensive, it's just that standards get deprecated, therefore more rare, therefore more expensive.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
freegeek.org takes donations in Portland, Oregon. They also teach linux for free and give you a free computer if you complete the course!!!
I'm out like Elian.
S. ALan(TM)
My local community college offers a course for building computers. It helps people understand computer hardware, AND it helps people obtain a useful, low-cost machine.
Components like the ones described by the poster are in demand - reasonably modern equipment, and with a few extra pieces (like drives), the builder can save hundreds of dollars and have a useful and potentially upgradable home PC for the kids.
Other options include the local school district or the local place of worship - whatever floats your boat. Or give it to the neighbor kid who is interested in such things.
The only thing I ask you not to do is to let it rot - by storing it in a closet until it's useless, or by putting it out with the garbage.
I would be more than happy to accept your donation!!
right if you want to donate a machine
put manuals in plastic bag along with driver disk and phyically attach it to hardware
(those plastic ties are nice )
this is to prevent it getting lost if they seperate the box from board
FORMAT HARD DISK
(do it with a linux distro for a laugh and root pass =password)
HOW Many machines Have I boot to find letters to tax man porn and such is quite unbeliveable
those 2 steps are really nice
my advice is walk into a primary school with a linux box and X up and running with a edu game on it and the teachers love you (-;
regards
john jones
Their Thrift Stores take old computers and give you a receipt. Not sure about parts, but old complete systems are fine. (Just donatated one recently.)
I tend to store old parts in a pile, or closet. You never know when they will become useful. Someday I know I will need to use that old CGA card again, and you can never have too many 20 Mb drives lying around. You don't know that you won't learn how to fix that old burnt out monitor, and that floppy drive that exhibits destructive tendacies may come in handy sometime. Don't let me get started on my colection of power cords and other misc cables.
By all means keep them around. I've found that an excellent place to keep all this is in large rubbermade tubs under the stairs. Out of sight, but easy to get to when you need them, and also relatively dust free.
Anyhow, does anyone know of a way to get rid of / recycle the really old hardware without paying someone to take it?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
You can write off the whole thing if you say you use it solely for business. If you make good money, a $200 deduction is like $100 in your pocket.
--
A man's home is his castle. And the remote is his sword.
Sadly, old hardware is usually best for the scrap heap (well, recycling is better, but you get the idea). It is cheaper to get relatively modern hardware because the difference in operating costs and support hardware (such as power supplies and hard drives) for the older computers mean that fast computers have better bang for the buck.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Check your local geek clubs. UFO (Users of Free Operating Systems) Chicago has a list of its members' idle hardware. I sold an old SCSI drive and video card that I've been holding onto for a few years for just about market value to another UFO member.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
Every time the pile of old boxes gets out of hand I just take them out and shoot them. The afternoon's entertainment value exceeds anything I might get out of an old box.
Hang on to it or give it to another geek. Donation sounds nice but typically places you would think that need pc parts (church, school, non-for-profit) don't have the tech skills to manage a pc junk yard. They usually need a complete system that can moderately use current apps. I do volunteer work as a tech for a couple of places and they always get boxes of dot matrix printers and broken P100 250mb hd pcs. I usually end up scraping most of the stuff and config a game system for the facilities kindergarten room. Plus, tax write-off is only a percentage of the CURRENT value. What is that system really worth? Give the stuff to an interested kid who wants to blow up his first pc. That serves the computer world much better.
A lot of my older gear breaks quickly, and sometimes I do it myself. The older hard drives tend to crash, and once that happens, what use is a diskless 386 with 8 mb ram? I tend to take them apart and make stacks of strange computer gear. Two Pentiums that I once had got themselves smashed by crashing everytime I tried to put on Red Hat Linux or Windows. The older and less "used" a system is, the more likely that it will be used in some sort of geeky "experimentation" like hooking it up to a stereo, phone, radio or other electrical gear or installing an obscure, barely tested Unix kernel or alternative OS. This makes it more likely that the poor, over-the-hill machine will meet its demise due to power surged fried circuits or nuked hard disk!
I've got a 486 laptop with a 5" screen. Now what am I going to use that for? Windows 3.1, whew-hew!
Keep some of the useful stuff like soundcards, NIC's, RAM, floppy and hard drives and trash the rest. Never know when that stuff might come in handy. With storage at an all-time low, I can't see too much value in keeping those 500 MB disk drives around; they're just going to crash and make you mad later, anyways. I'd say any motherboard below Pentium is not worth keeping unless you have a lot of patience, an older OS and/or a dedicated task for it to perform, such as routing or firewalling. Even then, the low cost of gear like a Linksys router kind of makes you want to buy something small, useful and well-engineered rather than use an old, clunky x86 with extra NIC's.
I used to just store them in a closet, basement, wherever. Just out of the way. But I visited Togo in West Africa this past summer and saw people making use of 386 12 Mhz computers and loving it! I've since been wanting to send stuff over there but haven't actually done it yet...hopefully soon though.
You've got a lot to learn before you can beat me. Try again, kiddo! (ha ha ha!)
And why are you complaining? Am I the only slashdotter who gets annoyed while having to wade through tons of offensive posts, swear words and off-topic material just to get to the stuff I want to read?
Sometimes we need to realize that censorship gives greater liberty to those who would use it aright. You seem to propose anarchy here. I personally praise the Slashdot editors for granting us the freedom to read what we need to read without having to wade through tons of crap.
Am I a hipster-doofus?
Portland, Oregon - FREE GEEK is a non-profit that takes older equipment and makes simple end user Linux boxes (FREEK BOXes) that are given to needy individuals for a few hours of community service recycling computers. The computers come with a class on how to use it and everything. (we've given out a couple a hundred in the last year). http://www.freegeek.org
disclaimer: IANAL
Most indiviual taxpayers (that's us) need a receipt to get a tax deduction. Well worth it to keep spare $$ from the government.
Most businesses will have already expensed the equipment, and don't usually need to worry about receipts for business equipment that is discarded (unless it is sold).
Keep it out of the waste stream if you can; it's pretty toxic to dispose of, and nice for somebody to get useful eqiuipment to learn on and use.
Usually, my parts wind up going into the boxes owned by various family members. Between me and my mother (who's a Everquest fanatic), the upgrades happen fairly frequently which leaves plenty of spare parts to put in machines for my sister, my young neice and the computers my father uses as point-of-sale systems at his business.
Be nice and see if any of your younger family members could use something that would at least allow them to have 'net access and do word processing. After that, check into donating a working machine (c'mon don't just give them parts) to a local library or school. You may even want to see if there is an after-school activity facility in your area that will take your donation.
If you're just looking to do something with those parts, put them back together, fire it up and get hooked up with the SETI At Home (I don't remember the correct acronym) project, which decodes signals from space using your computer's idle time. Or build a MAME arcade machine. Or generate fractals. The possibilities are endless.
My sigs always suck.
I work for a non-profit group here in Michigan, The Geek Group, that is always looking for donations. We run quite a few classes to teach kids about computers and keeping a steady flow of systems to have them rip apart and learn tends to be a strugle.
akaylor@thegeekgroup.org
http://www.thegeekgroup.org
"The Geek Group is an American based, 501-c-3, non-profit organization with members from all over the world who have been brought together for one simple purpose, to have fun while learning and sharing knowledge for a positive impact on mankind.
We educate the public with fun and interesting science projects. From our Tesla Coil to Geekmobile Unit 3, our projects catch the eye while demonstrating scientific concepts in a fun and interesting manner. In addition to this, we also conduct classes on various areas of computer science, mechanical and electrical engineering, high voltage physics and more.
The Group also offers services to the public. Current on-line services include computer repair and web design. We are also capable of security advising, prototypical design, and software development. We also hold private demonstrations of our projects for schools and other groups.
To learn more about The Geek Group, please feel feel to browse the site. We promise to keep you entertained. Because the Geek shall inherit the Earth!"
I work with teenagers in my spare time. One of our indoor plans for the geekier kids is to take several instances of Pentium I and II technology and apply them to a beowulf cluster sometime during the cold of winter. Not sure what we'll compute, but it should be fun.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. QPT has a girlfriend already. He just likes trying to make me look bad... or whatever it is he's trying to do. Besides, I'd expect anything I got from him or one of his friends to be broken and/or unusable. He seems like the type that would do something like that.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
i stil have 486's in use, and my fastest machine is a pii300...
thios parts would definitely be of use to schols, but i don't think they'd be wiling to deal with individual hardware pieces.
the problem is that large organizations (schools, etc.) aren't going to want to deal with building machiensfrmo individual parts, because the administration costs of dealing with a large number of disparate machines can be huge.
Ebay is indeed a good choice. When I upgraded my machine last April, I was able to sell of all the parts on Ebay. I was able to sell my entire motherboard (AMD K6^2 350 MHZ) and power supply as one item, my modem (56k modem), video card (16MB Diamond Monster Fusion) and Sound Card (Sound Blaster AWE64) in short order. I kept my monitor, case, drives and keyboard when I upgraded.
I know I did not make a profit or break even, but, given how these items loose value with time as they get older and replaced with new technology, any money is better than no money.
If you do decide to go with Ebay, I found that having original manuals and CDs with the drivers get you more bids than the same items sold by someone else. You can sell of individual components or the whole thing.
Charity donations for tax purposes do work - but figuring out what the new value of your old system is with depreciation is difficult.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
The CoyoteLinux distro runs from a floppy and makes an old machine a perfect firewall provided you add 2 network cards and a floppy disk drive, but this should cheap enough regarding the security you'd get.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
If you care to donate old computers, or equipment of any kind, for that matter, a non-profit organization called Excess Access specializes in matching donations with the organizations (typically schools or other non-profits) who need them. The good part: they have all the necessary tax-receipt materials and you can feel good about being "socially responsible" with your excess/older equipment.
Ever seen what they did with the printer in Office Space? I used to have an old 4 Mhz system from the 80s till I saw that movie.
I am glad someone mentioned Freegeek.org before I had to.
Build cheap servers out of them for dedicated purposes
Build parents a system
Build friends and siblings systems
Trade parts with friends for other parts
Research their selling price on eBay. ((>20$)?sell:don't sell)
Worst case, stand by busy road and throw them into on coming traffic!
I never donate them. By the time I'm ready to part with them, schools don't even want them
LFS. Have you built your system today?
I'm not sure if it's a national thing, but when i lived in pittsburgh, there was a place called goodwill computers...accepted donations and provides decent systems for affordable prices. however, the stuff you're talking about ditching is worth holding onto if you ever want to build some test boxes, routers, firewalls, etc...
I would say donate them to 3rd world countries! That is the ones with power ;-) Linux can run on them no problem, and you could teach these 3rd world countries basic computer skills. And wire the world!
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I concur... I'm in the process of cataloging a several-year buildup of old computer parts scattered around my house. When I'm done, I will keep a spare or two of each part that I might need, eBay the rest, and funnel the proceeds back towards any new equipment I might want.
~Philly
no, don't curse your schools with surplus hardware!
i could live a little longer in this prison
A buddy of mine takes old computer parts (and stereos, and small TVs, etc.) and launches them off the parkade. Makes for excellent physics experiments.
Do I play Hockey?
What you say!!
I've donated crates of old hardware and software to them.
Stonewolf
These items have no value in the free market, and if you were to assign them value on your tax returns, you would be every bit the fraud that Hillary Clinton was when she had the gall to take tax deductions for donations of the family's used underwear (and if you're the type of person who wants to frame some Clinton family underwear and hang it on your wall, then you're wasting your time reading this reply).
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
you guys are refering to PII's as "old" and "spare"....while im stuck surfing on my pII 366......
guess it's time to upgrade, eh?
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
if you are certain that you will never again use them, donating them somewhere would be a great idea, but i cannot imagine that the tax benefit would be much. i know that if i had those kinds of parts around, i would simply add a few more and build two computers - not necesarily for me, but i know lots of people who could use one.
i do most of the computer work for my uncle's small law office and i havent yet gotten rid of anything that works, with the exception of maybe some old ( 200mb) hard drives. everything else eventually gets used. i have a few relatively new machines where the cdrom drive went bad and was replaced with an 8 year old 4x cdrom.
last time i had parts like that around, i built a computer for my brother. it is a 266, but even running windows, it is as useful and almost as fast as my fathers 1.2 ghz for internet and word processing use, and even a few games.
A PII 233 with 224MB of RAM is OBSOLETE to you!?!? I can think of a couple dozen uses for that. Give it to a friend or some kid.
I volunteer at tecschange and we'd be happy to take your hardware. We're very short of modern (Pentium II or newer) motherboards, processors, and memory. We have old cases, power supplies, cd-roms, floppy drives and hard disks filling up the basement.
We send better quality equipment to aid organizations working in the US and overseas. Older (Pentium 133) are given to students who take our computer repair course.
If you don't live in the Boston area you'd need to mail the equipment to tecschange, you may prefer to find a local organization who can use it instead. In any case, don't let your old system gather dust, donate it to someone who can use it!
Visit Tecschange
or libraries. They may actually be faster than what they have or some schools probably just need the extra machines.
I'm surprised not more people are encouraging this. I can't get enough of those old Pentium-class computers around here!
Since my organization has been upgrading desktop PCs, I've been using the old machines for things like running websites, ftp servers, backup routers/firewalls, simple terminals.
Personally, I like to keep an old machine around to experiment with. Learn or experiment with those other Linux or BSD distributions that you've always wanted to try without risking your main machine! Try out a new service! If nothing, run Seti@home or RC5.
Hard disks are cheap, and all it takes is a bit of time bring new life to these old machines
What possible use could you have for a CGA card or a 20 meg MFM drive? Please enlighten me. I doubt you can even find CGA monitors to go with the cards anymore.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The following list of places to donate old computers was copied from an LA Times article quite some time ago (sorry I can't cite it). You'd have to double check that they will accept parts in addition to whole machines.
* Goodwill Industries: 888-4-GOODWILL (to find closest donation center)
* Goodwill Computer Clearance Center: 626-915-4433 (for donating more than two computers)
* All Tech Computer Recyclers: 877-PC-RECYCLE
* Salvation Army: 800-95-TRUCK
* National Safety Council: http://www.nsc.org/ehc/epr2/recycler.htm (listings by state)
* California Materials Exchange: http://www.cimb.ca.gov/calmax/
* Los Angeles County Materials exchange Program: http://www.lacomax.com/
Best of luck!
- Rachel
http://www.reinyday.com/
Recycling centers need help making those "broken" computers useful. The local school needs help getting started with older equipment. If you've got time to donate, please do. Lend your time to institutions you care about. Their needs are suprisingly simple, and once started down the Free software road, they will be able to help themselves. A small investement of your time can save your favorite institution a great deal of money and trouble.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They will know what to do with them.
They take everything, working or not (though, due to toxic regulations, they charge $10 to take monitors).
They work out of a huge warehouse in Oakland and rebuild what they can and donate it to schools, developing countries, etc. What they can't fix, they recycle.
They are apparently even building a Beowolf cluster from donated PCs.
I either just keep them somewhere, or I use them again in the one computer I use mostly, like old HDDs, CD-ROMs, etc.
Will work for bandwidth
It looks like I came about 2 hours too late, but if by some chance you wade through all of the responces before me and are still up in the air about what to do with your parts, you could donate them to us, Children's Hopes & Dreams (like make a wish) We've been around since 83 helping ill children. I would pay shipping and personally write you a reciept for tax purposes. We can always use parts for our workstations. as a matter of fact our server is only a 166w128mg RAM. Anyway, call me M-F 9-5 EST (973) 361-7366 (luke)
I am in the process of doing the same thing. I can't offer specific advice because I don't know what your specific parts and motives are. I have a friend who works in an under funded (aren't they all) school system, they have some hodge podge hardware and they aren't sure how to do it. If you really want to have your donation be effective, you may want to do what I'm doing and spend a few hours on the weekends helping them add your new hardware to the lineup. It helps if you can find a willing school employee to learn what you're doing as you do it too. They might not understand all of the details, but as long as they get the gist they can provide basic support. Donating hardware is a good start, but the schools that can't afford the hardware also can't afford the people necessary to get the systems going either. It is tax deductible and most schools are capable of giving you a receipt for what they would have paid for the same equipment. Usually you can just tell them what it's worth and that's good enough for them since they're getting it for free anyway.
Besides being for a good cause, this is a great place to go buy old parts for the Linux boxen you're working on, plus they have an AWESOME museum of old computers.
Chuck Bucket
---------
(is sick)
free ipod and free gmail!
Since value depreciates so rapidly - and used goods worth donating are usually not worth keeping - why bother even trying to loophole a silly little tax write off (for items that you would otherwise hold on to, like some gluttonous pack rat - most of the items I suspect were 'acquired' by dubious means anyway, at $0.00 cost to you)
I had boxes of parts. Dubious and otherwise. I live in a city. Took it all outside, placed it neatly in easily viewed bags, and it was all gone within an hour. "Excuse me, I.R.S... I have a receipt for this video card I donated... it cost me $225 when it was new. It should be worth at least $16 today". Puhleeze.
If you're a larger entity, of course it would be good to have reciepts and stuff. Well, whatever.
I would be very interested to know what actually becomes of these old Petium 100s and such once they are donated. I can not imagine that more than a small percentage actually get reused... do they? I think it would be a herculean effort to have to dismantel, rebuild, test, format, and install these machines - then put them to use.
Alright. I'm done.
~fight the power >>-->kill your computer
In spite of the less-than-rosy economic picture, a lot of people are going to buy new computers so they can effectively run Office XP [on which they will only use about 10% of the features]. That just doesn't make sense to me.
How much RAM does Word take nowadays? And don't tell me that memory is cheap and this kind of bloat doesn't matter. It does. People are getting their clocks cleaned trying to keep up with what amounts to a proprietary communications protocol [.doc].
Far from making "kick-arse" machines that can stay current for 12 months. We seem to be entering into an "arse-kicking" machine of our own making.
[ just for fun
Shit, I'll take em! I'm still using an OLD 200MMx with a measly 64meg of ram. That's it, that's all I have. My email is above.
I collect old computer from friends and family and just add them onto my network. I have extra network cards and I just put them into the computers I get, install linux, and put them on the network. When I get bored I setup one as a primary DNS server, one as a secondary DNS. I play around with apache and sendmail configs. And even try to hack into my own machines for security holes. It's fun. Old computers have many uses, thanks to linux.
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
If you're looking for a place to donate your parts or computers, you could try http://www.pcsforkids.org/
Today is the closing of a parenthesis opened before this sig, before this story, before this existence that is me (as if
firewall
I escavated my trusty old 486 and will be setting it up as a router/firewall as of tomorrow (or whenever the phonecompany finally hooks up my DSL)
The table I am working on right now is made from an old wooden door, covered with a thick blade of transparent glass. The many layers of paint, some of them decades old, were sttripped out almost, but not quite, back to the original wood.
:)
Inside the door carvings there are 5 1/4" disks of various colours, some memory chips, a internal modem, some other unidentified chips, some serail and paralel ports. There are also other raw eletronic components.
The final effect is very good.
if more people would do this, we would have an
abundant supply of capable PC techs in the IT
industry instead of the morons that are now the
majority.
people need to learn to be flexible, and throwing
10 different systems at someone and telling them
to try to install (insert your OS here) on them
will force them to become flexible and creatively
resourceful.
ordering 100 Dells and handing them to students
could never inspire the same sort of learning
experience...
Bravo!!
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Seriously, this guy is describing my primary home system. Maybe it's time to upgrade. Those Matrox cards may speed things up...
Those boards can go up to a PII 366 - heck, you might be able to oc the current CPUs to that, given a large enough heatsink. I would offer to buy the parts myself, but I am on a budget for a house, so that nixes that.
One thing you can do in the "selling on ebay" dept is to sell them as "bare bones" starter systems - drop the boards into the boxes, CPUs, and memory, and a video card each, there you go.
Over the weekend, I picked up an old copier that was sitting out in the desert - shattered beyond belief. Plenty of parts, though:
Nylon Gears
Magnetic Clutches
Solenoids
Toothed Belts
Nylon Sprockets
Stepper Motors
I haven't got much use for this stuff, but I am thinking about cleaning it all up, testing it, then selling it as robot construction parts on Ebay - many of the gears, sprockets and belts are "matched", so would make great driver parts.
My biggest problem right now is staying as clean as I can from the toner!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I love to use old P120/32/1.2G class machines as OpenBSD firewalls. I have bought numerous systems from companies for $20, installed and configured OpenBSD with ipfilter and ipnat and end up with a super firewall/NAT box that I can then sell for $200-$300.
J
You need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers, and say "that's the bad guy."
Yes! I agree. That's a great idea.
Where I work I'm allowed to take time off to teach at a nearby private school. I've a relationship with them already having given them some computer donations already. I've offered to teach two classes: one on computer building and another on basic administration.
The holdup? They're not keen on the use of Linux or BSD.... why? I guess they like spending $150/computer on Windows licences. Humm..
Anyhow, with the recent fanfare Linux has received and with the encouragement of several parents the school has decided to let me teach this. A good thing, too.
Just wanted to say that your message inspired me to have the students pick and research parts and configure them.
Hands-on is the key.
-sid
There are lots of programs like Charlottesville's Computers4Kids out there. We'll take any processor at or above 130MHz, drives over 1GB, and other things of that generation. I don't know of any central directory of similar programs, but if there's not one, I know that we'd love to have 'em!
-Waldo
How about donating them to a local high school with the condition that the students use them to build a beowulf or MOSIX cluster? That way, you get the benefit of the donation and deduction, plus the students learn about Linux and get the chance to have a very powerful computer in the end. I know I've taken all of my old computers, combined with my spiffy new one (dual P3 1Ghz, 2GB RAM) and made a mosix cluster in my basement. The thing flies!
Wycliffe Bible Translaters is always in need of more computers, and they take donations.
No, this isn't a troll and it's not offtopic. It's not meant to spark a religious debate. I posted it so people of this persuasion would know about it. Thanks.
I have three different "levels" of ancient hardware storage in my home office. As I upgrade and replace my hardware, the obsolete stuff slowly makes its way out of my rig, off my desk, and out the door...
Beside the desk:
This is where the old-but-still-usable gear ends up. Looking down beside my desk right now I see several 20, 30, and 40 GB drives, a few CD-ROM drives, and my old mobo and 833 MHz CPU.
In the closet:
My closet holds all of my obsolete-but-not-quite-garbage stuff. Ancient 4X CDRW burners, PII-450 gear, 18 GB drives, etc. Plus a few Win98 retail boxes, heh.
Eventually my old stuff makes it out to the garage in a big scrab box. Every now and then I pour its contents into the garbage. Last dump had some P233 procs and mobos, 72 pin simms (heh), etc. Next load will probably be PII-266 era stuff. PC66 dimms, etc.
What are you insane 486 are compleatly functional computers albet a litle on the slow side. The least you could have done with them is to donate them to some charity that would use them as w.p.s the best would have bean seting them up as prtable X terminals. On top of that a 486 has enough power to be used as a nes emulator. You guys are a bunch of smeg heads.
http://kiteinc.org:8080/
This is run by some friends of mine. I've given them quite a few machines. All of their machines use open source software, so they're completely unencumbered.
I confess I have a big box of shit that would be great if put together and helped make my life better in some way... iopeners, palm vii, wireless stuff, CDRs etc
I'd really like to find a reason to put it together and make someone happy. But not sure where to start.
These guys have been putting together old PCs and handing them over to people in need. Wish I had their energy.
How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure. - Charles Crumb
Just because you like getting your ass fucked by goats doesn't mean we want to see it.
And besides, asswipe, those old stories were painfully put back into the database so that people could still use their viewing preferences instead of looking at a static page. It's no wonder why they removed it.
And besides, what the fuck do we care if the editors remove stupid dumbass comments like that one anyways? I, for one, am not offended that they removed it, as they had good reason. Point me to 1 comment that was removed that wasn't flaimbait and posted by loosers who get their perverse kicks out of firstposts and posting stupid ascii art, then I'll listen to what you have to say.
If God gave us curiosity
MAME Cabinet.
I've got an 8088 mb sitting right here next to me. (I've got one of each gen, no PII's, tho.)
8088, 286 (got a tube of sixteen 286-16 chips, too), 386, 486, K6, Pentium MMX (our server), K6-2, PIII
Don't think I have an original Pentium, either
There are many charities that would benefit from old computers, of the level mentioned, since whatthey have is probably far inferior, however the charities in createst need probably don't have the expertise to deal with parts. Most charities would be willing to accept donations of computers (for office work, etc) but only the technically inclined would brobably be interested in parts. Consider, buying a couple cheap drives and assembling the parts into working systems and donating those. You'd probably get a lot more charities interested in such a donation.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
There is a volenteer group in Dayton, OH which specializes in takeing donated incomplete computers, and other parts and combining them into full working computers. They then donate the 'new' old computers to local organizations and chuches and such as well as train the people there on using computers. It's a great group of people. I gave them 4 or 5 old boxes about a year ago when I cleaned out my basement.
JOIN !LINK CLUB!
Wow. Well done.
If any of my circuits or gears will help, I'll gladly donate them.
As one of the student admins of "The Bunker", a computer lab run on donated parts, I can appreciate how much a donataion of good parts can mean to a school. For example, just before the school year ended last year we got a PII233 donated. This was the first PII workstation in the lab.
It's amazing what a couple of geeks (me and a friend) can do with donated parts. Our lab was better run and administrated then the two "official" labs. While the other two labs were being stocked with Dell PIII workstations, and their server was crashing consistantly, our lab ran full time, and never went down.
It was a great experience working in that lab, and even though I've graduated I'm sure I'll still pop in every once and a while.
Libranet GNU/Linux
One word: Keychain. Nothing says "Geek" like some RAM in your pocket with your keys. SIMMs already have wholes that most of those little steel ball chain keychains fit through, no modification required.
Others might want to look into this organization to use it as a model for a similar non-profit in your own area.
That is all.
just a couple years ago i was in high school and in charge of most all the computer activity that went on around there. the school didn't have even enough money to buy textbooks let alone new computers or a network admin. most of the boxes i pieced together were donated 386/486 parts. granted it was 2 years ago, but that was still pretty slow. i almost guarantee, depending on the school's computer program in your area, that they would gladly take anything you could offer. and by the way, how are we going to transform kids into code wizzards when they're coding in LOGO...
This article shows how to recycle your old computer CD to use it on your car, it was already published at slashdot.org some time ago
Unfortunately, you could save money (and be more environmentally friendly) in the long run by replacing all these boxes with a single P2-class box.
Bear in mind that running those machines 24/7 uses a fair amount of electricity, and this adds up pretty fast.
I've got an old Mac IIci at home that I've been meaning to do a project NetBSD box on, but have just never gotten around to it because I don't relish the idea of yet another machine I don't need running all the time.
-l
I have an old P150 I still use. It could really use a RAM upgrade, but old FPU SIMMs are really expensive. The most I can stick in there are 4 32MB SIMMS for 128MB, which is about what I need. Unfortunately, 32MB SIMMs are going for about $1/MB. In contrast, 128MB DIMMs are available for less than $20!
Please list all of the features of Office, and from that list please highlight the 10% of features that people use.
I'm curious if your list will match up with mine. I suspect it won't.
I'm also not so arrogant to think I know better than my customer what features they need.
Donate tham to OBSD
or Debian
Kenny Sabarese
www.kennysabarese.com
If you donate to a particularly "rich" school district, please note that the donations are picked over by the school techs and all remaining items are placed on pallets and sold for next to nothing to locals.
This money is then used to offset the enormous cost of disposing old monitors.
I was told they just about break even between selling computers for scrap and disposing old monitors.
I probably use about 1% of the features of a typical WP. Which is why I usually use vi to edit HTML documents for my WP needs. Fast, and portable.
If anyone wants to donate PowerMac stuff, I'll take it. I'm so po' I can't even afford the "or" let alone hardware for a cheap development box.
Constitutionally Correct
Still really irks me. And with the surplus stuff, how about just use it to show very minor things:
"So that's how much pressure is required to stop a motherboard."
"So that's what not cooling a system will do."
"Is that what a bad ram module looks like"
Knowing what bad equipment does is just as important as putting together good stuff.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
We make an email server and put it in the bathroom.
http://blacktop.res.cmu.edu/mailserver.jpg We're still working out some networking troubles but you can try http://bathroom.res.cmu.edu/~tw
And no, a PII 233 is not old hardware. Anything pentium class or even 486 can make a linux server of almost any type.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I have a mantra whenever i am in need of an upgrade:
My first year at my high school I helped create a computer club called, F.L.A.T.T. (Forest Lake Area Technology Team).
Our teacher bought various cheap 486s, and whatever parts we could scrap up from varios local schools.
We did so much there. I had already knew a bit or two about computers before then, but this was like a crash course. If we wanted computers for the club we had to build them and get them working with what we had. I had a Mac Plus at home and didn't have much knowledge of PCs, but within 3 months I understood IRQ conflicts, RAM types, processors. I could install Windows 3.11 on a 386 blindfolded with both arms behind my back.
We practiced programming and the club grew. Unfourtunately it shrunk when I left to attend college early. It gave me more computer experience than any other experience so far. It was the best, I learned so much by spending many nights after school trying to get hardware and software configs to work.
The only somewhat mention of our group on the web is at the parrell mac computing site AppleSeed
Many older computers are being recycled into bootleg satellite descramblers. They are used to run smart card emulators, so if the satellite company sends a "magic bullet" that would normally disable a hacked smart card, the emulator is unaffected since it can re-load the access code from off of a floppy. An emulator can be run off of an old 486 computer.
Oh wait, why imagine? Just do it. Set up Beowulf, then play with something like SETI to run on it.
http://www.sharetechnology.org
As far as receipts go, you don't need one if your donation is worth less than $200. However, I am sure plenty of organizations would still be willing to give you a receipt, either way. How do you handle it? You find someone interested in your donation (a 501(c)3) and then you simply ASK for your receipt upon exchange. :)
As always, check with your tax lawyer, accountant, CPA, or whatever.. also, the IRS actually has a very good website with all the information you need, in fairly plain english, a database to look up organizations, and a fairly good telephone information hotline to call for specific questions.
In addition to this, my nonprofit (as listed in the URL in the headers..) is in need of one or two good systems for our offices, and also looking for laptop or PDA systems, as our work takes us around the region. We are located in Philadelphia, PA. We will accept parts, and non-standard equipment, we also work in conjunction with a number of local computer recycling organizations. CARP:Creative Arts Resource Project
At my school, we use Norton Ghost on donated machines. This is a program that copies an exact disk image from one hard drive onto another. We just make one master hard disk, and clone a hard drive for each machine. The result is that each computer in a "batch" of donations is identical from the user's point of view, and all the computers in the school have more or less the same "look" to them on the desktop. Slap PolEdit on all of them to keep the idiots from messing with the machines, put Centurion Guards on the machines you don't want the smart people messing with either, and you have a really workable setup in which donated machines are quite useful.
Liscencing isn't a problem, as I said, because we just Ghost a clean drive onto all the machines in a donation batch. Ditto for porn and viruses. In fact, the biggest porn problem comes from teachers themselves (surprise surprise). I spent two hours last friday cleaning a science teacher's computer which was filled to capacity with JPEGs of an - ahem - interesting nature.
Drivers sometimes are a problem, but it's rare we can't find them within an hour of searching on the internet. Since we're ghosting each batch of donations anyway, the additional time required for driver installation is nill.
Regarding proprietary hardware: I've seen computers at my high school that would terrify all right-thinking techs. I've seen computers that were being held together with duct tape, computers with all sorts of proprietary crap - especially compaqs, with the funky square keyboard connectors they used a few years ago - but I've never seen anything in a donation so alien no one in the building could work with it.
My district's budget is a joke - donations are the only thing that let us get enough computers. Every non-department-head teacher computer is a donation, as are all the computers in the programming lab. I don't know what we'd do without people giving us their half-working crap, and our fixing it and putting it in a place it has to be.
Interesting sidenote: You know who gives us more computers than anyone else? Anheiser Bush.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I left a lot of my older computers (actually some just recently acquired) at home while I went to college. None were better than a P-100. My room's a complete mess, so they're now being used as floor covering, as well as a reminder that "Josh was here!"
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
"Oh, BLOODY giveaway, that is!
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP HELP! I'm being repressed!"
"No dictatorship can stand the cruel power of MOCKERY."
What about a 500MB external SCSI HD? I tried my local second hand computer store but they only wanted complete systems. At the moment it is sitting in a box until I can find a better place than the bin - I am not likely to use it again as I don't think buying a SCSI card just to use it is money well spent.
If anyone knows any place in Quebec that is happy to accept old stuff like this then I would love to know.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So many Slashdotters brag about how they save money by running a network of old 386s and 486s for distributed computing, etc.
When you consider the electricity cost over time it almost always makes sense to trash those systems and just buy a new high-end athlon or P3/P4 to replace all of the existing systems.
please donate this to OTAP, the Ohio Technology Access Project which gathers computers and parts and gets them in workable condition and redistributes them primarily to disabled and poor individuals. They accept anything, but would prefer if you would donate primarily from the 486 era onwards. Donations are tax deductible as a charitable contribution. We need everything we can get, and very little gets thrown away except software we don't have licenses for, floppy media, severely broken monitors/printers, etc.
And don't think that old dot matrix printer in the corner should be thrown away...believe it or not, small dot matrix printers are a hot commodity! They're durable and cheap to run.
Try your favorite local private school. I have a relationship with mine... with a little history, so they're more willing to let me do it, my way.
The final push to let me teach came from some of the parents whose kids I've tutored... remember in a private school the parents have a bigger voice because they're paying the bigger dollars.
In any case... it is sad that it's not easier to volunteer. I guess the school districts are playing CYA and the willing volunteers get left with a bad taste.
-sid
The old gabinets, I put them side by side, so my room appears like the main data center of a huge internet corporation.
That's GREAT!
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Some admin please delete the parent NOW before the word spreads!
Freebytes, in Atlanta, is a 501(c)3 that will take almost any computer, fix it, and give it to other non-profits and schools. If your hardware is too old, they will properly dispose of it for you.
This sig intentionally left blank.
You could look for an organization such as Sister Care. In Columbia, SC, that group uses cast-off computers to help train disadvantaged abused women in basic computer job skills. What you are describing is actually more powerful than any of the cast-offs we just helped re-hab for them.
I stock pile my components on a shelf on my computer desk, i've got lots ribbon cables that i've collected along with a network card and random pieces from cases...i'll be adding more as soon as i get my upgrade...
Our school has an entire program just for this called StRUT (Students Recycling Used Technology). They take old, cheap/used/donated hardware, load it up with Windoze, and make it into a functional computer. It's a great learning experience for the students, and the school even gets money for selling the complete computer on the cheap, or they put the computer in one of our labs and have gotten a computer for free or very little cost that the students can use. I definately suggest calling your local highschool and giving them the parts (if they want them). Then again, I keep most of my old parts, because I can usually use them to build a computer for my self, to use as a mini webserver (mudland.cjb.net is just a 233 PI/32 megs ram, and it handles apache, wuftp, and about 6 muds). It all depends on how useful the hardware will be to use vs. a school. I have donated old components to my school in favor of new ones, small hard drives, old network cards, but I keep a lot of the stuff around, memory etc., in favor of building another linux box to play with. Just my thoughts.
I'd like to look at building them a computer lab or at least enhance their library. People have done this before, with the Geeks Into The Streets program.
Maybe we can even start a computer bank, like her furniture bank?
- Jay (jay at bastille-linux DOT org)
We want pictures! Show us pictures.
Also, how thick is the glass, is it shatterproof, how much did you pay for it, where did you get it, etc.
What do you do with older parts? Well you build a mame cabinet of course!!! You can see CmdrTaco's here or find any other number of example on the internet...why let old hardware get wasted...use it for pointless (but fun) games :)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Yeah, and have Junkyard Wars as required viewing! With bonus essay points for saying why Kryten is a better host that that other dude! :)
Seriously, one of the most FAQ over at TLC's site is "Are you going to do a High School version?"
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Will need it. They always have the older equipment. Isn't there a foundation that do this?
I worked / volunteered as a tech at a non-profit organization that did work with people with disabilities. The particular section I worked in, tried to set clients up with assistive technology devices / computers / software. This stuff was rented or loaned on a long term basis at very low cost. Virtually all of the systems that were used in the building were donated, from office work, to the systems that went into clients with Lou Gehrig's desease homes to control X10 modules. We were always taking anything above a pentium 100 and using it as a working system, or taking lower systems and using them for parts.
Call up your local united way, or other non-profit agencies that do similar things. Public schools get grants to buy computers, but places like these can always use computers.
The screwups at CRC run out of date, trashed web pages- Can anyone yet PRINT that list of donation locations and schedules? It's going to be tiny white text on black background if you can do it, anyway.
And when they have a donation drive if they screw up their storage space (as in ALWAYS), then you can't even pay them to take your machine after you've hauled it to one of their out of the way donation sites. Screw CRC, please.
I've donated to Tecschange in the past. Gave them a fairly good Sony 15" monitor (upgraded to a 19" Hitachi). They even came by and picked it up, which was a major bonus for me (I'm carless, so any hauling of equipment anyplace entails a huge hassle). I'm ride of something I used to stub my toe on, and someone, someplace, now has a functioning PC monitor. I didn't bother with the tax writeoff. Recovering the floorspace was enough for me :)
Currently, I seem to have enough computer-needy freinds to make disposing of my recently-used hardware. I just gave my nephews a computer built out of my old hard drive, case, and a failed motherboard upgrade. A freind of mine is going to get my BP6 motherboard after she moves... another may get parts from a gutted server that was replaced with a smaller system.
Ask around, as well. I know several of the IT folks where I work do volunteering for non-profits on the side. I may drag the old 200Mhz PPro out, lash it back together, and give it to them.
Well, there are always alternatives. It looks like they could have used a bit more practice on the shooting range, though.
I'd check with the local Rotary, Lion's, VFW, etc. To see if any one has projects of donating PC's to less fortunate countries. The local Rotary Club here put out a request for 10 pc's to donate to a school in Peru I think it was, they ended up with around 60 pc's to donate.
Will
I just stuff old computer parts in boxes under my bed, only to be removed when I get bored and feel like seeing if they still work just for kicks.
Take em out to Rio Puerco, NM or whatever remote .45 calibers do a good job.
area you live in and blow em to pieces. 44 Mags
and
.//Brian J.
Unfortunately I don't have any pictures right now, and my digital camera is not here also. But here are some details:
- The door size is 2m X 0.9m, it was in use when we bought this house. We changed most of the doors, and kept this one to eventually make a table. But many things at our house, including some windows and doors, were found in demolition sites (where you can buy some amazing itens very cheap).
- The glass covers the whole door panel, and is 1 cm thick, shatterproof. It was made to order, not terribly expensive but not cheap also (I don't have the exact price, my wife deals with all this strange stuff related to money:)).
- The table legs were bought in a "do-it-yourself" store.
- At this point there are two CPUs (one in use, one being slowly retrofitted into a new computer from spare parts sitting around) and a monitor on the table.
http://www.surplusexchange.org/
My grandfather's church bought a system from them years ago. They have volunteers that test components and assemble them into viable systems for discount sale to non-profit organizations. Some things they sell outright, first to charities and then making the sale open to the public after a time. They also recycle Office furniture and store fixtures in much the same way. They try to work with anything useful, and what isn't useful, they recycle, even going as far as crushing the boards and recycling the gold and silver out of them. They provide jobs in the community, teach computer classes to inner-city youth, and are completely on the up and up. (Also a fun place to dig around for used hardware on a Saturday afternoon.)
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
Just kidding, yes you can donate to a church and then write them off on your taxes. Get a reciept from the church, as you'll need it for your taxes at the end of the year. Alternately you can look at some dealers, like if they were made by HP I think they have a disposal program. They may even take none HP computers. Alternately you could try a place like selling them on a message board like craigslist.org or even ebay. I'd use craigslist, but they are only available (or marketed?) in certain areas AFAIK. I've sold a few items using craigslist.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Pick your fave BSD, Nix or whatever project, and donate em..
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
I should have been more specific. The 'server' I built was added to a network of 3-4 workstations spread around the office. All machines, including the server are shut down every night.
You make a solid point (and I've avoided adding other machines for that reason), but none of the existing desktops could have provided these services due to locations of printers, power, phones lines, etc.
Y'know... just for the record... and I certainly couldn't have spent less money then free;)
Assemble your used parts into web/e-mail terminals. There is no shortage of low income people who can afford to pay $10-20 a month to an ISP, but cannot afford to buy a PC (or know how to configure it afterward).
Ask your coworkers and friends - they probably know people who can use the PCs.
I know it's frustrating, but it does make some sense when you think about it. The criminal background checks alone would be pretty expensive, and I don't think any school system would dare accept anybody without a pretty thorough background investigation. All they would have to do is slip up once and it would be all over the papers. School administrators, being good bureaucrats, loathe bad press. The easiest thing to do is to allow only employees, and perhaps parents, under exceptional cirucumstances, anywhere near the students.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
I saw something on TV a while ago about a company that would buy up old parts and melt them down gradually in a kiln for the gold/silver/copper what have you. I guess they made money off of this. I don't have a link to the company, but found this article --h tm l
http://www.summitdaily.com/business/bu1_082800.
about this sort of thing. Hope it helps.
You mother freaking think my child only needs to learn computers stuff?
What about other subjects? focker?
The most important thing is that the non-profit cannot give you a "cash value" for donations. They should describe, in detail, in their acknowlegement the equipment you donated, but must refrain from making any estimate of dollar value. Many non-profits violate this rule, and you must discard their estimates of the worth of your donation. You will get in trouble with the IRS for trying to use this kind of valuation (and so will the non-profit).
Instead, you should be claiming either the depreciated value of the equipment according to your depreciation schedule (bleah!) or the current market value for equipment which was not depreciated (for example, personal non-business donations). For the latter, it is very useful to print out and save ads for comparable items on Craigslist or Ebay.
This has been your Tax Accounting Moment
-Josh
Ah yes, but if you sell it for two hundered, you can keep all two hundred. And, if you plow that two hundred back into new equipment, no tax penalty (up to 18K a year I beleive).
BTW, I am not a CPA, and I don't play one on TV
WTF? Over?
Fill them with cement, put labels that say Pentium 4 on them and leave them on your front yard.
Wasn't this covered in a previous slashdot article?
You're Just Jealous Because The Voices Are Talking To Me.
If your machine is too old, too broken, or just plain crap it is sent to a recycler to be melted down into the various metals you can get from a PC (aluminum, iron, gold, etc.) They'll even pick it up if there's a bunch of it, and issue you a more than fair tax receipt for it's value. Worthwhile cause, for sure!
They also have other shops throughout Canada, so check out the site.
"I thought I had an Appetite for Destruction, when all I really wanted was a club sandwich."
... pick up a handful of components to round out whatever the system is missing, and make it into a nice router, firewall, or just some generic box for testing out kernel experiments, etc.
Donating it to someone is a good for your karma, but you can still find practical uses for it yourself too.
I know I did not make a profit or break even, but, given how these items loose value with time as they get older and replaced with new technology, any money is better than no money.
Exactly, usually buying something like computer equipment is like throwing money down the rat hole, (you never expect to see it back, just get usage out of the equipment, and hopefully generate money from that endevor). However, Ebay has been my fishing pole to retrieve some of that money. If you buy a box for $1500, then 3 years later, part out some of it for $400, keep some to use as a base for upgrading, you essentially got a computer for 3 years for $1100. (keeping in mind, 3 years ago, 1500 wasn't that bad a deal....)
WTF? Over?
>When you consider the electricity cost over time
>it almost always makes sense to trash those
>systems and just buy a new high-end athlon or
>P3/P4 to replace all of the existing systems.
Especially considering how cheaply you can build a fast machine these days.
We just got a new Fry's in Austin, and they had an advertised special the other day - Athlon 900 with motherboard (built in video and sound), case, floppy, and 128 megs of RAM. Just drop in your hard drives and network card, plug in a keyboard and mouse, and you've got a VERY capable Linux/*BSD firewall, router, mail/web/name server.
Cost for the CPU/MB/case/memory? $149.
How much does it cost to run four or five 486's or low-end Pentiums for a few months?
-l
Check out bsdpunk.com to see what I like to do with my old hardware. FIRE IS GOOD!!!!!!!
stephen
What happened to freeboxen?
My entire 'net presence (I'm self-hosted) is based on used equipment, mostly Sun. SPARC IPC for primary DNS, SPARClassics for mail and web, and a big Compaq ProLiant 5000 with RAID-5 for FTP, backup DNS, and emulating an NT PDC thanks to Samba. Pretty soon, I'll be adding a DEC (original DEC, not post-Compaq takeover) VAX 4000/300 for a backup/maintenance and bootserver system.
;-)
Every single system in that list would have gone to the landfill if I hadn't taken some gifts, and gone scrounging at various electronics swap meets and surplus stores. Instead, it's all serving useful purposes thanks to a little cleanup and judicious application of NetBSD into everything.
With the exception of one failed disk drive, the stuff has been utterly solid, reliability-wise. Don't EVER let anyone tell you that the used/surplus market isn't worth the effort! They'll either be lying through their teeth, paranoid that "used" means "bad," or trying to guard some hidden treasure that they've found for themselves.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
As a CS major, I am always looking out for what people would deem as "old" or "useless" computers. A 233, in my mind is a beautiful thing. I would love to use one of those slap a 1GB hard drive in it. Put slackware on and be able to tinker around on it. As said earlier, schools, charities, and churches may need computers, however they manytimes will want something that can run the latest OS from Remond. If you are willing to educate them on open source OS alternatives that would be the best charity work you can do.
Theres so much you can do with stuff like that. My main linux box is running Slackware Linux on a 33 mhz 486 chip with 32 megs of ram.
That said, if you still can't use them, ask around, I know as a fact someone like me can!
contact techhouse (those people that put tetris on the sciences library at Brown) and we would be (most likely) happy to take it (our server is only a 233Mhz!!!)
yup. =)
I have 8 systems (all working) at home. 3 are 486, 3 are pentium, 1 is a pentium-ii, and 1 is a pentium 3. How do I build a server farm/cluster using the 3 x 486's and 3 x pentiums? Obviously I'm going to use linux, but what distro is good to run on 486 and pentium? RH6.2?? This is not a troll, so please don't mod me down...
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
According to the IDC, the average cost for donating a PC is some $343.90. This is due to the expense incurred for administration and coordination.
The security of corporate-sensitive information will require that all disks are thoroughly scrubbed to safeguard against accidental release/disclosure of information. According to the IDC, it costs an average of $216.75 to wipe a machine clean of information.
There are a number of documented cases where a company that donated equipment was named in a lawsuit when the donated equipment was disposed of improperly by the benefactor. Consider, for example, that the glass from a monitor contains up to 25% of lead oxide. If disposed of improperly (e.g., in a landfill), fines and/or lawsuits normally follow.
Many of our older systems are still in use across the corporation. The IT department uses old or retired hardware as a "bone yard" of sorts to avoid purchasing replacement parts whenever possible.
From a financial viewpoint, there is little to no tax benefit to the company since these assets have already been depreciated for tax purposes. Aside from the costs outlined above, there are probably additional costs related to repair/cleanup, preparation, shipping, etc.
Almost all modems past the 14.4KBps days had voice capability, so you've likely got everthing you need for a really sophisticated answering machine with voice-mail, fax and lots of other goodies. That's what I use my old '486 for.
It's definitely up to the task and doesn't use any cycles on my main computer.
Since it was all software controlled, I have features that no regular answering machine had, such as emailing call lists to my work address, paging me for certain calls and providing different responses to different callers based on a Caller-ID and storing years worth of messages.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Very well said, both your post, the the previous post. I couldn't agree with you both more.
No offence MCSE's out there (Must Consult Someone with Experience) but 'generally' most MCSE's out there know windows, and only windows! It's really a shame, and companies hire them, *oh, they're MCSE, they know everything*.
Like, what a waste... Anyone can know windows, anyone can get MCSE, doesn't take intelligence, just takes money and time nothing more. Nothing more simple than windows. Try FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Linux(a REAL distro, not RH, SuSe, Caldera, etc)/Solaris, etc., on for hand.
http://www.accrc.org/ is the site of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, which seems to be the burial ground for a huge amount of Silicon Valley's castoff equipment. It's also a kick-ass place to volunteer time. Imagine the sheer joy of digging up a couple PDP11's or any number of the giant SGI PowerSeries boxes and coming up with some "worthwhile" repurposing for said hw... Mmmmmm, old hardware. Time to go change pants.
- Eat it.
I use a unplugged 386 for raising my monitor 5 1/4 inches.
Really, could you see me trying to balance a 17" or larger on top a mid or full tower?!!
I didn't think so.
On a side note. I have an old p200 AST Advantage! system that has been given to me and i do not have the bios password-the person who gave it to me had forgotten it. Pulling out the cmos battery for a while doesnt reset it either. Does anyone know a factory password or any way to reset it so i can get into the bios and boot the computer? It wont boot without entering the password. Thanks
>>IF you feel benevolent, then just give them to >>the local charity or whatever.
;)
Some people do like helping out the lesser fortunate people out there
-------------
Andy Tomaka
You shouldn't throw those machines away! Low end pentium systems make great "enterprise level" routers, or local area mail servers. In fact, apache running on those boxes could serve up a surprising number of sustained hits.
/dev/kudos, proving your resourcefulness.
Where I work, we don't get new computers often. Yes, we're a computer company, but the boss is cheap. We find ways to get more life out of older machines. We actually just took a bunch (12) of pentium-75 machines, forced them to boot directly to a MS Terminal Services client. They're all connected together in a classroom to a win2k term server. By doing that, we enabled old hardware to perform a necessary task, and do so with modern tools.
My point is that you could probably find uses for these machines within your own area. Doing this successfully will add value to your employment and likely get you some
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
What better charity then a non profit orginization who makes one of the best Free OS's ever made.
click here for information.
You can use them for any number of useless and/or mundane tasks: mp3 player, firewall, router, proxy, old-computer-emulator, to name a few...
I do everything the voices in my head tell me to...
Sounds like optimum hardware for headless cluster nodes, send 'em my way if you don't need 'em for that :)
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Plus I cant ssh into a linksys remotely to admin my network.
When ipv6 or something better takes over, this wont be an issue. Until then, NAT hacks are de rigueur.
Geeks with Guns
I do everything the voices in my head tell me to...
In my family, we recycle computers for the ones
who can't afford to buy a computer. Not everyone
has a family of 13 but I'm sure you have some
cousin or niece who would enjoy a working
computer.
Mercy Ships bring help and hope to poor and needy people around the world. They accept donations of old computers and other equipment.
They should remove your post, if you ask me.
You used the words f****d by goats. That deeply offends me and had this been my website I would have deleted the comment.
Also, this entire discussion is offtopic and serves as little purpose as an ASCII art of a man's buttocks.
[Are the implications of what CmdrTaco and co. are doing painfully obvious to you yet or would you like more examples?]
I was just checking out slashdot and noticed you were asking what you could do with your left over parts..well while I do not have a 501(c) non-profit I do run a non-profitable website from which all the proceeds go towards keeping the site online. So if you have left over equipment I would LOVE to get it =) I'm trying to gather parts to expand as well as build a beowulf cluster to devote to SETI @Home as well as a privately funded seti station we are working on building. I guess a little background - I run The Anomalies Network (http://www.anomalies.net) which is a good sized online paranormal/ufo community. We have over 9gigs of online data as well as over 1300 registered users in our online forum but all in all we get about 3 million hits per month which means its a bear to keep online. We run on either self funded or dontated hardware, and I got really lucky with the bandwidth! Lets see what else - We've been online for over 5 years (I think about 6 years but the launch date escapes me right now..although my wife knows =) and in all that time I earned $45 from the site =) Anyways I would love all your spare hardware (Pentium 1 plus), to make this cluster a reality! It will take time but I promise this is a good cause =) Ok thats as compelling as I think I can be...check out the site and you'll see what I've built. And hopefully you guys would like to help!! Thanks for your time, Olav Founder The Anomalies Network http://www.anomalies.net
Lets consider the cost. Assume an old 200 Watt powersupply. Now, you probably are going to only use 100 watts of that. In one day, that's 2.4 kw/hrs. In a month, thats 73 kw/hrs (2.4 * 30.5). Assume $.10 a kw/h for electicity, that's $7.30 a month. About $87/year.
So, why pay $500 - $1000 for a new server, which will still need to use electricity, when you can take an old 486 or two and use them as a cheap file/print server and a mail/internet server? You don't need the additional speed, so why pay the additional cost?
Only a few months ago, I took the helm of a Computer charity that was created a little over a year ago that goes by the name of "Cyberpile.org"
This is a Long Island, NY based organization now run by myself and a friend. Currently, we have a large inventory of parts, and once the basement is complete, things will run at full speed. We hope to donate as many as 10 PCs and Macs very soon to various other organizations.
For More information, check out our web site, Cyberpile.org
So If you're in the tri-state area and have old computers or parts you want to get rid of, give us a ring
The Mighty Sanfam has spoken!
P.S.: I still have been unable to create a user account! Something's not right.
If you are in the Seattle area, Re-PC
http://www.repc.com/
will take anything. They charge $10 for monitors older than VGA, other than that it's free.
They'll take broken stuff. They'll take ANYTHING.
Hope that helps.
I'm thinking that the school districts say, "if only people would get more involved," to guilt taxpayers into giving money, but have no desire for actual community involvement. Much like a begger on the street with "Will work for food," as a sign, but really just wants a handout.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
I'd be more than glad to take home these "old" parts and put them to good use... P233 just happens to be an ideal system for some of the stuff I do. Plus outdated video and sound cards, older RAM.. it all finds a good home with me.
I still have a 286 that occasionally does useful work (and during a power outage, my heavy UPS can run that machine for 2 solid hours, and it runs everything I can't live without). While back even my XT proved needful for testing some software...
It's never truly junk so long as it still has some function.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
WTF? Over?
Could it be? An Ani Difranco reference on Slashdot!?!
im looking for hte parts that you described. i need to build a little linux box and dont have the spare parts to do so. a P2 233 would be perfect.
You're right - "tiny" market share implies Linux. I should have said "microscopic" or "sub atomic" in reference to BSD. It's dying, you know?
..or maybe, what don't I do with old hardware. (:
:-)
1.) firewall boxen
2.) bench test hardware
3.) extra terminals for my home LAN
4.) car Ogg Vorbis player
5.) keychains
6.) wall decorations
7.) spare electronics parts
8.) Christmas tree ornaments
9.) scrap metal / plastic
10.) torture devices -- bang two old hard disk platters together, then hold one up to each ear as they ring. It's a really cool but annoying effect.
There are nearly endless uses for old hardware. Be creative.
Please donate them to my community college (well, not mine, but the one I attend). Right now my group of 5 in the intermediate unix course is sharing a P100 with 16 megs of ram and a 1GB hard drive... it's horrible!
I asked if we were going to get new computers but the department head told me that there was a 2.1 billion dollar cut in funding to the community colleges. So basically we got the shaft because the governor had to pay the insane electric bills.
So please donate them to this college:
Grossmont college
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, CA 92020
If not this college, then a community college near you would probably like it.
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
In the San Jose,CA area, there is an organization called RAFT, Resource Area for Teachers. They accept donations of many types of usable items, as detailed on their web site, http://www.raft.net . They perform a great service, and provide suitable tax documentation. They operate a warehouse where member teachers can select from a wide variety of useful castoff materials and items. If you work or live in the Bay Area, please consider them for your surplus items. I donated a variety of used computers and other tech gear to them after a teacher told me how useful they are to working teachers. (Most teachers have to spend their own money for supplies in the absence of such support.)
Feel good and make others feel good - win/win!
This is such a dumb question.
What's next -- how can I wipe my ass with Linux? (POSIX-compliant methods only)
when you can buy a sparkling new celeron 600 64/20G/DVD system for $197, it doesn't make much sense to do anything more than make doorstops out of old parts.
give excess parts to poor college students for the price of shipping. I know I'd love to get some halfway decent computer parts for cheap..
Check out Students Recycling Used Technology --http://www.strut.org/ -- in Portland, OR. They accept small and large amounts of donated tech goods and redistribute to member school districts (one of which I am employed by.)
It's better than donating directly to our area school districts since we can reap the benefits of usable equipment w/o being stuck w/ loads of unusable stuff.
Public school administrators are busy too and have better things to do than turn around and load decade-old paperweights into dumpsters.
dan_young at mail dot parkrose dot k12 dot or dot us
We are taking old computer to make Xterminal for school. So, if you want, just give it to us :-)
Well, most of our peecees are 486 with 1megs PCI (or local bus) video card... but anyway...
I bought my computer parts and systems for my entertainment. Why should the old, mostly useless parts be treated differently?
:-) Not to mention AOL/Earthlink/MSN CD-ROMs that show up in EVERYTHING!
.308NATO)
Hard drives, floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, and expansion cards make great targets at 100 meters.
Monitors are a great show but messy to clean up afterwards...
And since I just acquired a new toy Monday morning... (I'm now in need of another case of
BANG!!
so where to donate? fFind a church which has a computer geek doing the web pages and stuff. the church elders will be pleased to see a nice donation, but not have the fFoggiest idea what to do with the parts, and will give them to the geek. the geek will be very happy to see the fFree parts, which (s)he will see are useless around the church, but quietly take home and put into a personal project -- heh, maybe even donate them off to another church fFor another tax break :)
I'm a luddite.
I have a Voodoo2 card that I got online for my mac, very cheap ($40). The amazing thing is that it is considered a dinosaur chipset by today's gamers. Yet it is way better than ANYTHING that can come bundled in a motherboard. Ok, I have an Intel 810 chip with 4MB, but I need something that can actually remind me 400Mhz is fast by some standards
My problem is that I need a rom dump to flash the card back to a PC configuration since I don't have a mac anymore. Any help?
PS: Old computer parts and no-name brands can give you a cheap and "extense" system, but I don't recommend it unless you run windows.
"Wireless : LAN
I meant, of course, the Voodoo2 card is "better than anything I've seen that's built into cheap OEM setups." Since my installed Voodoo2 needs to be flashed to a PC state, I have to settle with running games at the smallest resolution.
"Wireless : LAN
OK, say you have the makings for two computers, like above... ok.. take the mobos, stick em in the case with the mem and proc and get a couple of cheapo netgear 314's and start the seeds of a supercomputer. 233mhz (in large clusters) is a formidable speed. even though that is the first pii, it still has out of order sequencing and the full boat of 686 code.
good news is that if you can build a beowulf out of old shitboxes, mid sized firms that have tight it budgets might hire you for $$$ to build a supercomputer for them out of old dual ppro and pii xeons they have lying around, perhaps with another 1 or 2 years of lease on them.
alright...you've convinced me. I want to start an after school "skunkware" club at my local HS. I feel I have the experience to guide new hands in to the field (I learned by tearing apart a 286 a couple hundred times, then up to 386, 486, so on, all built from scrounged parts, of course, until I finally built my dream machine) I have the ins to get an audience with the right people to make this happen, IF I can come up with a good plan of action. I also have several possible channels through which to obtain such hardware. My question to you (both the original poster and all of you who have done/tried similar undertakings) is: what advice do you have? Any pitfalls I should watch for? Judging by what I saw of the school when I attended, there would be an interest in just such a thing from the people who are tired of Introduction to Business Computing (Read: Typing 102) and Computer Programming I & II (Read: GW-BASIC and Pascal 3.0)...yes, I took all three...and learned nothing. Others were similarly frustrated. Any advice would be gratefully recieved and rewarded with cash and beer (I swear! ;-)
ummm... i'd love to have that. i came here (us)looking for work but i can't find anyone interested in hiring me. i'd love to have a machine where i can install my favorite os and continue my 'studies'.
a crested penguin with a placard that says "will code for food and an h1b"
I've simply donated surplus computer parts to other Usenet readers.
Usenet still kicks and is add free - such a bless.
-- From Denmark
Yes, yes, the school/charity (at least here in America) will give you paperwork suitable for your tax return. However, there's always *someone* who will pay cash for your old hardware.
Donate your old computer hardware if you're generous and magnanimous (sp?) or because you want to make a personal impact in your community, but not because you need another line item in your 1040 deductions.
If you need a tax break, buy some real estate and stop renting (or maybe sink some more money into your 401(k) or IRA/Roth IRA).
Fully appreciated securities are another very welcome donation to non-profit organizations, but that's a different matter...
If you have any old components I'll take them. No I can't offer you any tax rebates. But hey I cook pretty well :)
We had built a free computer lab, made of old computers and Linux, all connected via ethernet and to the internet. so we can offer free use of pc & linux programs, emails, internet connectivity, C programming and so on, to all the people here that don't (& can't) have a computer :) we have now more than 400 users, a nice community of local
people, "telnet" people, from many countries
(here in Catania, Italy, there are many people
coming from other states, basically from Africa, Asia and Ex-Yug. That is, the first
italian "hacklab" open to the people.
p.s. all this is no-profit. it's a sort of hobby for us :)
i think it's easy to create such a "public
computer club" for many of us. :)
you can see this at www.freaknet.org.
Sorry for my bad english language!
Dear All,
Smoothwall from http://www.smoothwall.org will run on a 486 and 16 Mb of RAM.
It is really easy to install and configure.
Cheers,
--Db--
TecsChange
According to TecsChange faq, here is their wishlist:
What equipment can you accept?
As of the spring of 2001, we are looking for Pentium computers (working motherboards, OK if they are missing parts). We are also looking for spare parts that can be used for repairing/upgrading this class of computers - no 5.25" floppy drives or mono monitors please! Specifically, we are looking for:
* Desktop Computers: at least 233 MHz Pentium II processors, working motherboards
* Laptop Computers: Working Pentium laptops with at least 24 MB of memory
* Monitors: 17-inch color SVGA, good working condition
* Printers: laser, deskjet, or letter-quality dot matrix, working condition
* Hard Disks: IDE hard drives of 4 GB capacity or larger
* Memory: 16 MB or larger, SIMMS/DIMMS
* Modems: 33.6 KBPS speed or faster
* CD-ROM drives: any speed IDE drives, also IDE CD burners
* Zip Drives: any capacity, also Zip Disks
* Networking Equipment: especially 10-Base-T hubs and ethernet switches
* Overhead Projectors: VGA compatible plug
* Software Licenses: the "Certificate of Authenticity" for Windows 95, 98, or any version of Microsoft Office that comes with your donated computer
In particular I noted the Software Licenses issue.
Something about that is fishy, but I'm not sure I can put my fingers on it, can you?
I think my main concerns are that, why not install Linux/BSD/OSS instead of the windows software which will only make the computers more expensive in maintenance and upgrades. Also strategically from many various interests, this windows stuff on these free computers seems weird.
I see no reason to support TecsChange until they have worked out their priorities. Bundling these free computers for low income interest groups with an expensive software platform doesn't provide much space for growth.
So a little recommendation to TecsChange, be smarter or I and many others see no reason to support you, as we would not feel cofident that you have the brains to do the job properly.
What right have you to call someone names just because they are exercising their right to do what they want to their own property?
Sure its a waste and the equipment could have been put to better use elsewhere, but at the end of the day it's their choice, not yours.
I would be interested to learn who the initial giver of the laptops was, and their opinions on their fate.
Just my opinion..
Are there local pickup places to buy or take away antique hardware? Nothing in this network is higher than a PII, and I'm looking for a few 486's.
They take old machines, reformat them and send them to schools in southern Africa. They've shipped over 4,500 machines so far, of which I've provided about a dozen.
Don't crush 'em, destroy 'em, leave 'em to moulder in boxes or fool around with Beowulf: do something worthwhile.
-- Liam P.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
Here are some good places to donate.
Free Linux CD.org
LinuxFund
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
.-new parts goto my PC
.-replaced parts of my PC go to Daughters PC
.-replaced parts of daughter PC goto server or cousins PC.
.-replaced parts of nephews PC(I dont really care)
SIMM??? Real geeks would use a SIPP! Of course you would have to be careful picking up your keys. A pin under the fingernail is never pleasant.
Schools in BC won't even let parents volunteer. The union for non-teaching staff (CUPE in think) pitches a fit when anyone non-union does any work around the school. Even work that no one would ever pay someone to do.
Donate to hidaya, which is a non-profit organization and lends used computers to educational institutes in South Aisa (India, Bangladesh and pakistan):
http://www.hidaya.net/