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?"

Comments

Power supplies = blower fans

[RollingThunder]

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.

You could spend a little extra...

[dberger]

FWIW: I've done this sort of thing several times (each time I do a major upgrade on a machine) - and in almost every case, I hit the local parts swap, pick up the missing parts (in this case probably to the tune of $50 or so - small IDE drive, basic CDROM, and floppy) and donate a working machine rather than a collection of parts. The tax writeoff is nice, of course, but the knowledge that I've given someone a working machine is better.

As for destinations - I give local schools and libraries first shot at them.

Just my .02

Save your RAM modules

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

no, don't

[pezpunk]

schools, at least where i live, won't take surplus computers. and if you think about it for a sec, you'll realize that this is a smart move. first of all, every new computer (or computer part) is a fountain of potential problems. what's on the hard drive (porn / unlicensed software / viruses / etc etc etc)? who owns the licenses? is this hardware about to crap out? where are the drivers? is it compatible with this other part over here? anybody around here know how to install it? can it support software x? plus, of course, whoever's in charge would have to re-train everyone else on each new system, not to mention spending countless hours trying to get it functionable in the first place.

no, don't curse your schools with surplus hardware!

Re:no, don't

[Tim Doran]

Shame - if I taught highschool, I'd love to run a skunkworks computer lab. Have students pursue donations of parts from around town and see what they can do with them. Have them research the various parts, choose the best configurations and, of course, build Linux/BSD boxen from them. Wouldn't take long to build a lab - imagine, a *nix lab in a highschool maintained by student volunteers who learn something new every time they crack open a case.

This reflects my experience with accumulated cast-off parts and could be the most useful computer training they receive (short of actual programming classes).

Better hardware to keep up with bloated software?

[tenzig_112]

The fundamental issue for me is not what to do with the old stuff, it is how the new stuff becomes old stuff so quickly.

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 ... a link to an article on the 20 years of feature bloat that has brought the PC to where it is today: http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?displ ay=20010813]

you'd have the best IT dept anywhere

[CrudPuppy]

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!!