Proper Disposal Of Old PCs?

IMNTPC writes "Over the years, I've advanced from a 386DX-33 to a Celeron 1.3 Ghz system. I've slowly been accumulating enough old parts that now I think it's time to start disposing of anything that predates a Pentium 166. Does anyone know of a good place that will properly dispose/recycle of these old parts and PCs for little or no money? So far I've found pcdisposal.com, but anyone know of any others, either online or physical dropoff points in major metropolitan areas?"

Comments

EBAY!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those suckers will buy ANYTHING!

Re:EBAY!!!

[ChrisKnight]

I second the eBay recommendation, but I would hardly call the people looking for older parts suckers. Some people still need older parts. I sell of my obsolete hardware on eBay, and I've been able to purchase hard to find parts there myself. I have a couple of VA Linux rackmount servers, and eBay was the only place I could find reasonably priced spare parts.

I've sold scsi cards on eBay for a dollar, and broke even on the shipping; and I am happy because I know the part is going to use and not into a land fill.

-Chris

Re:EBAY!!!

[eugene ts wong]

I heard that NASA buys XT processors on eBay. Can anybody verify this?

In keeping more with the discussion, maybe people should see if there are users in other countries that can make use of old computers? I hear people keep speaking about countries that can't afford the latest & greatest. Well, if they can afford the shipping, then they've got "free" computers.

Re:EBAY!!!

[zakezuke]

I second the eBay recommendation

I too am in favor of the e-bay solution. Not only did the parents make valid points on hard to find parts, but there is sometimes software / hardware that just doesn't run well on faster systems. Sloppy programing i'd imagine, taking the time from the cpu clock. Not to speak of some older ISA hardware that just won't play well on anything modern. Specificly...

1. E-prom programers... some people invested good money in a prom burner.... and why spend all that money again when you can just use a lame PC.

2. Obscure interfaces.... I know that I have a non scsi scanner which requires an isa card to operate.

3. Propriority TTL devices... often i've seen people use the printer port for TTL communications. In my experence, old motorola pagers are a good example of something that needs TTL logic.

4. MFM / RLL / ESDI / some tape drives (qic-02 / qic-36 ) ... The last motherboard I had that took ISA slots was an asus p3v4x and it didn't take too kindly to the ESDI controler I had, nor the qic-02 controler. I've had to borrow an older system to pull the data from some of my older disks / tapes.

5. Voicemail systems. Many a small buisiness were sold into a voicemail system that pretty much was a 386 / 486 class machine, with some 3rd party software and hardware that works perfectly, well, till the fans or disk give out.

In short... there is still a logical application for ye-old 386, though few and far between. Some bugger on e-bay might actually need a lame machine for a lame task when the cost to upgrade to something new is too out of bounds.

Re:EBAY!!!

[jpmkm]

I wouldn't want to go into space with something that is controlled by a fucking processor bought on ebay. No telling what it has been through.

Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[ObviousGuy]

Just leave it out on the sidewalk and enterprising young people who are cash-strapped can build their e-empire using your old throw-aways.

It's the American Dream.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[fataugie]

OK, I know this is modded funny, but another true story from my past working at a local bank in the facilities dept.

We would get orders on occasion to clean out storage rooms, repo'd houses, old offices, etc. The problem was, usually there was a bunch of stuff and only one dumpster behind our headquarters. We tried the "fill the truck and cruise around and fill up some other branch's dumpster" trick, but that usually ended in shouting matches.

If we filled our dumpster, the cleaning people during the week would just toss the trash bags on the ground and make a huge mess.

What we started doing was, the big, bulky items like chairs, computers, desks, whatever....we would place one at a time on the sidewalk (we were located in an urban downtown area). The longest anything ever stayed on the sidewalk was 15 minutes. People would take anything.

It was actually a win-win for everyone, the people were happy, we were happy, the bank was happy. No one could sue (we figured we'd say the item was "stolen" off the sidewalk if they tried). This was not a sanctioned event by the bank, but they really didn't care because the task was completed (items disposed of).

So, especially if you are in an urban setting, try leaving it outside on the curb with a "take me" sign on it.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[Mesaeus]

I wouldn't use a "take me" sign, but a "valuable ! do not take this" one. Basic human psychology.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[plinius]

I agree. In Germany this is an established practice and it works well for cheap items. They call it putting out the "Sperrmuell". When I lived there I got several decent chairs that way.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[Reziac]

In fact, there are people who make a small living from curb gleanings -- pick 'em up, fix as required, sell 'em for whatever they can get. Everybody happy!

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[whiteranger99x]

You know, it's funny you say that, cause my parents did the exact same thing, only it wasnt a 386, it was a broken Atari 5200, a bunch of old broken 2x4s, a 5 gallon bucket of dried up paint, some old rags, a Commodore 64 :( Dead ), some broken tools, and a cracked easel (spelling?).

The funny thing was, I went to get some food soon after and when I got back, they were gone!!

We're still in shock over it lol

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[Bz3rk]

Somebody left a computer on the sidewalk next to the trash in my (not so run down) neighborhood. Took it home and it was a working 200mhz! Sadly, no porn was left on it.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[pipingguy]

Isn't "urban downtown" redundant? Or did you mean something else.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[fataugie]

I meant the "old downtown" section of a now "urban" metro area. The city is rather large compared to the downtown section. I would call the city urban. So I was narrowing my scope of concentration.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[Anonymous Coward]

In Norway, any electronics store is required to accept old TVs, computers etc and dispose of them properly

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[RackinFrackin]

I know someone who used this strategy to get rid of an old nonfunctional fridge. The fridge was in his workshop, which is in a really bad part of the city. When it died, he put it on the side of the road, expecting the garbage pickup to get it. After it sat there for a few weeks, the sanitation dept told him that he'd have to pay to have it hauled away. He put a for-sale sign on it one night, and it was gone the next morning.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[Doppler00]

I just saw an old computer sitting next to the dumpster at my apartment complex. Looks like a pentium II or pentium III series. I didnt care to take it, as I could buy a brand new one, several times faster for about $300. I don't think there are very many people who want to waste the time trying to get an old computer to work anyway. It was obviously thrown away for some reason.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[dasmegabyte]

I used to work for a state university computer center. We often got rid of a number of still useful, but aging machines, all at the same time (when we got money for new machines and had no room for the old ones).

We wanted to give them to local elementary schools. But in order to do that, we needed permission from the state bureau...which took forever, took a ton of money, and was basically a major hassle..

So here's what we did: we befriended the guy in charge of the security camera on the loading dock. We brought him subs and beers. Then, when it was time to toss out computers, he would flick the monitor to a different relay for 20 minutes, and we would move everything out.

Yeah. We stole it. And donated it to a "foundation," who removed serial numbers and gave the machines to the school.

Apparently, the director of the computer center liked our plan...he stopped scheduling pickups for throwaways. Just put them on the loading dock, and let them disappear.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[Anonymous Coward]

Just be sure and format, (really format) your HDD, and place a floppy with tomsrtbt linux on it in the drive. Include a little card on how to navigate to the MAN pages.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[cfuse]

We would get orders on occasion to clean out storage rooms, repo'd houses, old offices, etc.

I get those sort of orders occasionally (ie. on one hand "we must tighten our belts" on the other "could you just throw away everything here")

The largest thing I ever got rid of was a 5 metre section of the building's air conditioning system (hope they didn't want it).

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[nametaken]

I don't live in a terribly wealthy area, but a nice one. My friend and I used to drive around in my pickup and just grap computers. No joke, in the summer you can find at least one old computer every week. Some had usuable stuff, some don't. I have working TVs, VCRs, all kinds of crap. Most ends up going back out in my garbage... but sometimes you find something cool. Just don't be that guy on a bicycle trying to ride down the street at 5am with a roll of old carpet across the handlebars. That's just sad. :)

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[fataugie]

Exactly, most times in the case of storage rooms or whatever, they wanted it for some dept. storage or some crap....usually something "they couldn't live without" like holiday decorations or God forbid they have to walk down a hall to get their files.

The joke was, these dept's NEVER stay in one place for more than a few years. We were ALWAYS moving someone somewhere. And some of these storage rooms had old furiture from the 40's, 50's, 60's in them. Usually in really good shape except for the dust and crap on them. Sometimes a leaky pipe would destroy a leather chair or something, but usually it was just dusty. Alot of people got some nice old stuff when we went on a cleaning binge.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[KUHurdler]

I have a great job and make a great living... but on the way to work thursdays (trash day) I pick up old computers and electronics. I just love fixing them.

I sit at a desk job all day long. And a repairman doesn't make crap for wages. So I satisfy my "fixing" habit thru my neighbors garbage. If its too expensive to fix, it goes back in the trash. If I can fix it cheap, I either give it to a buddy, or sell it for cheap at work.

Free stuff is the best, and it doesn't end up in a landfill for another couple years.

Re:Old run down neighborhoods are great places

[Doppler00]

I guess it's common in silicon valley for people to throw computers away. That's where I live.

Give them to schools

[rastakid]

You could give your old systems away to schools and such. The schools with younger kids (up to the age of 10-12) are still able to do a lot of things with older systems, like grammar and mathematics educational games, requiring not more than MS-DOS. Of course there are enough schools with a rather big IT budget, but there also enough school who have to do it with less, is my experience. And they will really be glad with your donations.

Re:Give them to schools

[John Courtland]

Don't forget the possible tax deductions. I don't know what you could hope to see, but donating a non-functional car to the ACF or the ALA or whatever is worth quite a bit off your taxes.

Re:Give them to schools

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

You could give your old systems away to schools and such. The schools with younger kids (up to the age of 10-12) are still able to do a lot of things with older systems, like grammar and mathematics educational games, requiring not more than MS-DOS. Of course there are enough schools with a rather big IT budget, but there also enough school who have to do it with less, is my experience. And they will really be glad with your donations.

Please don't donate very old hardware to schools. Many schools have policies that require them to accept donations like this, and others might accept the computers because they don't realize how old and worthless they are (remember, the article mentioned "older than a Pentium-166").

All you're doing is shifting the disposal cost to the school, which may end up costing them more than the value of the computer itself.

Keep in mind that schools typically do not have a staff of IT people to repair computers, install software, train teachers, etc. I wouldn't argue if you wanted to take an old but perfectly working computer, load it up with educational software appropriate for a particular grade level, donate it to a specific teacher who's interested, and train him/her on how to use it. But my guess is that's not what you had in mind.

Re:Give them to schools

[RTPMatt]

if your in the San Jose, CA area, RAFT takes donations of all types, and cleans/fixes them and sells them them back to teachers. They have a department spcifically for computers & computer related stuff. if you want to donate, or are a teacher looking for cheap classroom computers, i stongly reccomend them.

Re:Give them to schools

[openmtl]

As the IT person at a local school I don't automatically accept any PC and I tell staff to not drop off PCs that they get given. Why ? Many reasons.

Firstly software: Being On Microsoft Schools Agreement means that any PC will thus cost money each year in the per-PC fees EVEN IF ITS USED WITH LINUX/*BSD. Don't matter - as long as its a Pentium class PC its fee liable.

Most PCs that are handed in are slow, maybe of a motherboard brand thats not well know (meaning company gone bust so no BIOS updates) or of a unusual processor e.g. Intel in a AMD site or vis versa of uses old EDO memory (which now costs a lot to replace) or ....and it goes on.

Also the device has to be electrically tested (which costs money) and prepped with correct build (driver issues here) plus would usually have to have a optical mouse added (small kids and balled mice don't mix !) and usually a new (i.e. clean without coffee and food) keyboard. Sometimes the harddisk is just 1 Gig or so which was big a few years back but now doesn't fit our standard image (intended for 2.5 Gig or higher). We also get offered old 14 and 15 inch screens - waste of electricity and room now. I'm happy with 17inch or **flat** but not less than that.

This all takes up valuable time. Now in 3rd world and LDCs time is cheaper than parts but in any first world country time is the expensive component and taking old PCs is a false economy.

Now many companies are dumping PCs on schools: why because in the UK and EU PCs are deemed as hazardous waste and thus have expensive disposal costs. They see schools as a nice way of offloading dispoal costs. Yeh great thanks but no thanks - we have a room filled with old '386/P133s already ! Once you have one router/firewall/Nessus scanner PC then you don't need any more.

Re:Give them to schools

[Anonymous Coward]

If a 4mhz z80 with 1k of ram is so fantastisch, why don't YOU use it?

The reality is that schools teach their kids to use computers, not to build/rebuild them. That means you need to be able to run something that resembles what they'll see in real life, which is either openoffice or ms office (and for schools I would suggest ms office). Good luck getting either to run on something less than a p166.

Re:Give them to schools

[dave_f1m]

We just had an article in yesterday's paper about how obsolete some of the schools computers are. The state regs. (Maryland) call for at minimum, a PII w/ 64M RAM., and in our school district, 20% are less than this.

Re:Give them to schools

[bloosh]

As the IT person at a local school, I accept any Pentium based machine with PCI slots. Add one 100Mb NIC, disable the hard drive, make a boot floppy and I've got myself a perfectly good X terminal to connect to my LTSP (http://www.ltsp.org) server. The slowest machine I have like this is an old AST Pentium 75. Runs Mozilla, OpenOffice and most everything else perfectly. Even runs our Windows based reading software via Wine. I am fortunate to work at a school where most of the administration supports me and trusts my judgement. They also seem to like the money I save by not using Microsoft products on every computer.

Re:Give them to schools

[Anonymous Coward]

How about not. 95% of the stuff that gets donated to where I work, I look at for 5 seconds, then carry to the dumpster. What the hell am I supposed to do with old 14" VGA monitors that only do 640x480, 486 computers(!), 386 computers (!!!!), and MONOCHROME-FUCKING-MONITORS???? That is just the tip of the useless computer equipment iceberg. I mean come on, none of our computers are slower than a Pentium III and all have super-VGA 15" monitors minimum. And no, we don't need a "backup" dot matrix printer either.

So get your nice fuzzy feeling unloading shit to your local school. We all know you just did it for a tax deduction anyway, which is why most of the donations come at a certain time of year.

Re:Give them to schools

[Drageon]

I agree with not dumping old pcs onto schools, my old HS had an abundance of old HW most of it pre p166 stuff, most of it gets hauled off and shipped around the district. Some of it is kept, and recently I used one of the old 166's to turn into a dhcp server for one of the peer-to-peer networks thats setup specifically for printing. Sometimes old stuff like that CAN come in handy, but it is very rare for it to. I'm somewhat lucky when it comes to ridding of old hw, I have a friend whose dad usually takes the old stuff and can pawn it off to auto shops or people without pcs. Auto shops usually use them for inventory or point of sale, usually doesn't take much machine for a older pos system or inventory system. Just my .02

Re:Give them to schools

[k12linux]

A four or five years ago we received 200 486/25Mhz computers for free from a local company. It cost us a fortune.

Most of the mice had to be replaced (approx $1000.) Because they didn't come with *PROOF* of OS licensing, we had to buy DOS for them all (approx $3000.) We had to create a working software image (approx $800 in labor) then haul them around the district, set them up in labs and ghost them (approx $30,000 in labor.)

Soon they started breaking down (power supplies going out, floppies dying, HD's dying, CMOS batteries going dead, etc.) After all, they were OLD computers. So we had to canabalize systems to keep others running and at times by some of the cheaper parts (CMOS batteries, a few floppies.) This cost plenty (approx $20,000 in time/labor.)

Eventually we decided it was costing too much just to keep them running.. plus space is limited in schools. We wanted to put systems that actually were useful to our students in these labs. You can't just throw these things in the trash (at least not around here due to recycling laws.) The cheapest we found was a place that would take CPUs for $5 each and monitors for $10 each. (The local PC resale place had no interest in any of it.) In all, getting rid of them ran us about another $2000.

If you were keeping track, that means these "free" computers cost the school district around $56,800. With that much cash, we could have gotten 70 brand new PCs from a vendor who pre-ghosts them for us and which have a five year warranty AND still paid for the labor to install them in the classrooms.

And here is something else for you to consider... on average, each tech person in a school district is responsible for 400-500 computers (contrast that to a 1:50 ratio in business.) If the computers require an average of just 10 minutes of time from a tech per *year* compared to a new one, that is as much as two work weeks worth of wasted time.

A whole different issue is how much time is wasted purely by using Windows and the MS model of each PC being independant. People would freak if they realized how much time/money were wasted in schools just keeping the Windows sytems running and installing software vs. how much time needed if they used K12LTSP Linux.

Re:Give them to schools

[k12linux]

ARRG! I re-read after posting and realized that the setup labor was WAY off. It would have been closer to $5000. I also forgot that we had to add network cards to every PC. The rest of the numbers are about right, but we would have been able to get only 45 or so brand new PCs not 70.

Regardless I still think that 45 brand new PCs we could use for 5 years is still a better deal than 200 PCs we have to scrap after 2 years and which can barely run modern software.

K12LTSP makes all of this a bit more academic. "Old" PCs are actually useful with that as long as they have a network card, good enough video card, and are fast enough to un K12LTSP well. Just the same, hardware support costs can really add up on old hardware when you have a lot of PCs.

Re:Give them to schools

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

I find this a bit sad. My first computer had 1k of RAM and was a 4 Megahertz Z80 processor. With this I learned to program in basic, play games, do word puzzles to improve spelling and maths.

Why should a 166MHz machine that would have been some futuristic dream to me be any less use to kids today?

Part of it is just the resources available. Back when your 166MHz machine was a futurustic dream, all of the software you could buy in a computer store would run on it, you could buy accessories and replacement parts for it, etc.

Keep in mind that kids are exposed to lots of electronics with about that amount of computing power - in game boys, cell phones, graphing calculators, etc.

Re:Give them to schools

[jasonditz]

Most of the schools around here won't accept old computers at all (I and some friends even offered to help them sort and fix up donated computers and were turned down).

I guess they'd rather bitch about not having enough computers and try to pass more and more tax increases to pay for brand new ones than to take a donation for *gasp* the private sector.

Re:Give them to schools

[PReDiToR]

(and for schools I would suggest ms office)

Wouldn't it be more in the spirit of /. to suggest that we edumacate the young in the ways of FOSS like OpenOffice at the earliest opportunity, rather than locking them into the Windows/Office cycle?

I mentio this because I built a PC for my 7 year old kid this Xmas and it dual boots SuSE 9 and XP, with games a plenty for both, shared Data partition and OpenOffice installed instead of Office.
I'm hoping that he starts hacking up the Linux install and finding out what a command line is before he learns about the registry, but its in his hands from here on, its for him to decide which OS he boots.

Re:Give them to schools

[griffjon]

486s, yeah, those are painful. We received some as a donation and found very little use for them, even in a development situation (of course, they had 160MB HDDs, no memory, very little capability to expand with, no working NICs or PCI slots). That being said, if you are willing to slap a nice Linux on top of the machines, add some educational software (Tux4Kids is a good place to start), it can be a valuable donation, if it has decent hardware (i.e. not like the ones I described).

You might consider international donation, check out the PeaceCorps.gov website to see if anyone's posted a request for computers, donate them to a GoodWill, etc.

Re:Give them to schools

[spidersnowball]

Boy, did you say it !!! I work in a school that is full of Mac's, although the district is slowly leaning towards PC's... The High School is almost all PC's... Doing the Tech stuff at our school on old equipment is a real pain... Try surfing every hard drive to make there is no worm, virus, porno, or anything else ANYONE would object to. Then try integrating that one-of-a-kind machine with everything else ! The idea of giving it to a specific teacher with specific, wanted software would be by far the best ticket. Maybe some poorer, private school may feel differently, but we have such a LACK of trained people, especially diverse people, it is sad!

Re:Give them to schools

[hesiod]

> Back when your 166MHz machine was a futurustic dream, all of the software you could buy in a computer store would run on it,

Excellent point. Many of these people wouldn't know that WinXP won't run on a 166, but they'd try it anyway, then think the PC is broken when it doesn't work..

Re:Give them to schools

[rackman]

1:50 Are you smoking the same crack as SCO? In my company we run comparable to that and we support a region that is five hours from one end to the other. Where did you get that number????? We run anywhere from 1:200 to 1:600 on our support model. That is supporting it all. Not just PC's but the supporting equipment, wiring and all the phone systems. I laugh at your 1:50 HAHAHAHA :-). Seriously... I help schools support there systems in my off time and I agree that they need labor not parts to help them.

Re:Give them to schools

[k12linux]

1:50 Are you smoking the same crack as SCO? In my company we run comparable to that and we support a region that is five hours from one end to the other. Where did you get that number????? We run anywhere from 1:200 to 1:600 on our support model.

Even though you apparently have no idea what the actual ratio in your company is (1:200 to 1:600 is a pretty damn big range) it does not mean that your company is consistant with the *average* in business. Based on my experience working with a variety of businesses over the past decade or so, 1:50 is indeed a fairly common ratio.

Basically, I didn't just pull these numbers out of my butt. According to this article ratios from 1:30-125 are realistic in business depending on type of use. Also, this breakdown comes up with a 50:1 ratio. Do some research and you'll find most studies recommend a *maximum* ratio of 1:100 for businesses.

On the other end, in education, this study found school district tech staff ratios averaged "1:250-1:350" with some larger districts having as high as 1:1315 ratio!

So, just because you chose to send a knee-jerk reply based on your narrow sample (one business) doesn't mean your results are at all typical. BTW, the same study shows *some* schools with as low as 1:20 to 1:125 ratio (dependant partially on school district size) but they also say these are mostly charter schools and do not represent the typical public school district. And besides, I did say "average" and not "all" when talking about both business and education staffing.

An important point is that this is a PC-to-support ratio, not user-to-support. The school environment, by neccessity, creates a VERY high user-to-support ratio. Based on my own experience, I have to agree completely with the study's findings that "Very little staff is dedicated to directly assisting teachers with the use of technology to enhance their teaching. This probably means that available hardware and software are underutilized or inefficiently utilized, and that technology-related academic expectations for the district are either limited or not fully achieved."

Re:Give them to schools

[rackman]

Two of the three articles you cited where written during the tech boom when companies hired support people they never needed. 1996 and 1998 can hardly be counted in today's business environment.

The 1:200-600 numbers depend on what type of site it is. The average dictated by our corporate bobbing heads is 1:250 PC's not users. For the market our group supports we have 8 techs and around 2700 users. To save time on calculations that works out to 1 tech to 337.5 users We have some sites that run three shifts with at least 950 users using 435 machines a day. That is an example of one site out of two that we have like this. Both are supported by one guy a piece. I believe I stated before that this was not just PC Support but network equipment, servers and the phone systems. This extra support role can add 35-40 percent more work load to the average tech. To use your words this not average. To my knowledge we try to match our support models to the competitors. There maybe some with less per tech but with outsourcing looming the majority of IT Departments are trying to trim staff for cost savings and to avoid being outsourced themselves.

Another factor you failed to consider is SLA's (Service Level Agreements). Every company uses them and I am unsure if schools do the same. In the school systems around here, I have a feeling they are less than average, if something gets broken or is damaged it can take as long as 2 months to get them fixed. In business the majority of problems must be repaired in 4-16 business hours even at the desktop level. It was not my intention to belittle school technicians. In my experience they are usually overworked, underpaid and not appreciated. They also usually have to wait for on the job training instead of the school dishing out what is required to get them up to speed on new technology they deploy.

You could...

[tomstdenis]

... say throw linux on it [or wipe the drive] and donate it to a local school. You could post a bulletin in your local newspaper [usually you can find ways of doing this for free] and offer it for free.

I can imagine there are families out there that wouldn't consider a P166 [in working order] a "bad computer".

So I'd say as long as your older machines still work clean on up and offer it to someone needy.

That, or you could fill the thing with propane cylinders and explode it in a local abandonned quary. Make sure you tape it and post a url to your video later on!!!

Tom

Re:You could...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind if someone accepts donated ancient computers to use them at home, but don't donate them to schools. A "free" 486 or slower will cost more in lost administrative time than the price of a non-free low-end Duron system which can handle current software. Don't take teachers away from kids. They will do a much better job without your trash. Just because some schools' computer labs look like computer museums doesn't mean you have to add to the misery.

Re:You could...

[leprasmurf]

I disagree, reason being school teachers don't really need access to the computers during class time or whatnot (at least not in my old HS). I could see many uses for an old computer, hell my main computer crashed and I'm on a 150Mhz computer right now. You could put it in a student area and allow them to browse the internet behind netnanny or something. They can't cause to much trouble because the computer can't handle causing to much trouble.

There are other uses in schools, my typing class couldn't have been on much more than a glorified type writer/part time paper-weight and I learned well enough. At absolute worse the schools themselves could even give them to the less than well off students, they would know alot better than a stranger who is in need if they are any type of teacher to begin with.

Re:You could...

[strike2867]

Im at college and we would be happy to take that computer. I go to UIC. We are using the old 75Mhz up to like 160 to run honeypot stuff.

Re:You could...

[Anonymous Coward]

Point in case is that the knowledge, the publically available support and replacement hardware for old machines is in short supply. Therefore (not just because the machine is slower as such) it takes much longer to make a 486 into something useful than it takes to do the same with a reasonably current low-end system. If a student accepts the challenge of browsing today's web on a 486, I'm all for it. There's a lot to be learned on that path. There are much better uses for a teacher's time though. Total cost of ownership isn't just a buzzword. Go visit a local school's computer lab and tell me if you still feel it's ok to donate your trash. You should properly recycle it and donate the hardware you were going to sell on ebay for $100 instead. Something's wrong if you think "dump", and then "local school" and "cheaper" cross your mind.

Re:You could...

[c0dedude]

I know two places that would take it: The Lazarus Foundation and Wilde Lake High School

Re:You could...

[hucke]

UIC = Univ. of Illinois, Chicago? If so, I can give you some older stuff - contact me as hucke@cynico.net.

Re:You could...

[Gavin Miller]

Ya I would consider fixing it up and donating it to a local church. Maybe use some of those spare parts lying around to get everything working and just offer it to a church or a family that cannot afford a new computer. I gave a 66mhz away to a family that could not afford a computer after installing linux on it, and it got written off my taxes :D. Merry Xmas, Gavin Miller

Re:You could...

[SiliconJesus101]

I agree 100%. I am a field tech for a cable ISP and I can definitely say that I have seen more than my share of archaic machines in use at customers homes and businesses. There are plenty of people that are less privileged that would be happy to have a computer for themselves or their kids that quite simply works even if it is a bit slow.

As I have learned in my days with cars, a throwaway car to someone else was gold to me. With most of my cars being rescued from the junk heap (when I was more poor than I am today) anything that kept me from walking was an absolutely wonderful piece of machinery.

I'm sure there are plenty of poor people that would be more than happy to have an old P166 with a dialup modem for their kids to at least have something to use and get online with.

Some garbage tips have a place for them.

[danamania]

When I lived in Sydney, one of the nearby dumps had an area where old computing equipment could be left. It -claimed- to recycle these properly, but I can't vouch for the truth behind that.

There seem to be many places that will take ancient working machinery too, and use it as donation equipment - for some people, a simple 386 is heaven. In 2001 I helped shuffle some of this stuff around, and for students who had absolutely no access to a computer for doing university work at home, a 386 that could edit text was a godsend. No, it's no use for software development or comp sci courses, but for those students who do only need to type up essays and the like, a simple machine with floppy is well appreciated and more than enough. Not every college course is comp.sci or IT.

Personally, I just get a new one and push the old ones to the side. They seem to become part of the furniture and I don't notice they're there any more :)

Re:Some garbage tips have a place for them.

[danamania]

> Which one?

It wasn't far from the huge Macquarie Centre shopping complex, along the same main road I can't remember the name of. This was back in 1997 :). Lane Cove Road perhaps? It was on one of the small side roads that led off it northwards.

Re:Some garbage tips have a place for them.

[bhtooefr]

Damn, my P4-2.2 sometimes has trouble keeping up with my typing... when I've got UT:GOTY, Opera, and Thunderbird running all at the same time. Really, a 386 ISN'T that bad - a 486SLC/2-66 (the IBM one, not the Cyrix one), which was really a 386 SX with cache, could perform equally to a 486DX2/66, except when the MCP was called on (it was an old 387SX). The 386DX-40 could kick a 486SX-33 into the ground, and it was cheaper, too. For that matter, the 286-25 was sometimes mistaken for a 386DX-40 in performance, but as soon as one were to try to run a 32-bit app, the part about it being a 286 would rear it's ugly head...

Re:Some garbage tips have a place for them.

[oo_waratah]

Computer Bank: http://www.cbnsw.com.au will take old computers in NSW Australia. There are related groups in most Australian states.

Our objective is to refurbish old computers putting open source Software on them so that they work reasonably well and distribute them to the Australian bush where they are really needed. We have groups in centres throughout NSW.

There are commercial recyclers in Australia as well. Some of these put a cheap windows setup and resell them, some grind the boards up and truly recycle them. This is where computer Bank disposes of the non-working equipment.

It is important that we do not put computers in landfill. There are heaps of nasty chemcials in them so be very considerate.

Ebay

[Killshot]

I put all my old parts, working or not on ebay People are actually willing to buy them In fact I read an article a while back that NASA has been trolling Ebay for old computers to power our space shuttle.. apparently upgrading isnt as easy an option as it is for the average computer user

Re:Ebay

[AKnightCowboy]

I put all my old parts, working or not on ebay People are actually willing to buy them In fact I read an article a while back that NASA has been trolling Ebay for old computers to power our space shuttle..

If you've got any old Cisco 2501 routers be sure to put them on eBay too since NASA is especially looking for those for their shuttles... yea, their shuttles, that's the ticket. Make sure not to priced it more than $150 with the buy now option.

Re:Ebay

[rbanffy]

Ebay is a good solution.

And you can make some money out of it too. EDO memories use to cost twice as much per byte than PC1xx or DDR.

The bad part of eBay is the shipping cost. Once I bought a Sparcstation for (I collect old interesting computers - no beige PCs - as a hobby), say, US$ 10, but shipping it to Brazil would cost more than US$ 300. Shipping whithin US cost about US$ 100, so, we gave up on the deal.

If I ever go to Denver, CO, I can drop by and see if the guy still wants to sell it ;-)

Re:eBay

[Oswald]

In a semi-related suggestion, I've donated numerous antique-but-functional parts to the local "computer doctor" guy. Unless the business is a front for a crack house, he's not making very much money, and he can solve your recycling problem. My guy even took a broken monitor, on the chance that it could be repaired economically.

Re:Ebay

[DerekLyons]

I put all my old parts, working or not on ebay People are actually willing to buy them In fact I read an article a while back that NASA has been trolling Ebay for old computers to power our space shuttle.. apparently upgrading isnt as easy an option as it is for the average computer user

True, but not true. NASA was buying old test equipment on eBay to get the chips from them to use in the Shuttle's ground support equipment, not as flight equipment. (One of the myriad budget problems that NASA has it that it's (relatively) easy to get money to upgrade the shuttle's electronics, but impossible to get money to upgrade the very unsexy ground test equipment. Congress is the ultimate PHB.)

Re:Ebay

[CowboyNick]

This is true. I recently (like in the past month) sold an Apple //e Hayes modem on eBay.

Valuable metals...?

[wrinkledshirt]

I remember seeing this report on tv or the internet or somewhere that alot of the stuff inside some old motherboards contains some valuable metals that can be melted off...? Like, silver or gold or something?

I'm sorry if I've repeated an urban legend or something, but I'm positive this was legitimate...

Re:Valuable metals...?

[kastberg]

This is actually rather true, i have worked at a place where you disassemble electronics, and the circuitboards, you send on to melt. there is actually rather large amounts of these valuable metals.

Re:Valuable metals...?

[teledyne]

Back in the day 10MB MFM drives, and even 1GB SCSI hard drives were the size of 2 5.25" bays (full height spec). These bad boys (at the time) weighed a ton, and of course went well with those huge AT cases. Anyways, people have been known to melt these drives down and extract the gold that was used to plate the inside of the drive.

Seriously, these hard drives would make a great paperweight buy on ThinkGeek, although the shipping would obviously be a little high...

Re:Valuable metals...?

[tomatobasil]

A '384/486 era motherboard contains between $1 and $2 worth of recyclable metals. You need about 5-6000 pounds of boards before processing them is economically worthwhile. Mainframe boards are worth anywhere up to $4 per pound. Junk like the power supply boards and boards inside CRTs are worth roughly 12 cents per pound. All numbers are in $us, 12/2003. Real numbers from someone in the biz of buying dead ones by the semi-truck load. It all gets processed in the US. Yes I'm buying, but only if you have a few thousand pounds of scrap minimum.

Re:Valuable metals...?

[wampus]

Seriously... I once bought a 9GB full height SCSI drive from an eBay competitor. Shipping wasn't god awful, but then I was buying this drive to use, and may have overlooked shipping in favor of the price difference vs. a new drive. I still remember that drive... a pound per gigabyte, according to the shipping label.

Google, my friend... google.

[gr8fulnded]

PC Disposal Dell, HP, and several other big players all offer various PC disposal programs also.

Welll.....

[UnCleverNickName]

There's always Goodwill. They'll take it and put it up for sale for ya. I buy a lot of old Macs from there. Their pricing is a bit odd with regards to computers, the bigger the box the bigger the price, that's the way they do it here. So while I got a 600Mhz desktop for 90$ they wanted almost twice that for a huge ppro machine hehe. Oh, and don't forget your local Churches and boy & girl scout organizations - they have computer/PC merit badges and a used PC is a great way to get their feet wet!

Re:Welll.....

[velo_mike]

There's always Goodwill.

I think this varies by area. When we left Denver for Europe 2 years ago, Goodwill wanted to pick and choose - some clothes were ok, others weren't. 3 15" monitors were unacceptable. They wouldn't take dishes but some cookware was ok, we were combining 2 houses into one and leaving the country, basically everything redundant had to go. In the end, I ended up telling Goodwill to piss off and took everything to ARC (Assoc of retarted citizens) or the battered womens shelters. Same tax right off, less headaches.

Re:Welll.....

[NetJunkie]

The local Goodwills here (Raleigh, NC) do not accept any computer equipment. I think this is a pretty new decision, but they have signs up now. No more.

Re:Welll.....

[bluestrain]

Not in Omaha, NE They'll send you to the local computer recycler that charges per pound.

Re:Welll.....

[mortal_enema]

I have found Goodwill to be not so good. The are very picky even with items that are definitely saleable and there doesn'tseem to be any policy of such. Most of the workers are just drunk-drivers working off their community service obligation. I'd rather see them mow grass or picking up trash.

Schools don't want them

[Anonymous Coward]

Licensing problems, lack of support, and a myriad of other problems plague these old computers.

They will turn you away at the parking lot, let alone allow you to drag that crap in through the front door.

Re:Schools don't want them

[Stephen Samuel]

Licensing problems, lack of support, and a myriad of other problems plague these old computers.

Licensing problems are only an issue if you insist on running Wintendos. A P100 makes a fine SOHO firewall.. Throw BSD, smoothwall, etc. on it with a spare ethernet card or two and you're flying for DSL/Cable.

They're also fine for all sorts of classroom uses that don't demand heavy computations. This would include things like doing word processing with AbiWord (Not sure about Open Office, though -- haven't tried it)

Re:Schools don't want them

[stuartkahler]

A P100 makes a fine SOHO firewall..

Actually, it doesn't. Back when a router cost $200, an old computer was a good way to run your net connection. Nowadays, you can get a router (with 802.11b AP and 4 port switch, no less) for as little as $30. The difference in electricity costs for running this 24/7 come to $5-10 per month. Not to mention the space savings, and the lack of noise or heat gain.

Re:Schools don't want them

[justins]

They're also fine for all sorts of classroom uses that don't demand heavy computations. This would include things like doing word processing with AbiWord (Not sure about Open Office, though -- haven't tried it)

Yeah, there's a really huge demand among educators for computers that can barely run AbiWord, provided you use a skeletal desktop environment that doesn't suck up whatever meager resources the machine has. Teachers are clamoring for that shit.

Re:Schools don't want them

[FCKGW]

Does your $30 router have near-infinitely adjustable firewall rules? A real DMZ (real = separate subnet)? The ability to act as a VPN endpoint? Cool traffic graphs and logging? Even in the age of $30 router/switch combos, an old PC is still a great way to get features that come mostly on very expensive corporate routers and firewalls.

Old PCs also make awesome little servers. Even a family of neophytes with multiple computers could use a shared file space, and us geeks can set up our own file/web/FTP/DNS/DHCP/time/backup/whatever servers. Personally, I have a P166 as a router, a P133 web server, and a P133 backup server. My file server is a Tbird900 only because I use it as a desktop sometimes.

Re:Schools don't want them

[stuartkahler]

I used to like the geek factor of being able to point out my server computer in the corner that I built from scrap parts in the garage. Last summer, I realized that the thing was noisy (god, I hate constant din of fans and hard drives), bulky, and continuously converted a ~100 Watt power feed into heat in a room that I did not want extra heat in. Plus extra AC costs from May - September. And I was paying roughly $8.64 per month for it. (.1KW/H * 24h * 30 days * $0.12/KWh) That's over $100/year!

The space I picked up from dumping that system gave me the room to put in a nice third system to invite an extra friend over for LAN gaming. My old K6-2 server was ass for playing games on.

Now I automatically mirror important files across the LAN to the other computer. Media files are in a shared (read only) directory. I can open the FTP port to my main computer if I want to let a friend FTP some files from me. My backup router is sitting on the shelf at Best Buy 3 miles away.

Traffic graphs and logging... Who cares? I don't have a 13 year old son who needs regular grounding for surfing for porn. My connection is 3mbps/384kbps, so I don't even need complicated load balancers. And I do want all of my machines to be on the same subnet for gaming.

I only know one person who needs more than a router/firewall for his machines at home, and he opted for multiple connections instead. He has a dedicated line to work (which then connects to the net), and a dedicated line to the internet. The two networks never touch.

I can understand using an old system as a terminal for web surfing instead of a better system, or setting it up as a 24/7 print and file server for homes with the other computers spread across the house. But using it as just a firewall/router is like driving nails with a jackhammer. It might be fun, but you look stupid doing it.

It seems like you're using a lot of that old hardware because you can't bear to dump it, rather than using it to fill a legitimate need. Do you really need to do your routing, web serving, and backups all on separate machines? You're like a smoker carrying around matches, a lighter, and two pieces of flint.

Re:Schools don't want them

[PFAK]

Yeah, I agree.

I setup a old P3 733 with 384MB of RAM with 2 8GB hard drivers running snort, squid, and a bunch of other caching functions and serving as my NAT for my network, works like a charm.

Old computers are good for something =)

Re:Schools don't want them

[FCKGW]

I like having lots of machines so I can learn different operating systems and software. My file server runs Mepis, my backup server runs Debian, my router runs IPCop, and my web server will run FreeBSD after this weekend. A lot of my stuff is done just "because I can" and for learning.

I have thought about consolidating some things, and am still considering it. I might move my backup server's hard drives into my file server and have it do its own backups (with the occasional burning of irreplaceables to CD of course). I'd like my web server to be separate from the rest of my network, so that means a real DMZ (yeah, I'm paranoid). If my ISP offers additional IP addresses for a reasonable price, I can just buy a regular SOHO router and stick my web server outside of it. Maybe I can build a low-power VIA Epia box if I miss the flexibility of a computer.

About being afraid to dump stuff, I've taken machines and parts to the recycling center in the past if I have no use for it (costing me 25 cents per pound), and will continue to do so in the future. I actually brought home my current web and backup servers from my employer (with permission) to have computers to experiment with.

Depends on where you live

[Seraphim_72]

Here in sunny Minneapolis ther are several places that will take them - my fav charges 10 cents a pound, and then they part them out and have a salvation army type store next door for the parts. I regularly dumb off my old carp, and then go shopping afterward. Managed to get some great deals on stuff and the monitor prices cant be beat -(17" for $20, 19 for $50) all good stuff too

Sera

Re:Depends on where you live

[Groo Wanderer]

Post the name of those places please. As a Minneapolinite with way to many parts, I could use a place like that. Hell, it might even make for an entertaining article, something like 'this is what happens to your old junk'.

-Charlie

Re:Depends on where you live

[bhtooefr]

Know if there's anything like that in Central Ohio?

Re:Depends on where you live

[Seraphim_72]

Sadly no,

Though I have to believe that someone has a website for recycling pc's ... :/

Sera

Re:Depends on where you live

[Reziac]

No, no, no, you're doing it all wrong! The trick is to stand outside the recyling place, and when someone comes along with a nice 19" monitor, tell them "I'll pay you 10 cents a pound for that". That way you get the same monitor for $5.00 instead of $50.

Of course, the pay by the hour for standing there isn't so great, but hey, we're bargain-hunting here!! ;)

Re:Depends on where you live

[Seraphim_72]

lol - worse monitors run $10 + $1/lb :)

Re:Depends on where you live

[Reziac]

Well, there ya go -- you get a good deal, and you save some poor bloke the $60 it would cost to dispose of that 19" monitor!

Re:Depends on where you live

[Seraphim_72]

Rez, I am adding you as a friend, Merry Met, Merry Christmas. Sera

Re:Depends on where you live

[Reziac]

Hail and well met, and good cheer to you as well!

(I have so many people here that I recognise and would count as "friends", that I gave up adding 'em as a hopeless task; nonetheless I count all those on my fans list as friends :)

Re:Depends on where you live

[number11]

Here in sunny Minneapolis ther are several places that will take them - my fav charges 10 cents a pound

In sunny Minneapolis (Hennepin County), residential recycling pickups take computer gear for free. Monitors, computers, printers, cartons of dead keyboards and power supplies, everything. And if the weather's dry and you set the stuff out a week before recycle day, it will often vanish before the appointed time.

If you're near berzerkeley

[mackstann]

ACCRC

major metropolitan area?

[cpdsaorg]

Salvation Army.

Re:major metropolitan area?

[eclectro]

My Salvation Army stopped taking computer equipment entirely. Many goodwills are following suit as they are left holding the bag when REAL junk gets dropped off.

It costs them to have their dumpster emptied to the landfill. There is no profit in having to pay for dumpsters filled with completely unusable equipment.

The stuff I take to the goodwill is very much junk, where the best of the scroungers here would not want to look at it. It really is trash by time I'm ready to haul it off. (broken 10meg MFM drive anyone? How 'bout a cga monitor? Or a 386 board with all of the chips removed? See what I mean?)

Re:major metropolitan area?

[Reziac]

There is a guy who makes clocks out of old dead hard drives and sells 'em for $25 -- very neat stuff. I'm sure a little googling will bring up his site; he has instructions for how to do it yourself, too.

I've mentioned this before, but... in Bozeman MT there is a circuit-board company that used to pitch out all their defective boards, til they noticed the horde of local artists scavenging their trash. After that, they started selling 'em at a buck or two apiece. Seems the boards were in demand as bases for wall art. Similarly, I've seen some motherboards that were downright pretty (bright green with lots of parallel copper visible), that would probably strip down into nice art backings, especially for some sort of internally-lit hanging doodad. Anyway, it's a thought for you artistically-inclined types.

industry barometer

[Anonymous Coward]

One way to check up on the "state of the art" as practiced by the average schmo is to check out the curbside pickings. For a long time in my area, the curbside offerings were Pentium 1 machines with FX chipsets and 16K to 32K of DRAM. In the last six months things have improved. Its not uncommon to find PII 300 systems or AMD K6 300 systems with 64K or 128K. Disk drives now are now usually a respectable 4 or 5 gigs or so.

One weird thing is all the perfectly good monitors that end up in the trash. I've found two Dell Trinitron 17 inch units in the last few weeks alone. Not ragged out units but clean and in excellent working condition. I suspect the reason so many good monitors end up at the curbside is the move to flat screens.

The weeks after Christmas are a good time to keep an eye on your neighbors trash. They have to make room for their Christmas computer and the old one will end up by the curb. Happy hunting.

Re:industry barometer

[Phleg]

I suspect the reason so many good monitors end up at the curbside is the move to flat screens.

In my opinion, it's something much simpler than that. Most people don't realize that monitors are mix-and-match, and can be reused with multiple computers. When Joe Sixpack buys a computer, he doesn't realize that the monitor, the processor, the PCI cards, etc., are all just standardized parts; as far as he's concerned, he bought a brick with nice graphics.

This is partly the industry's fault, too. Most manufacturers won't ship computers without a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and all the fixings. It doesn't matter that you have perfectly workable parts already--that cuts into their profit margins. And since people don't know any better and aren't educated on the matter, they don't realize that monitors without their matching computer are quite valuable and reuseable, as far as computer parts go.

Re:industry barometer

[bob65]

Most people don't realize that monitors are mix-and-match, and can be reused with multiple computers.

Woa. Talk about underestimating Joe Sixpack's knowledge level. I mean, give him some credit, let alone *most* people. Probably the real reason people throw away old monitors is because they *want* new/better ones, and have no use (that they can think of) for the old ones. Simple as that. And yes, manufacturers help out by making it oh so easy to buy a bundle, and play on people's sense of aesthetics to have matching exterior designs for all components (everyone is subject to this to some extent - ever feel the urge to get a new black keyboard to match your black monitor and mouse?).

Re:industry barometer

[puffing_billy69]

It would pay to provide a video signal, so the recorder has something to sync to. Without that, it might not run at the right speed. Any stable signal at the native colour format of the VCR should suffice.

Advanced Recycling Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Switzerland we have an advanced recycling fee since a few years. You can bring any electronic device to anyone who sells electronic devices. They have to take it back for free, even if the stuff you bring back is older then the new recycling system. Before people were trying to evade costly recycling fees by dumping things into the wood or the like. From a consumer point of few I like this very much because it sometimes was quite difficult to find the correct place to dispose off something.

But if the device is still working or easily repaired, reuse it rather than recycle it.

The fees (German)

An english overview over the system

You should start earlier

[wackybrit]

Instead of hoarding and facing this problem, you should have done something about it a long time ago. I upgrade all the time, but when I do, I always find someone to sell the old parts to, or can put them in a machine I'm building that someone buys from me on the cheap (this is how I seem to upgrade my CDRW about a billion times a year). But you need to get rid of old parts before they become old, otherwise you end up with the problem you're in now.

If you sell the parts while someone still really wants them, and will pay good money, then you remove the whole problem of disposal. (Well, technically you push it on to someone else, but that's just as good) So next time you upgrade, go out and get those benjamins! It helps you rationalize the upgrade if you can get 50% of your costs back too ;-)

Re:You should start earlier

[wackybrit]

Your suggestion just passes the problem onto someone else.

And what's wrong with the good old American way!?

Re:You should start earlier

[randmairs]

Problem is I'm the guy you sell them to...

Re:You should start earlier

[Reziac]

My problem is that I always seem to have enough concurrent stuff of my own that can use the aged-out parts... frex, back when SIPPs were still worth something, my junker test box was a 386 that took SIPPs. So I have 20mb of the things, which outlived said test box. Hate to throw 'em out, cuz if ever they're needed, they'd be a bitch to replace.

But *I* think it's "normal" to have a dozen systems around the house, mostly built from used and salvage parts. For someone who only needs one newish system at a time, well, I certainly have bought (and salvaged) enough of other folks' aged-out componets to confirm that there is a market for last-year's parts. :)

Re:You should start earlier

[kardar]

One strategy that you could use would be to cram as much hardware into one case as you can (unless you want to keep the case, which would make sense). On the other hand, cases are relatively inexpensive, so it might be worth it for the sake of neatness.

Cram it full of expansion cards that don't work, old hard drives, CD drives, just pack that case full until you can't fit anything else in there. With a little creativity, you could even mount a power supply where hard drives are supposed to be.

That way you have it all in one handy, nice, little (or not so little) package which will be easier to "put" somewhere.

In any case, if you do consolidate and simplify, it will make you feel better because your computer parts area of your domicile will at least have the appearance of being organized.

Re:You should start earlier

[wackybrit]

That's such a simple idea that I'm not sure why I didn't think of it. I have a big old empty server case, I could easily load it up with junk. Good thinking batman :-)

Several Options

[briansz]

1) Donate to Goodwill and get a coupon you can use at their local outlet to buy more schlock

2) Donate to somebody needy

3) Scrapfest. Steel can usually be dropped off for free at scrap metal dealers. If you clean the standoffs, nuts, screws, and metal ends off the circuit boards, they should be worth about $0.75 a pound for gold recovery. If all the metal is left on, expect half that. Check the Yellow pages under Scrap Metal.

Destroy and despposal

[zippo01]

Destorying them, DON'T GIVE YOUR DATA UP. but have fun with it, See how long it will run as you pull it's parts out, see how long you can play Tuxracer while it slowly smolderes.

Re:Destroy and despposal

[bhtooefr]

If it's version 1.1, and it's as old as the guy says, it'll smolder just playing Tux Racer!

BTW, if I try this, which part do I remove first for maximum runtime and maximum destruction.

Re:Destroy and despposal

[bhtooefr]

Umm, I said maximum RUNTIME too, you know. Would ripping out RAM chips do anything interesting or just lock the box?

recycle tax

[Potor]

if you live in belgium, then you can give back the parts to electronics dealers, or dispose of them ecologically soundly at a community dump. we pay a small recycling tax on all electronics over here, and that is used for disposal. ps, this post comes from a p166. merry xmas, potor

Re:recycle tax

[Spellbinder]

just like in switzerland =))))

Re:recycle tax

[peksik]

if you live in belgium, ... I mod up grammar corrections.

Mod me up. Your sentences didn't start with capital letters and the last one didn't end with a period.

Re:recycle tax

[Potor]

orthography is not the same as grammar.

Re:recycle tax

[j0e_average]

Okay, how's this? If you live in belgium, you can return parts to electronics dealers, or dispose of them in an ecologically sound manner at a community dump. Over here, we pay a small recycling tax on all electronics that is used for disposal. Merry Christmas, potor ps: This post comes from a p166.

Re:recycle tax

[Potor]

merry christmas to you, good sir.

cheers, potor

Goodwill Recycles

[ChuckCaves]

Goodwill has a program where they use old machines/parts to train computer skills to teens. I'm not sure if it exists at all Goodwills... but I'm sure that they would take your old stuff and some of it could be eligible as a tax deduction for you.

Re:Goodwill Recycles

[schatten]

Here in Austin, TX, there's a Goodwill Computer Store - it is specifically for computers & computer parts only.

In the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the UK and make up computers from salvaged parts. When I or other people upgrade, there's a food chain the machines move down.

Not many charitys take old machines over here (to sell) because they become liable for damage (i think).

It's always nice to see someones face light up because they've just been given a computer, even an old one, that they couldn't afford anyway

Austin Texas Info

[SethJohnson]

In Austin, Texas, there are several solutions for disposing of these obsolete appliances. Here is a link to your options.

I agree with the posters discouraging the donation of old computers to schools. They really aren't equipped to deal with them. If you want to see the hardware creatively 're-used' rather than recycled, perhaps you can donate it to a non-profit hacker organization like the Free Net groups in various cities.

Check with your state recycling program

[weave]

Check with your state recycling program. For example, Delaware has a free electronics recycling drop off program.

If your state doesn't have one, push your legislators to start one too. Point at Delaware as an example! It beats it ending up in a common landfill without proper handling.

Recycling computers in Australia

[sbranden]

Australia has an excellent network of hardware recyclers. Computerbank Australia Inc is a non-profit that receives donated computers and builds decent systems out of the peripherals and components, installs linux and gives the computers away to those who can not usually afford them.

I am involved with Computerbank in South Australia and we are always looking for hardware. We pick it up in the metro area for free and wipe any drives using dban.

Re:Recycling computers in Australia

[sbranden]

The current opperating system used in South Australia is fedora, but most systems this year were installed with mandrake 9.0.
The minimum specifications for a workstation machine that we give away are pentium 1 166, 2gb hdd, 64mb ram and 15" svga monitor. Lower end machines are typically used as x-terminals and routers.
Any parts that are not useful get sent to a hardware recycler.

I too have been meaning to do this

[aardwolf204]

I wonder how many other slashdotters have closets full of computer parts. Sometimes I think to myself that this is ridiculous. I've got 3 closets in my apartment and I refer to them as "monitors closet", "case closet" and "parts closet"... Even invested in drawers for the parts closet so I can find what I need (IDE cable, PSU, mobo) quickly.

Why, oh God why do I keep 512KB SIMMs!! Someone just steal this stuff from me!

Re:I too have been meaning to do this

[Reziac]

Sounds just like my place, which is often referred to by others as "The Closet" :) Among its contents are cache and BIOS chips for 386s, 20mb in 256k SIPP sticks, over 300mb in 72pin SIMMs (where's my time machine? 10 years ago that was $15,000 worth!), and one fully working XT. This ain't a parts closet, it's a museum!

[plaintively] Is there a tax deduction for museums??

Re:I too have been meaning to do this

[JoeShmoe950]

You people only have closets! I have a room! Actually its just 2/3 of a room.

Re:I too have been meaning to do this

[PReDiToR]

Think "Fight Club" and see how far out of your block you can send mangled burning pieces of computer with a good old fashioned gas explosion...

Good insurance is expensive to come by, lets keep it that way.

Re:I too have been meaning to do this

[Reziac]

Hmmph. Well, I'm working on making it a whole building worth. :)

Of course, if the rest of what is supposed to be the master bedroom weren't taken up with two full pickup loads worth of books, it could contain more computer parts. :)

(When I get my shop building reroofed, the older computer stuff will all get evicted out to there...)

MOD UP

[Zork the Almighty]

I'm sure the parent post will get modded into oblivion, seeing as how it's Christmas and people are looking for that warm fuzzy feeling.

Here are my suggestions : Convert anything with 16mb of ram or more into an X-terminal; load FreeDOS and maybe Windows 3.1 and use it for old games and legacy apps; use it to experiment with weird operating systems; if you program, test your code on it - your own impatience will improve your algorithms; attach it to some sort of household device, like a coffee maker, so you can control it over the network; make an IASD setup (irredundant array of shitty disks) and store all your important files on it;

...and last but not least : find a geek, preferably unmarried, who expresses interest in any of the preceding.

Re:MOD UP

[saintlupus]

make an IASD setup (irredundant array of shitty disks)

Heh. My friends and I always referred to this is a RASDA (pronounced "Rasta") -- Randomly Accessed Shitty Drive Array.

--saint

Give it to someone who needs it

[mr_lithic]

We have this problem as an organisation and have found a small co-operative in the East End of Glagow that takes them and refurbishes them for community groups.

When I have a computer that is looking a bit worn, I wipe the drive, reload the OS, adn give to a local group that needs it. So far, that has included a local lawn bowling club, a scout troop and a senior's home. These people don't need a fast machine. Just someone that can dial up to the internet and print newletters or raffle tickets. I get more room at home and they get the machine. Works a treat.

Re:nmmmm pie

[Sexy Bern]

When come back, bring pie.

disposal worth more than cash

[psyki]

Here in the Seattle area there are at least half a dozen places I know of that will either buy old crap from you or at least take it off your hands for free. If your hardware has any value at all (read: less than 3 years old) then usually you can make a few bucks or so.

Although I usually hold on to hardware well past the point of it being valuable anymore so I could care less about getting any money for old 15" CRTs or Pentiums.

dell...

[smash]

... apparently have a pc-recycling program, at least here in Australia.

I just noticed in one of their recent corporate brochure mail-outs, that they actually offer you a rebate on new stuff if you send them your old hardware.

Maybe worth if if you're looking to upgrade...

smash.

Re:dell...

[TheDarkRogue]

Yea, they have it here in the US Too, several months ago they had a dropoff point at CMU in pittsburgh

Re:Oh dear, what can the matter be?

[Doomrat]

Mod parent up! +! insightfool!

Re:Two options

[davmoo]

Sorry, but this is an urban legend and could get you in to trouble with the IRS.

The value of your old 386, when you donate it, is NOT the $3000 you originally paid for it. The value of your old 386, for tax donation purposes, is what a reasonable person would pay for it on the open market...in otherwords, maybe $20.

This applies to anything you donate that is used, not just computers. If that old junk heap of a vehicle in your front yard would only get $300 if sold, then that is its value for tax donation purposes. Giving it to the Goodwill does not allow you to write off the $17,000 purchase price when it was new. And the fact that organizations give you a blank receipt and allow you to write in your own value does not change tax law.

Will you get caught and busted for overstating the value? Probably not, unless you do it all the time. But still you should be aware of what you are doing when you put it on that tax form.

Usually here I would put the usual IANAL, but this case is different. Besides being a computer programmer, this time of year I also am a paid tax preparer with bookoo training on the subject, and my mommy works for the IRS.

A similar question

[Monkelectric]

Does anyone know how to recycle lead acid batteries? I've got a whole pile of dead cells from UPS's.

Re:A similar question

[hazem]

In the US, most city/county governments have an office that keeps track of local recycling companies. I'd look there to see if they can point you in the right direction.

Re:A similar question

[afidel]

I think any place that sells car batteries is required to accept used lead acid batteries for disposal. They probably just throw em in with the car batteries that get sent to a place that reconditions them.

Re:A similar question

[bscott]

To recycle any sort of battery: http://www.BatteriesPlus.com - not intended as an endorsement per se, it's just the place I take my old batteries and buy some of the more obscure models of replacement when the need arises. Looks like they're in (almost?) all 50 states.

Burbank Recycle Center

[phalse phace]

Here in Burbank, California we have the Burbank Recycle Center. Bring in all your old stuff and drop it off. They'll take care of the rest.

Here are the E-Waste that they'll take:

• Cell phones
• Computers, monitors
• Electronic toys
• Microwave ovens
• Network equipment
• Printers
• Stereos
• Telephones
• Televisions
• Vacuum cleaners
• VCRs
• Video games

If you have numerous computers, monitors, printers, etc., the Recycle Center can put you in direct contact with the recyclers of these products.

Freegeek in Portland, OR

[hazem]

In Portland, OR, there is Freegeek: www.freegeek.org.

They take all kinds of computer equipment. They refurbish what they can and recycle the rest with "responsible vendors" - meaning places that don't just ship it off to China.

Drop-offs are free, except for monitors, which cost $10 because of the difficulty in handling all the metals and toxic materials in monitors.

People can also volunteer there in their different programs and get "free" computers for their work.

Re:Freegeek in Portland, OR

[mysticgoat]

Free Geek charges $10 / monitor to cover the cost of shipping them to a recycler that can break them apart safely. People (and businesses) bring in their old systems and leave with a receipt that's of use at tax time. It is up to the donator to estimate the value of his donation.

Free Geek runs three programs that are kind of interesting:

• A, for Adoption program: do 24 hours of volunteer time and you earn a Freak Box (lot's of high schoolers in this program)

  Freak Boxen are currently spec'ed as: 200 - 233 Mhz CPU, 96 Mb ram, 3 - 4 Gb HD, NIC, sound card, modem included, Debian as the OS. Volunteers get a four hour orientation to common home computering under Linux, a working system, and follow-up support.

• B, for Build program: assemble five computers from salvaged parts for Free Geek's programs, then you can assemble a sixth one for yourself
• C, for Collaborative Technologies programs: Debian systems, support, and training are provided to area non-profits like charities and churches to move them away from the costs of proprietary systems.

Here's the link again, in case you missed it in the parent: Free Geek

The Build program is a kick. Building systems from salvaged parts gives is giving me a whole different perspective.

Re:Freegeek in Portland, OR

[Sepper]

Anyone knows how this could be duplicated elsewhere?

Re:Freegeek in Portland, OR

[whypick1]

"The Build program is a kick. Building systems from salvaged parts gives is giving me a whole different perspective." Couldn't agree more. Combines my addiction with all things computer-related with something beneficial to society. Plus the place looks any living space I have been/will be in, except they have a hell of a lot more dead hardware than I could ever accumulate (although I did get a few "whoas" when I brought in all of this stuff in along with a 6x4x2' box full of other computer miscellany to donate).

Re:Freegeek in Portland, OR

[mysticgoat]

It requires a lot of intensive people effort. I think the greatest challenges are finding the best ways to enable motivated but clueless volunteers to become effective at breaking down old equipment, then testing and assembling miscellaneous components into new working systems. It's fascinating. Free Geek is literally teaching people who didn't know a monitor had its own power cord how to build up a computer system.

Most of this is not yet really codified. It's at that stage where instructions to the n00b are "Just follow the flowchart that's on the workbench wall... oh yeah, come get me when you reach the third step because we've changed that..." The whole organization seems to run this way. Given the hacker culture there, I don't see any intrinsic reason why these people would try to codify what they've done beyond the bare minimum: the current methodology works, is constantly being adapted and improved, and is comfortable for all who are immediately involved with it. It may not seem very efficient, but the customary measures of efficiency don't apply in this situation (raw materials have zero cost; the value invested in a nearly complete work in progress can be less than the value of soothing someone's ego, etc).

Now an extrinsic reason for codifying their knowledge base, like grant funding to do so... hmmm... that's something to think about...

I think at present anyone wanting to start up a similar operation should either try real hard to headhunt one of the Free Geek staff, or send their own tame geek to Free Geek for three months or so, to absorb the culture and learn the techniques (but possibly lose their geek to the wilds of SE Portland).

Help the Third World

[Hugh Mayfield]

Depending on where you are, Computer Aid International may be able to help. If you're in the Bristol/Avon or Reading areas of the UK, a great little charity called Computers for African Schools might be interested if the machine is at least a P75, 32MB RAM, 1GB HDD. These guys do some excellent work, refurbishing these machines and shipping them out to Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. I work with them on occasion, not so much because I want to help the third world (though of course that's important) but mainly because I hate to see good machines go to waste.

386 usage

[Jacek Poplawski]

on 386 you can still do interesting things:

• programming in many languages (just without visual shit^H^H^H^Hide)
  
• edit documents in text editor (then compile them with LaTeX!)
  
• watch picture collection
  
• play NetHack
  

All you need is good, new monitor, because old one can be bad for your eyes. Other parts of computer are perfect to use with completly new software.

Re:386 usage

[acaird]

LateX on a 386? :) If you do this, make sure you have the disk space for the fonts and set LaTeX to keep them around. Generating them on demand on a 386 will take days.

That said, there is no better way to make beautiful documents, and LaTeX will certainly work well on a 386. And, of course, when you upgrade, your files will still look exactly the same - Mac, PC, Linux, BSD, whatever.

Re:386 usage

[Reziac]

Actually, a good clear amber mono monitor is much easier on the eyes than any VGA could ever hope to be, because mono's total light output is so much less -- even less than LED screens. Herc mono is also perfect for text editing or simple graphics, and works well with older systems. There are even mono-compatible games, like Beast, MahJongg, and perhaps even Netwars :)

Re:386 usage

[Jacek Poplawski]

LateX on a 386? :)

Text editor on 386. LaTeX later, on another computer. All you need is modem, ethernet, or floppy disk :)

Re:386 usage

[stuartkahler]

watch picture collection

386s are surprisingly slow at displaying JPGs. Especially ones taken at 3+ megapixel camera resolution that your typical geek would have. Most slideshow programs don't pre-decode the picture before displaying it since it tends to be near instantaneous on modern machines. This means that a 386 driven picture show would spend a lot of time showing the picture being decoded.

Re:386 usage

[FurryFeet]

watch picture collection

You misspelled pr0n.

play NetHack

And, actually, this is all a decent systems administrator ever runs, anyway...

Send them to the 'third world'

[billsf]

Nobody has mentioned what is often done here. Collect old equipment, mix and match parts until you have say thirty or more working PCs and send them to Africa or any other place that can use them. There are NGOs that will see to it they end up where they are needed.

It's your conscience what OS you use, and while they often think they want Windows, this is probably more harmful than good. It is important for people to learn how the machines work so Linux or BSD are far better choices. (Compile on your fast machine and install on the slower machines.) The i386 is more or less obsolete and also many old workstations.

In considering the operating system remember that getting even a single Internet connection in a third world village can be problematic. In the mean time a LAN will do. Some, if not all, should therefore have server capabilities. All but the poorest areas can manage to get electricity and eventually an outside connection, often by radio.

Despite all the nice pictures you see on your TV, starvation is not the problem the people behind this propaganda would want you to believe. It is unrealistic to believe any more than a tiny fraction of charity money ever makes it out of your own country. On the other hand the old PCs do and therefore that is a better charity choice.

easy...

[DaneelGiskard]

...build PC for parents, they will love it and you get a warm feeling out of it*

*only profitable if you live out of easy travel distance

Re:easy...

[mce]

The only trouble here is that parents don't upgrade because you do.

I'm still using a Dual P-166 at the moment. Yes, it's damn old and I'm very seriously thinking of replacing it soon. But I will not be able to pass it on to my father, simply because he's still using my previous box: a 386DX running at 33MHz, from which he removed the 387 clone because he had no use for something that advanced. He knows DOS inside out and back (assembly level included) and can work real miracles with things like damaged FAT floppies, but give him a machine that requires Windows or Linux for no other reason than a lack of DOS drivers, and he's lost to no end. He'll turn 76 soon, by the way, so I perfectly understand him not wanting to invest in learning a "new" OS anymore. Not even the Windows 95 that I still have sitting in a dark and dusty corner of my harddisk (and never ever use, obviously).

Not on the sidewalk.

[Anonymous Coward]

The American Dream is happening in India nowadays.

Now, IMHO, Africa wiould be a better place to donate your PC...

Merry Xmas to everyone!

Scrap them for parts!

[aarku]

Or give them to a robot enthusaist like me who will. The floppy drives, optical drives, and hard drives are a great source for very nice stepper and gear motors.

Dell Recycling

[InnovativeCX]

Yesterday afternoon I received a Dell ad in the mail. On the back cover, they advertise a new PC recylcing service. For $7.50, you can recycle up to 50 lbs of computer equipment, up to three items from any manufacturer. Additionally, they give you a handy 10% off coupon for use toward a new Dell purchase.

Furthermore, they have also launched a new Dell Donations program to benefit the National Cristina Foundation. If you have hardware (ad says 'above Pentium I'--ambiguous as to whether or not your P-166 would be accepted), they'll take it and fix it up for disabled/disadvantaged children and adults.

Instead of forcing you to drive or UPS it to a distribution center or a warehouse, they send an Airborne Express guy out to your house or business to pick it up. I have to admit, I'm rather impressed by this program.

More information available here.

Re:Dell Recycling

[SoupaFly]

I used this for some old 386 systems I had laying around collecting dust and it worked like a charm! I did some looking around and didn't find many options for computer recycling. The Dell program was really simple though. Simply online order form. Then you just put the stuff outside your front door on the day specified. Couldn't be easier. HP has a recycling program too (looks a little bit more expensive than Dell).

Anywhoo, I was a little upset about having to pay someone to recycling my old electronics. I guess if you consider the fee as a shipping cost though, it's not so bad. Better than dumping more toxic crap in a hole in the ground too.

Re:Two options

[afidel]

My CPA told me you are probably safe with the greater of the 'reasonable sale price' or purchase price minus standard depreciation table methods. You just have to be able to justify it to an auditor should it come to that. Obviously overvalued deductions can get you flagged for an audit and should you be overstating your case the fines, penalties, and headaches will make it SO not worth it.

Dell Recycling

[mmurphy000]

Dell runs a recycling program, and they take other manufacturers' equipment as well. They take PCs, printers, monitors, etc. There is a per-item charge, but it's fairly low (PCs are normally $15, but it looks like it's "on sale" for $7.50). That covers the shipping - you just box the item up, and on the day they specify, leave it outside, and Airborne will come by and take it away.

Check it out at the Dell site.

I've used this program to recycle a dead 17" monitor, and it worked like a charm.

pass it on...

[humanerror]

I donate my geek skills to a non-profit here in San Francisco (an experience which has given me new insight into the phrase "legacy systems")... I scavenge hardware for parts off the free listings on craigslist.org. The usability and quality is generally better than what we get from donations (usually from local businesses looking to get rid of ancient hardware at no cost, just like you).

If you live in an area covered by craigslist, just post a listing in the free section... someone will take it off your hands, I assure you. Or, take a few moments to locate a worthy local non-profit or charity and make a call or two. Even if the ones you call have no need for it, chances are they know some other org that would love to have it.

Recycling is just one part of resource lifecycle management... don't forget about reduction and reuse.

Where are you?

[NilsK]

We have recycling centers in every city. The one here around the corner accepts electronical devices for recycling for free from private persons. Companies have to pay some money to get rid of their stuff. That is in Hamburg, Germany. You forgot to mention where you are.

Nils

Charityies

[mpost4]

I would say a Charity would be happy to take them, I know at my church we still have alot of 486s and P90s (I am right now building a new back up server out of an old P133, using linux of cource) and we would be happy to take anything.

uk based stuff

[sparkes]

www.a2rt.org and lowtech.org to get those old pc's recycled into art installations or access spaces running linux.

besides the blokes running these projects are cool ;-) and drop by from time to time to party with wolves lug.

Salvage yards

[jonadab]

Look in the yellow pages under "Salvage". Where I live, there's a little place
called CTR just up the road in Crestline, about a five minute drive from here.
There may be something similar near where you live.

um...

[nuggetman]

I dont suppose you've considered taking them to a recycling center...?

WTF?

[tuxette]

Being On Microsoft Schools Agreement means that any PC will thus cost money each year in the per-PC fees EVEN IF ITS USED WITH LINUX/*BSD. Don't matter - as long as its a Pentium class PC its fee liable.

Am I understanding this correctly? That you have to pay a fee for every Pentium class PC you have, even if it doesn't have Microsoft crap on it?!

If so, find the moron responsible for signing such a contract, and slap him/her silly.

Re:WTF?

[CaptBubba]

"If so, find the moron responsible for signing such a contract, and slap him/her silly."

More like identify the morons who are responsible and vote them out of office.

Re:WTF?

[justins]

"If so, find the moron responsible for signing such a contract, and slap him/her silly."

More like identify the morons who are responsible and vote them out of office.

Since you're probably talking about a local school board, it's more like:
1. Convince the local voters this is actually a problem
2. Convince the local voters they should replace all the school board members they voted in over some trivial software crap

Good luck with that.

Re:WTF?

[rifter]

"Being On Microsoft Schools Agreement means that any PC will thus cost money each year in the per-PC fees EVEN IF ITS USED WITH LINUX/*BSD. Don't matter - as long as its a Pentium class PC its fee liable."

Am I understanding this correctly? That you have to pay a fee for every Pentium class PC you have, even if it doesn't have Microsoft crap on it?!

If so, find the moron responsible for signing such a contract, and slap him/her silly.

This is Microsoft's standard contract. You dont get a different one. If you do not buy this contract you go to BSA-land. Under this contract you pay for a windows license on computers even if they run Linux, and even if you bought them with an OEM-licensed copy of Windows. So you pay for Windows at least twice in most cases.

You cannot decrease the number of computers under this contract. You can only increase it, and at a rate determined by Microsoft. This means that you may be paying for more licenses than you have computers.

This is the license they are offering schools, businesses, and governments, and they are lapping them up like hotcakes. It was Microsoft's plan to survive the dot-bomb and kill Linux, and it is working.

Recently the Federal government found out they had been being overcharged for years, in part by paying small business prices for things rather than enterprise prices. Their reaction was to buy more microsoft software than ever.

Re:WTF?

[M. Silver]

Am I understanding this correctly? That you have to pay a fee for every Pentium class PC you have, even if it doesn't have Microsoft crap on it?!

Seems to be a pretty common sort of contract. If you're a Microsoft-only shop, there's really no reason not to sign that sort of contract; it makes paperwork easier (just count boxen) and I assume MS gives a discount for it.

Re:WTF?

[openmtl]

Yup thats how it works. Basically the per-PC price is dirt cheap (less than a 10th of the retail/fully packaged price of the software) but it only includes UPGRADES to the OS thus any PC that you place on the MS Schools Agreement MUST include a fully licensed Windows OS if its to be used with MS software.

In the end it means its very hard to remove Windows once you are stuck in the MS tarpit because every PC is liable and to get out of the Schools agreement then you would have to migrate many PCs because every PC that doesn't get migrated (e.g. admin system to run specialist admin packages) must have a Full license (retail/edu) product bought for it (which given the costs of Office and an OS every residual Windows PC would cancel out 5-10 times as many Linux/*BSD PCs.

You don't get to be a multi-billion dollar company with 40 billion or so of spare cash which is still being accumulated even during a recession by being helpful or generous to poor inner-city schools !.

Recycling center?

[jridley]

In Ann Arbor, MI, the recycling center has a dropoff spot for computers. I'm sad they have a "no scavenging" sign there, whenever I go there there's a mountain of machines, monitors, and laser printers on the heap. But it's a college town, if they let people pick it they'd have husks with no RAM/etc. I don't know what they do with them but at least as dropped off they could send them to a refitter that could use the RAM, drives, etc to build machines for the 3rd world, etc. Some machines may even be fast enough to give to local schools; businesses are starting to throw away machines close to 1GHz. Our company has been throwing away older enterprise-class laser printers like 5Si's even if they have not been having maintenance problems; a school could make good use of those. Hell, I wouldn't mind one except it'd take up half my computer area.

eBay

[Gadzinka]

No, I'm serious. I sell all my outdated computer parts via an auction site. Not only it doesn't cost me, usually I earn enough to send them and buy myself couple of blank DVDs or so.

This way someone who still has some use for them can buy it really cheap too.

Robert

please, send them to me.

[hummassa]

contact me (my-slashdot-nick at email d0t com) and I'll happily give you the address. I am in desperate need of a new firewall appliance... ;-)

DOS Lives!

[dostalgic]

Slap FreeDOS on them and check out the abandonware game sites. DOS on a 166 MHz rocks!

Not true

[eamber]

I work for a school district in rural Lancaster, PA - and I'll tell you: We have an entire old schoolhouse building FILLED with skids stacked with old P166's - probably at least 1000 of them ... and monitors to go with them. We can't even give them away. No one will take them, and believe me - we've looked.

Re:Not true

[acidrain69]

Bullshit. A monitor is never useless. You can always go multimonitor on win98 and up and with X. There is no reason someone wouldn't want a monitor. I make my family members hold on to the old one when they replace one, you never know when one will fail. My girlfriend's monitor is starting to die, it has smudged/darkened grey streaks across the screen. It's a 19" though, and I don't have anything that big to replace it with :)

Re:Not true

[Smelly Jeffrey]

There are many many uses I can think of for old machines such as those you describe...

Re:Not true

[doj8]

Bullshit. A monitor is never useless.

What if the maximum resolution it can display is 640x480x256 color? And you need more for your applications. What if it is black and white? And you need color. What if it isn't a VGA monitor (it is CGA, EGA, TTL)? Most everything now requires VGA. There are many cases where you cannot use an old monitor. As much as I would like to, I've had to discard literally hundreds over the years.

Re:Not true

[Jesus 2.0]

There is no reason someone wouldn't want a monitor.

How about "because I already have more than I need, because they take up space, because I have never had a monitor fail on me, and because if enough of my monitors did fail on me that I would need another, I would simply go out to the store and get another"?

Re:Not true

[justins]

Bullshit. A monitor is never useless. You can always go multimonitor on win98 and up and with X. There is no reason someone wouldn't want a monitor.

There are a few rather obvious reasons:
1. Desk space
2. Don't need it
3. The monitor is low-quality crap - and most monitors are, frankly, even when they're new

In any case, a lot of people are very happy with one monitor, thanks.

Re:Not true

[Wolfrider]

--Imagine a Beow[NO CARRIER]

Re:Not true

[KermitJunior]

I'll take them all. I've started a NPO that does a lot of LTSP and focuses on and educational distro. Email me at: my /. login (at) yahoo DOT com

Thought !

[moby]

have you tried the trash?

Re:You lazy fucking American!

[whoda]

Sure you both aren't French? You both have coward in your names.

It's winter time.

[alecto]

Being that it's cold in many parts of the world and many are without heat, I imagine an old PC with even a vintage Intel or AMD chip would add welcome warmth to homes in which natural gas service has been disconnected.

Merry Christmas!

Freecycle

[PacoTaco]

Maybe try this. Also good for non-computer stuff.

the needy, the curb, the recycler

[ScottSpeaks!]

My local newspaper publishes a special section on Thanksgiving Day in which people (mostly from social service organizations and charities, but also friends and neighbors) describe "Christmas wishes" for certain needy people they know. There are invariably several requests for functional computers of various kinds (e.g. "capable of doing e-mail"), which is a good use for "obsolete" gear, and great for your offline karma. (Suggest this to your local paper if they don't already do anything like it.)

I'll echo another poster's suggestion of the "curb sale" approach. It may not work in homogenous suburbs where everyone keeps up with the Joneses, but in a mixed-income area, there are always people who can use the cast-offs of the middle class. Over the years I've gained and disposed of some great stuff on the local curbs.

But to directly answer the original question: CompRenew in Belding, Michigan is a good, not-too-expensive option for the recycling/salvage of computer gear in this area.

Absolutely,

[bakuretsu]

drop 'em off at my house.

Give them to the poor -- not to schools/nonprofits

[plinius]

I've seen it a hundred times, people never want to give freebies to the poor in America. This is worse on the West Coast but it's generally true. They will give things away to schools, to nonprofits, to immigrants even, but native-born poor people are often cut out of the loop. I say, put an ad in the paper that says "free computers to any individuals who need them".

Blow them up!

[dmobrien_2001]

My son and I take old PC's and monitors out in the backyard and shoot them with rifles and pistols! Great fun.

Heavy Salvage

[man_ls]

I've got a damaged computer system in my garage (StorageTek 9393-600) that weighs about 1000 lbs empty.

Any suggestions on getting this thing out? Maybe a salvage dealer would come pick it up?

Prison

[matth]

We have a local Prison that works with Unicor to recycle old computers, and then sell what they can as usable computers, we often are able to get some good deals for our company there.

Unicor

don't underestimate the sidewalk

[mr_burns]

If you live anywhere urban the sidewalk is amazing.

I was walking down the street with my gf at the time in Oakland and there were these old 486's and p60's laying around. I busted out the cybertool and started harvesting ethernet cards. People came by with tools who had seen them 15 minutes or so earlier than I did and I started helping them build machines and pick the best parts.

However, you can't just abandon the machines or leave them for the dept of sanitation. The amount of lead and other nasties in computers is environmentally hostile. One thing to do is advertise that you're doing this. I see this on craigslist.org (or any other location based classifieds) a lot. Postings like: "I'm gonna leave this stuff on the corner of this and that at 5pm" are common and get the word out to people who need parts and can't afford them.

After the compu-hyenas have picked the carrion clean you should take responsibility for what's left and decide, based on what's there if you want to recycle or find a place to dump that will do so ethically.

in the San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley area

[danimal]

there is the Alameda County Computer Resource Center. They even have a list of fees that they charge to make sure they can properly dispose of the items. They take many types of electronics, "We want everything you can plug in that you don't put food inside of." They also turn around and provide computers and other things that work or are repaired to schools, charities, non-profits, and disabled folks. So it's a win-win situation, you get rid of your computer parts and they help someone else.

Re:You lazy fucking American!

[ChuckCaves]

What the hell say do you have about the content of Ask Slashdot? It's an American site... I guess the reason that you hang out here is that wherever you come from must have extremely boring websites since you seem to have to hang out in an AMERICAN website to find interesting material.

And as far as laziness goes... America is the MOST productive country by far in the world. We work more hours per week than any other country (not sure about Japan... they are probably close to us). But Europeans? They are always on vaction... we work over 40 hours a week on average... while the lazy Europeans work 35 or less... but that's okay... as long as you guys stay lazy... we will maintain our economic superiority.

So go hang fire bloke

old linux machines never die...

[mr_burns]

...they become appliances.

Just because the machine is no longer fast enough to be a general purpose machine of modern standards doesn't mean it can't do one specific thing extremely well.

A school or nonprofit could make good use of a donated 386 as a print server, pbx etc. You can find your favorite needy organization, ask them what they sorely need and use your hardware macgyver skills to do some philanthropy.

Sell used parts?

[bigberk]

In my city, we have formed a USENET group meant for the sale/swapping of old parts. I've used this group to buy my Pentium-class server which now runs Linux, the thing cost me $30 because it was someone else's junk. I don't know about 386s, but people still use the group to get rid of 486s because someone is usually interested in parts for salvage.

I know

[ShadowRage]

my house. :)

old pc's

[kfuq]

isn't that what openmosix is for ?

bust that *nix cluster out !

places for old pc's

[kfuq]

If your around the seattle area, there is also RE-PC

E-bay.

[SharpFang]

You can dispose of everything there, be it toxic waste, old dirty socks, illegal weapons of mass destruction, your uncle's corpse, multi-tentacle monster, your younger sister, used up ballpens and post-it notes, collection of photos of you and your mare in compromising positions, some curious-looking blue thing nobody can identify, a roll of toilet paper, G. W. Bush or Eiffel's tower. So why not old computer parts?

friends, easily

[Lord Bitman]

I like to take old PCs and set them up as single-purpose machines. My friends know this and dispose of their old equipment properly. :)

Never have to deal with compatability woes when a game never works on the latest OS, I've got more PCs than versions of windows.

386DX-33? That's nothing.

[gubachwa]

I've got a 8088 PC sitting in my basement. I'm just letting it sit until it becomes a collector's item. Surely sometime in the future it will have some greater value. I remember paying over $1000 when I first bought the thing.

Yet another reason software 'upgrades' are evil

[plopez]

These 'upgrades' are filling up the landfills with potentially hazardous items (lots of heavy metals etc.). So when Microsoft (or Oracle or HP or IBM or whoever) forces you to upgrade the hardware because thier bug ridden bloated software will not run older equipment, they are making profits at the expense of our environment. In addition, individuals and businesses pay taxes and tip fees to dispose of the equipment. This amounts to a hidden subsidy of the profits of the software and hardware companies. It is planned obselecence of the worst sort.

We need, in the US, a system which charges the disposal fee upfront, so there are no hidden costs. In addition if anyone is looking to innovate, a truly recyclable computer would be a great goal.

Re:Yet another reason software 'upgrades' are evil

[Reziac]

I have an excellent idea... whenever Microsoft
(or Oracle or HP or IBM or whoever) forces you to upgrade the hardware due to their software requiring it, charge THEM the disposal fee!! ;)

Tho I'm sure these software upgrades are well-beloved by companies like Dell and HP, who otherwise could not sell those bulk lots of new workstations every year... after all, if everyone was still running Win95, no one would need a P4-3GHz.

I vaguely recall that IBM has a recycling program, but it costs something like $35 per machine, plus shipping!

Re:Yet another reason software 'upgrades' are evil

[bhtooefr]

Dell and HP both have recycling programs, and I think Dell has a special right now where if you recycle up to 50lbs of equipment for $7.50, you get 10% off your next Hell purchase (yes, I said Hell for a reason - that's what Dell boxes are!).

Re:Yet another reason software 'upgrades' are evil

[mandalayx]

So when Microsoft (or Oracle or HP or IBM or whoever) forces you to upgrade the hardware because thier bug ridden bloated software will not run older equipment, they are making profits at the expense of our environment.

Software companies don't force you to throw away hardware. In fact, they don't even force you to upgrade. ....

We need, in the US, a system which charges the disposal fee upfront, so there are no hidden costs.

Hold on, isn't that like the CDR tax? Who says I plan to actually dispose of this computer? I can understand that things like aluminum cans are probably going to be thrown away after use, but as far as I know, none of the computers I've used have gone into the dumpster.

Re:Yet another reason software 'upgrades' are evil

[Reziac]

Hadn't heard about Dell and HP programs... and have never had the displeasure of sticking my hands in a Dell, but from what I've heard, I should probably wear anti-contamination gloves :)

Conversely I've got a pile of IBM junkers, and one Purp^H^H^H^H Spotted Cow, and have worked on a few Compaqs, and they are all complete crap (even eMachines are more for the money, given that they cost so much less). So I can't believe Dell are enough better to matter!

Try the local County Government

[Clanner]

Where I live (northern Illinois), the counties all have a "solid waste disposal agency", and they occasionally have a 3-day event in which they accept old electronics. They take pretty much anything except for large appliances, microwaves, and software. There's no cost- all you have to do is drop the items off at preset collection points. These are usually local community colleges or corporate sponsors. I've used these event twice now to get rid of broken monitors, computers too old to be useful for me, etc. They take the items and recycle them properly, where the normal trash pickup, if they take the items, will just dump them in a landfill.

Community service projects

[jmichaelg]

To get a degree, local (Central California Coast) high school students have to do some sort of volunteer work. It can be pretty much anything so one student I know has organized a computer drive. He accepts anything computer related and when he has enough parts, puts together a working computer which he then donates to families who can use them which he finds through the local food bank.

Another organization I know of is Oakland Tech, a public high school in Oakland California. They run a training program that teaches students how to repair broken computers. Once the machines are working, they're given away to students who can't afford to buy their own.

Dumpster Diving For Fun & Parts..

[SacredNaCl]

Okay, 80% of what ends up on the curb is junk, but it depends greatly on where you live and the areas demographics as to what you can find.

I wont go out of my way to look very often, but I have a few spots behind certain engineering firms that I do look, and if I happen to see a box when I'm out and about I'll grab it. I can always throw it away again.

I've found decent SCSI controllers, small and medium SCSI drives, tons of decent size EDO and SDRAM, plenty of optical drives, several 17" good monitors that were reasonably clean, a working Athlon system (that just needed the ram in it reseated).

Of course, 4 out of 5 I stop and it's a P100 or 486 piece of junk, but that other 1 out of 5 nets something that is still usable.

Re:Dumpster Diving For Fun & Parts..

[Reziac]

P100 is still within the range of what I consider "useful" and worth hauling away. My "luggable" is a lowly P120 and it does what's required of it, while not being worth so much that it's a disaster if it gets broken in transit.

Sometimes even-older machines have stuff worth pilfering, like a 56k modem (which doesn't care if it's in a 386). If nothing else, there's always fans, screws, and cables. :)

Re:Dumpster Diving For Fun & Parts..

[SacredNaCl]

I draw the line at about P120 for still being 'useable'.

A laptop is one thing, a desktop is a whole different animal when it comes to slow chips. I have some dual boards that will take P120's, so I do pull those socket 7 chips when I find them. They make decent enough low end servers. I will yank out any decent cards or parts that are useable. Have an entire closet full of parts. It used to be a lot more till I cleaned house and gave a lot of it away, and what I couldn't I pitched or took down to the metal recycling center.

My friend scruffy has an enitre basement stacked floor to ceiling with parts. Plus more on the first floor, and yet more on the 2nd floor. I'll never let my house get that bad! :) When I had him as a roommate he moved out and left me an entire basement filled with computer parts there too. heh

If your situation is as bad as Scruffy's current one, you might considering moving and just leaving it all behind.

Re:Dumpster Diving For Fun & Parts..

[acidrain69]

And there are still useful parts in a 486 and Pentium 100. Take all the jumpers, LEDs, and screws. Doesn't hurt to have spares. And if you are into modding, may as well take the fans out of the power supply and off the chip (if there is one, P1's didn't require active cooling), and if it's not an ATX power supply, cut off the molex connector wires where they go into the PSU. You can make your own Y cables or splice off them to power various things.

If the case is ATX, but the inside is junk, you can out out the handy jigsaw and cut out the motherboard tray and backplane where the cards attach. Put them in a $15 aluminum/wood briefcase with the sides cut out, and you have a sweet looking PC for LAN party usage, or even a poor-man's lunchbox PC if you have the cash to mount an LCD in the topside.

Re:Dumpster Diving For Fun & Parts..

[Reziac]

Yeah, what I consider "usable" has crept upward over the years. Wasn't that long ago that even a 486 could have some mission in life (and I still have two clients using 486s, so having a few odd parts for 'em is a Good Thing). Now, I turn up my nose at 'em unless they include something more generically worthwhile, like 56k modem, SCSI card, etc.

Right now I have one medium-sized closet half-full of old monitors, a handful of AT cases, and the very old complete machines (the XT, the PS/2, the 286 that I used for so long and is still the last-ditch emergency backup system), one large closet full of every sort of parts (semi-sorted by age and type), and one medium-sized shelf unit with assorted newer/more usuable stuff occupying it. And a few complete or mostly-there systems sitting around, besides the 3 that I use all the time and are therefore permitted in the living room (computers are people too :)

I also have an 800 sq.ft. shop building that once I get it reroofed (so you can tell which side of the roof you're on when it rains!) I'll kick all the stuff I'm not likely to use myself out there, where a few crappy IBM carcasses already collect dust. They'll probably become freebies for my charity clients, when their 486s finally croak.

I own the place, so moving away isn't exactly an option. However, I've also got 10 acres of empty desert that could be put to use, should the situation become desperate :)

P233 is Just Exactly Right for my DOOM habit, so I kinda hoard whatever I can lay hands on of that era -- so any Socket7 motherboard and its children are welcome here. My other two usin' machines are early P3s, so what many folk are now discarding as "way too old and slow" seem perfectly modern to me. :)

Re:Dumpster Diving For Fun & Parts..

[SacredNaCl]

Some of the socket 7 boards can be brought back to life, sometimes you need a voltage regulator, but if the board has the right jumpers -- you can throw in a K-6 and take them up a notch. You can also sometimes find those kits from Power Leap that will let you run them up to 500mhz with a K6-2, or even K6-3+ at 550). So an ancient "Gatway P-100" box may or may not be complete junk depending on the board. I never find any with K6's in them already. That tells me people are keeping them, or the mod wasn't very popular.

Found a couple decent NEC MultiSync monitors 17" night before last and a couple nice USR hardware modems. Not much else worth mentioning.

Re:Dumpster Diving For Fun & Parts..

[Reziac]

Yeah, a lot of Socket7 boards can take any CPU in the P166 to P233 or K6-??? to K6-2 450MHz range, and many also can handle both 72pin SIMMs and PC100 DIMMs. And most have both ISA and PCI slots, and the occasional AGP slot. So they're pretty flexible as a base for systems built of whatver comes to hand. Also, as a rule they're very stable and abuse-tolerant.

Out of all my salvaged clone machines, only one had a K6 CPU (no K5, no K6-2), and I suspect it's because that line of CPUs is more likely to meet its end thru death than thru obsolescence. -- I have a small mountain of P60 thru P133 CPUs, and only one ever found DOS (Dead On Salvage).

Yesterday I found a doddery old Celeron 2.5GHz just laying on my porch... unfortunately, it was delivered by the mailman and belonged to my neighbour. Oh well! :)

6-Feet Under

[Hexydes]

Bury it in the basement, next to the bodies!

These worked for me...

[gekman]

About five years ago I gave an old Tandy 1000 to a local hospital for their after-school art program for disturbed kids. No tax deduction, but I knew the woman who ran the program, and the kids used and appreciated it for a few years.

I gave my 486 to my daughter's (then) boyfriend who made it into a Linux server.

I passed along my P200 to my sister, who only needs Word and AOL access.

Lastly, and most sadly, I recently got rid of my treasured TRS-80 Model III (my first computer, 16K RAM and a cassette recorder for storage). My county worked a deal with Lucent to be a pick-up area for old electronics, paint cans, chemical containers and other "hazardous materials." I think many areas run this kind of event periodically.

I HAD been saving the Model III until it as a "valuable icon of computing's early days," but when I checked EBay and found them going for $25 I said screw it.

check with your town/city about dropoff

[johnpaul191]

in some areas you can put it on the curb and it will be picked up overnight. a lot of cities/towns seem to have collection days for TVs and computers. I know Philadelphia PA (where i live) has collection days that bounce to another location every month or two. The have ones for old TVs, Computers and computer parts. They have a schedule for days like this for a lot of things, even "anmesty days" for things like old motor oil, oil based paints, and all kinds of chemicals you are not supposed to put in the trash or down the drain. check with your local town and see if they have something too. granted i think some cities are more advanced about this than some of the surrounding suburbs, and i am assuming it's to prevent the junk from ending up in an empty lot. when local suburbs have tight restrictions on trash volume and charge for trips to the dump, i can drag out a couch or air conditioner or refrigerator or whatever. granted the appliances have their own roving vehicles that pick them up, but i just push em to the curb. the city "large appliance vehicles" usually don't beat the scavengers to them anyway. i don't suggest driving into the local townsville and dropping everything on a curb (that's not legal), but if it's at all usable i have found putting it out with the trash means it will be scavenged 99% of the time. i generally don't feel bad throwing out old junk that may be useful to someone else (but not worth the Ebay hassle) because i know it'll be picked up. i guess that's more a trait of my neighborhood than a universal fact though. no, you can't send me your junk... sorry.

I wonder

[koan]

Once the "trusted computing" ala palladium takes off, if there will be a market for old hardware...
Ya think?

Re:Two options

[DNS-and-BIND]

That's "beaucoup". It's French. Before you mangle Cajun slang, at least look it up. Thank you.

I recycle PC's. I advertise and I dig.

[pair-a-noyd]

I'm recycling old PC's and sending them out with Linux on them.

I put up ads in all the stores (a sheet with tear off phone # strips) asking people to call me to pick their old computers rather than throw them in the trash piles. But I do drive around with my eye trained on every trash heap I see. I can spot a keyboard cable hanging out of a box at a 1,000 yards!

I pick them up for free :) clean them up like new, install Linux on them and resell them for a very cheap price as a SAFE Internet appliance for browsing and email, and maybe other basic functions depending on the box and thier needs.

People throw away 20 million computers each year I'm trying to keep a few out of the landfills and make a few HONEST dollars for myself...

Now today it's Christmas and I have my cell phone, pad and pen and am will be driving around scanning trash piles for the next few weeks.
I will, as I always do, score on a lot of them.
As it is now, I have countless old ISA cards, SB16 anyone?? I have enough spare parts to repair ANY old ISA and most older PCI/ISA based systems. I expect the pickings to be much better this year as prices are even cheaper that ever and sales are UP!

And, I cull out the gems and keep the best stuff for myself... I found a PII the other day with a perfect ZIP drive in it. $15 for a new ATX power supply and bingo! I've lost count of how many older PC type power supplies I have.
Oh yeah, I also found a pristine IBM XT 5160 with IBM color display, 640k, mathco, and a 10meg "Plus Hardcard"... It runs all of my old Sierra games like the KQ and SQ games from the 80's just like I was beamed back 20 years!

Keep throwing them away folks, a guy can't have too many PC's.... :)

I suspect so.

[alecto]

That's the reason I've only recently parted with a 386 and 386SX I'd been harboring. I still have several 486 and low end Pentium machines. I figure low end beats "trusted computing" any day.

Re:Two options

[Reziac]

On that note -- having watched the used computer componets market for a long time, I've concluded that half of *current new wholesale* (NOT retail) for that part is a fair price for used parts; anything higher is a rip-off. So for example if a 40g HD currently wholesales NEW for $50, a used 40g HD in good working condition is worth $25. But it's NOT worth half of the $300 you may have paid for it back when it was bleeding edge.

Was only a few years ago I saw a classified listing a "fully-loaded 286" for $800. Yeah, it probably cost over $3000 new, back around 1988, but in 1998 you were lucky to get someone to haul away a good working 486 for nothing. Some people sure have fantasies about the value retention of old computers!!

All my 486s

[ljavelin]

486's are great machines... most of them are well built, and they can still be useful with the right software, CPU, and a healthy amount of RAM.

There's just one problem: there are a boatload of Pentinum I & II class machines out there. And these P-Is and P-IIs are already populated with a good CPU, drive, and memory. So although my 486 would be useful for someone, anyone can get their hands on a better machine.

Therefore, my old machines are only worth scrap:

0. Old machines better than a Pentinum 166 are redeployed to family, friends, or other folks who can use a PC. For lesser machines:

1. ATX-style cases are retained - they're still useful for even brand new machines.

2. Working ATX-style power supplies are still useful, and kept. Non-standard and AT-style supplies are either donated to the local trade school, repurposed for a home project, or scrapped.

3. Old working floppy drives and IDE CD drives are useful in modern machines, so I keep them. Dead or non-standard devices are scrapped. (OK, floppy drives are not useful, but I use them anyway!)

4. Small or broken monitors are scrapped. Larger monitors are given away. I wish it'd be easy & cheap to convert them into a TV.

5. Obsolete Motherboards, etc. I pull interesting CPUs (like 100+ mhz 486 CPUs) and higher density SIMMs. Obsolete motherboards are scrapped. Obsolete cables are scrapped.

6. Drives >= 3 GB are usable. All others are scrapped. I cannabalize some HDDs for the nice rare-earth magnets inside.

Canadian alternative

[Bilange]

Heres a (French) Canadian Company that accepts/recycle anything from computers to printers, etc.

This company usually buys the used parts from companies, but they also accepts donation from people. Im sure you can arrange something (getting some $) if you have a whole batch of Pentium 166 and higher.

PC recyclers and Third world distribution

[Lord_Myron]

I am in Nova Scotia, Canada and although I can't think of their names right now there are two companies operating here that take old computers refurb them and send them to schools, the third world, and other places of need. They don't charge for the service and will even come to my door to get the equipment. They operate out of Halifax (the provinces Capital) so if you google search for them you should find them.

Re:You lazy fucking American!

[ChuckCaves]

Currency valuation is a relatively inept way of judging a nations economy. GDP is the only true indicator of financial superiority. I guess you also judge a stock by it's price. Damn it's easy to see why we are cleaning your clocks in matters of finance.

GDP:
U.S. - 10.082 trillion
UK - 1.47 trillion
Russia - 1.2 trillion
France - 1.51 trillion
Germany - 2.174 trillion
Australia - 465.9 billion
Japan - 3.45 trillion

as you can see... it takes all of these countries combined totals to equal the United States GDP... whatever country that you are from... you have a looooong way to go to catch up economically.

Better stop taking holiday and get to work.

And yes we are fat :-)

Really?

[GPS Pilot]

Really? If I couldn't afford a newer computer, I would gladly accept a donation of a 486, if the alternative was not owning a computer at all -- which is the situation most Africans are in.

What makes you think differently about this?

Re:Really?

[DNS-and-BIND]

I don't know...comments from Africans that they don't want our garbage? How many Africans do you know?

Re:Really?

[instarx]

That's probably garbage as in GARBAGE. There have been many attempts to send shiploads of garbage to African nations for disposal which have been opposed (rightly so) by Africans. More serious have been the attempts to send hazardous waste to African countries with no environmental laws for burial.

Old computers might very well be useful to some in Africa as training tools or recycling raw materials, but frankly the cost of sending them would exceed the value of the computer.

Re:Really?

[PFAK]

Yep, every year I "rebuild" old Pentium and Pentium II's to ship to Africa, mainly Zimbabwie and other outlying areas. I build about 150-300 of these computers yearly, and I've been doing it for 4 or 5 years.

Although, the hard thing is getting these computers to the intended reciepents, usually they end up being stolen (who would want a P2?) by corrupt government "officials"..

So yeah, even poor North Americans don't want these computers, which is pretty sad. But Africans will use them.. the only qualm is that we install Windows 95 OSR2 on them, and not FreeBSD which is what I've been pushing for.

These computers still have a use, and alot of them aren't going to the dump unless they don't work anymore. Then they do, and in that case the dump usually takes them for free because they are metal, and they recyle it, so it's all good in the end.

The ACCRC in Berkeley

[VonGuard]

Probably not near the poster of the topic, but folks in the SF Bay Area can check out the Alameda County Computer Resource Center. They were /.'d a couple years back. They won't rebuild you 386, but they will strip it down and recycle everything inside without a single scrap going outside of the US for those purposes.

In The North Of England

[g33ky]

You could try the Regional Electronics Initiative (http://www.rei.org.uk </a>) and more specifically Airedale Computer Recycling (<a href="http://www.airedalecomputers.com">http://www .airedalecomputers.com<a>)

freegeek.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Geek takes computers for free and teaches people how to use linux. freegeek.org is a good place to start.

Yeah, send them to us :-)

[Via_Patrino]

I think the major problem is an organized way to make it, in other words: some ngo to put a lot of equipment togheter to ship them at lower prices. Sending a computer abroad can be very expensive, if you send them the traditional way (mail or something) or don't have many computers to fill a container (or the minimum box size they ship by sea that fit about 5 complete computers).

Other problem is receiving. It's needed another ngo to receive (to don't pay taxes/customs for it) and it needs to be in a city with a major dock (in Brazil there is about 4 cities like that) to receive the computers. And distributing may also be a problem, like having contact with other NGOs in the country not just those in your city.

In Brazil I know two NGOs that recycle computers:
* CDI - but they use only windows (have a contract with microsoft), have some burocracy to give the computers to NGOs (like use only windows and need someone 40hours/week dedicated to computer courses) and often trow useful parts away (because can't use windows with them).
* MetaReciclagem - they use linux, have a nice structure but aren't national (altought it's located on a huge city that can absorb any amount of computers sent to them)

In US i know ACCRC - they use linux, i know they have sent computers abroad, but until what i know just to political organizations that eventually redistribute them (don't know if you have something against that)

Sending complete computers is expensive, although it's not very expensive to send small valuable parts, like you can send several memory modules or one motherboard with processor, or even harddisk and pay U$6. Use the usps site to calculate (and use Economy Letter Post).
It may look it don't worth to pay that much, but here hardware is more expensive, like, an used 1gb hard disk would cost no less than 25-30U$.

In my particular case I'm volunteer on a small NGO here in Brazil and we use some computers for teaching (in fact 4, we don't have room for more). They have low memory (32MB), so sometimes is boring wait for openoffice and other software loads. They also have 2 free slots each, so it would be interesting to receive some EDO memory modules, of over 8MB each. If you have many EDO memory modules around and is willing to send them, they're welcome :)

Re:Yeah, send them to us :-)

[bhtooefr]

Over 8MB? Damn, I've got 2 72-pin low-profile 8MB EDOs that I pulled out of my old Cyrix box...

Re:Yeah, send them to us :-)

[Via_Patrino]

8MB is ok too, but i don't think it worth to send just two modules, specially of that size, to here. Maybe if someone in the US is willing to send too, you can send to him or he can send to you, and then send to Brazil. I'll keep you in touch if anyone else mail me. Thanks.

Re:You lazy fucking American!

[ChuckCaves]

Okay... you've stooped to calling out names and typos... The last bastion of a weak mind... I guess that means I win this entire argument. Oh... and by the way... your initial gripe about the original post... it's generated at this point 251 comments... that's more than any current topic on Slashdot. Pretty good for a dull submission eh? Oh... and there is no capital 'a' in the middle of the word vacation :-P one last p.s. I hate no one... and I have murdered no one. But my government does have my support in defending our country against terrorists and brutal dictators.

Few suggestions

[chunkwhite86]

1. ebay
2. if it's a complete pc, give it to goodwill
3. if parts, offer them to your local LUG members
4. or to the computer dept / club of your local highschool / community college
5. give to cowboyneal

My House

[Apreche]

Just drop 'em off at my place. Hellooo kloppix.

Lead Acid Batteries

[MoriarGryphon]

Easiest place to find is proably a "Wal-Mart Tire and Lube" or similar. Keep asking random employees until they agree to take the batteries. ;>

Failing that, any sort of car place that sells batteries may be able to take them, though they may charge some sort of disposal fee. (Wal-Mart possibly should, but random employee number seven doesn't know that. ;>)

A cool place to "recycle" PCs

[Scottsman]

Hi, I highly recommend www.siliconsalvage.com. They are located in Orange County and they take in all sorts of electronic stuff that might ordinarily go to a landfill. When they get your stuff they sort and properly dispose of it OR they may keep it and store it. They archive old equipment for set design in movies and TV. Recently the producers of T3 rented a bunch of PCs during the production of the movie. They also use old hardware for period pieces. I use this place for my computer junk from work and they even gave me a few bucks for the junk. Very cool.

From the voice of experience

[onyxruby]

From the voice of experience I have lots of practical advice for both home users and administrators. I have had to get rid of a pretty fair chunk of hardware as a systems administrator so I have had to research this.

First: I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere yet so I'll say it. Wipe the drives with a wipe program. Don't just format them, it's too easy to get around. This is a good job for a pfy if you have one. If you give away information that leads to identity theft or the like your in for a world of trouble.

Do NOT donate old hardware that is obsolete to schools, goodwill or another charity. They all have to pay for the disposal costs, and people's charity in this area costs these institutions very real dollars. I speak from working with schools for a couple of years, experience as a systems administrator and having known people in charity work.

You can reuse / recycle them into continued use or dispose of them properly. Old Pentium class up computers make great firewalls. Between a friend and I we have probably gotten proper Linux firewalls to nearly a dozen households. Especially good when most of these people are not exactly full disclosure subscribers. If you don't have the skill to do this, you can always use something horribly mangled like the mandrake 9.2 firewall, but something is better than nothing.

You can do a basic enough breakdown for recycling if the box as a whole is propietary enough (Dell, Compaq, HP) that it isn't upgradable. Take out the disks and set these into your spare parts pile. This is very useful when someones firewall hard disk craps out as they are invariably led to do since the are almost always really old hard drives. The motherboard and old cards can be removed. If you don't have a recycle center that can take the circuit cards than throw those away. You can still recycle the case itself, just remove the plastics and the sheet metal shell will be taken by almost any recycling place.

If your doing this for an employer - don't just throw them away. If there new enough you can sell them to a wholesaler, give them away to employees (make sure you clear this high up to avoid the appearance of impropriety that can cost you your job). You can also sell almost anything on Ebay, some say this as a joke, but whoever is buying it is putting it back into use so you have recycled this. Save your receipts though and print out those auction pages. This is your proof that you have NOT thrown these away.

Important note about throwing away. Old circuit boards are full of a really nasty cocktail of bad for the environment chemicals. Old monitors are full of a pretty fair amount of lead. Both of these have the capacity to get your company in trouble for the future. In my case, working at the time for a company that once had a deplorable environmental record (nicely cleaned themselves up by the way), the costs for cleanup in the future for improperly disposed of company products was well known.

Since our old stuff (I had three facilities) was so old as to be no good to anyone, I scrapped what might be usable and found an environmentaly certified recycler for the old equipment. I paid them about 80 cents a pound, they gave me a shiny certificate absolving my company of environmental responsbility for those products.

- Keep in mind folks that this is the cost you inflict on charities when you donate obsolete hardware on them.

Important lesson here for companies - just because it's legal to throw away today doesn't mean your of the hook if it's deemed to have neccesitated an environementaly cleanup tomorrow.

Re:From the voice of experience

[finse]

awesome information.
mod this up!

Destruction Fest

[SumDog]

Being a college student at Tennessee Tech in the small ass town of Cookeville, we have nothing better to do (we being myself and other Computer Science and Engineering majors) than to find interesting ways of destroying old dead equipment.

For some reason, computer equipment is in a continual state of dieing in Cookeville. This past semester I lost a 4GB hard drive, and 8GB hard drive, a dual processor motherboard (Pentium II) and a single processor Pentium board, just to name a few. Coleman, a fellow computer science major, has lost a 200Mhz Sun Station, a 21 inch monitor (red color tube went out) and a wide host of other equipment.

We're not sure if it's just the bad power grid in Cookeville (I'm going more for the electric gremlin theory), but there is only one thing which can be done when equipment dies at the most inconvenient times: destruction fest.

We place all the equipment out on a lawn and then begin to pummel them with everything from baseball bats and crowbars to bricks and rocks. The stress relief of hitting a monitor can not be described in words. It's really great when you imagine a professors head instead of the monitor.

Afterwords we just throw all the equipment in a dumpster.

Sumit

Re:Destruction Fest

[Tim Doran]

Good lord - you know that monitor glass is *loaded* with lead, right? It's enough of an environmental impact when intact, but shatter it into a thousand pieces and dump it in a lanfill?!?

Please, please, please dispose of your monitors properly, if nothing else.

Re:You lazy fucking American!

[ChuckCaves]

Okay... so you apparently think Saddam was a fine upstanding gentleman and that mean old America picked on a nice world leader.

Saddam had 12 years to come clean... North Korea and some of the unstable governments in Africa still have time for diplomacy. This is apparent when you see the dictator Taylor from Liberia leaving and even Mohammar Quadaffi opening the door to WMD inspections and dismantlement.

War is the last resort when negotiation is no longer productive.

And the fact that most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi's wasn't as significant as the fact that they were part of a terrorist organization (Al-Queda) that was being nurtured by a fanatical government (The Taliban).

There's no question who was training terrorists (from many different countries including America) that were responsible for 9/11. And we really kicked some Taliban/Al-Queda ass and will continue to do so.

And yes there are some individuals in Saudi Arabia that support these murderers as there are people that support them in all countries. But rest assured that they will be uncovered and justice will be served upon them.

As far as China surpassing America as the worlds dominant economy... you may very well be right. China has a very strong work ethic and if they drop the socialism and the facade of communism then I have little doubt that they could achieve this.

Goodwill

[87C751]

Worked for me when I wanted to rid myself of 2 big boxes of junk (486 SBC, anyone?).

pc disposal

[rastavideo]

I just took a boatlaod of old hardware -- after stripping it for anything good -- to the City of Houston Recycling Center and they took it all, for free, no questions asked.

Dell

[Chalex]

Dell Recycling will pick up your old computer for like $10 AND give you a coupon for Dell's website.
Dell Recycling

What about disposal of old Suns?

[dsyu]

I've got an old SS10 that's working but otherwise useless (only 32MB of RAM) that should get disposed of properly. Any suggestions?

depending on where you live...

[filtur]

I live in Portland, OR. and I've used Free Geek. They have reasonable prices for the return of things dangerous to the environment, like monitors. They also run some great programs as well.
http://www.freegeek.org>

Link to many sites like that one

[nutznboltz]

http://www.usedcomputer.com/nonprof.htm

Re:Two options

[runderwo]

While not as bad as your $800 286 anecdote, i was thinking the same thing when the other day I saw a sign in someone's yard as I drove past. It was advertising a "Pentium 200 Computer" and listing its components, which were nothing special, and the price was $250. You'd be lucky to get $25 for the machine these days!

$15 per month

[ONOIML8]

Waste Management has a deal where I live. For $15 per month they come every week and collect a 92 gal. size can of anything I put in there. No questions asked. I've put old electronics in there. Gone. Dirty diapers. Gone. Old newspapers. Gone. Dead cat. Gone.

Keep in mind that if you turn something in for recycling, it might not be very friendly to the environment. Paper is a good example. Also, grouping things together like that can be a bad thing because then you get high concentrations of stuff in the landfill or incinerator whereas if you just throw it in the garbage the stuff is spread out and doesn't do quite the damage.

ACCRC will take them for little $$$

[York the Mysterious]

I volunteer at this place ACCRC (Alameda County Computer Resource Center). It's in Berkeley, CA. They're a non-profit that takes computers for a small fee. PIIs and above are turned into Linux boxes and are given to low income families. Some machines are even shipped to Africa to attempt to bridge the digital divide. They're a really great place. You can drop off software, peripherals and packing material for free. Computers, monitors, scanners, printers, fax machines, TVs, and stereo equipment has a small fee. It's a great place. They recycle everything, but they're biggest goal is to refurb Linux boxes. www.accrc.org

Re:I'm skeptical

[dasunt]

A pentium 75 runs OpenOffice "perfectly"?

If you checked out the grandparent poster's link, you'd see it for the Linux Terminal Server Project.

Thus, its safe to assume that the pentium 75 is acting as a dumb client (or, if you want to use X's terminology, as an X server), booting entirely from the network. Thus, the pentium 75 is displaying Open Office, and presumably some server with globs of ram and a fast cup or two is actually doing the heavy work.

Houston, TX - Westpark Recycling Center

[fildo]

In Houston, you can take computers and other electronics to the Westpark center or the Environmental service centers:

http://www.ci.houston.tx.us/swd/recycling.htm

Re:Two options

[nuintari]

Anything electronic depreciates in value like crazy. Its like cars, they do not hold value for the mile you drive them off the line.

My line to people who fail to grasp this concept is, "Look, its electronics, it losses 40-50% of its value the minute you takme it out of the box, and in the time it took to buy it, take it home, and open it, something better already came out."

Why I never want to sell a) cars or b) computers.

Depends entirely on where you live

[shylock0]

For instance, here in CT, computer recycling is *the law*. You can drop off old PCs at any town dump/recycling center, they have a special place for them.

Send 'em to Fidel...

[GnuAge]

If you live in the Bay Area you can contribute your old hardware to Infomed USA, which will pick up your refuse at your door and give you a receipt you can use for tax purposes. We accept any working Pentium-class machine as well as working monitors (14" VGA, post-1995) and send them to Cuba to be used by medical workers. Our group has sent something like 3,000 machines to Infomed Cuba, which provides on-line medical information to doctors from all over the world and technical support to Cuban doctors. You can read more about Infomed on the Stockholm Challenge award page for innovative and beneficial uses of technology.

Cuba has more doctors per capita than the United States and sends more physicians abroad to even poorer countries than the WHO (World Health Organization). Everyone on the island has free access to high quality health care (whereas in the U.S. where something like 40 million people have no access to medical care, including millions of full time workers). Cuba has the best medical care in Latin America, excellent life expectancies and infant mortality rates, and was ranked as having medical care comparable to the U.S. (39th world-wide vs. 37th) by the WHO in 2000, despite having a GNP per capita that is a fraction of what Americans spend for health care alone. Cuba also has a well developed medical technology industry that exports low cost but high quality pharmaceuticals, etc. all over the world.

Unfortunately, the United States State Department (along with Commerce & Defense) must grant export licenses so we can send hardware to Cuba and our licenses are not keeping up with Moore's "Law." Our most recent license only allows us to send 266 MHz or slower machines. Infomed-Cuba itself no longer wants our old crap, since they can do better buying their own equipment on the international market, so our next shipment will go to 5 Cuban hospitals, some of whom are still using 286 machines, I understand. However hopefully Bush won't be president forever, so we are stockpiling better machines until we can get a license to ship them.

To schedule a pickup email Dave if you live in the South Bay, Don in San Francisco or Ed if you are in the East Bay or North Bay. Also, we can also use anyone who can twirl a screwdriver to help us test and fix up the donated boxes. We have regularly scheduled work days in both Oakland and San Jose. Drop us a line if you'd like to pitch in...

Give them away...

[vertical_98]

If you are serious and not just blowing smoke...drop me an email. I need several for an inter-city youth computer training. If I had a couple hundred I could let the families have one. I would be more than willing to pick them up.
Vertical

vertical(underscore)98 'AT' NOSPAMPLEASEyahoo DOT com

Free Bytes in Atlanta

[TheZax]

Free Bytes in Atlanta will accpet old PCs. It doesn't cost anything directly, but they do appreciate a contribution when they do (which they definitely deserve), as it is a non-profit that does an awesome job.

Free Bytes will take old PCs, and either refurbish them, re-use parts, or recycle them. Their refurbish program then sells the PCs to other non-profits at rock bottom cost, and the recycle program is also very good.

Keep up the good work Free Bytes!

http://freebytes.org/

What's involved in Proper disposal

[failedlogic]

Assume we don't go to donate the computer to a school, charity, or sell it to a used computer store .

What *does* (or should) a proper disposal facility do to ensure environmentally safe procedures for properly computer disposal? What should we look for if we are concerned? I figure since we're asking the question about proper disposal it would be a good idea to define what that means.

Hearing stories of city paper recycling programs sending the garbage to landfills because of low paper costs, I don't feel comforatble sending several pounds of lead & mercury to the landfill either (ie its in the computer and monitor).

Re-PC for in or around Seattle area.

[mad_viking]

They will usually charge a fee of $10 for disposal.
http://www.repc.com/

Re:You lazy fucking American!

[mattcolemanrules]

I'd like to point out that all the news I've seen in foreign countries lately (England, France, Spain, and Estonia) makes it seem as if we all love what our government is doing. Like whenever George W. makes on of his moronic moves we all run up to pat him on the back. I don't know a single person that approves of his actions as president. I wish the north east would secede. So in conclusion, just because our government is a bunch of idiots and is doing its best to f**k up our country and any foreign relations we once had, don't go thinking that all the citizens support it. --- America: Overthrow it or get out.

IBM recycle program

[Rescate]

I mentioned this in a post about "Japan's War on E-Waste" back in July, but it seems to fit here also...

IBM offers a PC recycling service in the U.S. for $30. The PC can be from any manufacturer. It doesn't actually need to be a complete PC, it could be different parts and peripherals. They seem to charge by the shipped box, not by the system. They donate the system to "Gifs in Kind" if it qualifies. The service is offered on their Web store.

The machines are sent to Envirocycle, an electronic recycler. When you pay the 30 bucks, you get a prepaid UPS shipping label to send it there. You load your equipment into your own box (up to 26x26x26) and drop it off at a UPS dropoff location. If you fill out the included donation form, they will send you back a donation confirmation form you can use for tax purposes (if your machine qualifies). There is a lot more info in the FAQ.

IBM also has info on recycling IBM products in other countries, but I didn't get a chance to read through all the info, so I don't know if they have comparable programs in other countries or not.

Why Not a School?

[LuYu]

but anyone know of any others, either online or physical dropoff points in major metropolitan areas?

What about a school?

It seems to me that children might benefit from having spare computer parts. Even broken parts can be used to teach computer assembly.

Low end parts might not be the best, but they can certainly run science projects or make good platforms for learning programming.

Since Linux runs on anything, you could toss in a couple of Linux or FreeBSD CDs, too. Of course, this last one depends entirely on the ignorance of the teachers involved, but I think the picture is clear.

Computer parts should be used until they do not work, not until their Windoze licence or support runs out!

Fundraiser

[Mysteretp]

Get baseball bats and sell shots at it at like carnivals. My organization did it and we hung computers up in a loft for 3 shots for a dollar and destroy-a-printer for 5. You'd be surprised how much damage a case can survive. It took the iron crow bar to really do any damage... After a day of use we broke a bat. It's Great fundraiser idea!

Computer Toxics and Recycling/Reuse Links

[EcoActivist]

Donating computer equipment for reuse is better than recycling.

If reuse isn't an option, recycling is better than throwing it "away" but it can still be harmful due to the many toxic components in computers and other electronic equipment. Some electronics recycling operations are better than others. The really bad ones involve such things as incinerating the toxic (PVC) plastic casings, using U.S. prison labor to handle the toxic process of recycling these materials (without the labor protections that might exist outside the prison system), shipping wastes to "third world" countries where weaker environmental laws exist, etc.

BACKGROUND ON THE PROBLEMS OF COMPUTER AND ELECTRONIC WASTES:

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition's Clean Computer Campaign
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/

Computer Take Back Campaign
http://www.computertakeback.com

Toxic Dude (Clean Computer Campaign targets Dell)
http://www.toxicdude.com

European Union Directives on Detoxifying Computers and Recycling Electronic Wastes
http://www.informinc.org/summaries_waste.p hp (see top two links)

Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing Of Asia
http://www.ban.org/E-waste/technotrashfinalc omp.pd f

Electronics Recycler's Pledge of True Stewardship
http://www.computertakeback.com/the_s olutions/recy cler_s_pledge.cfm

E-waste related news
http://www.ban.org/ban_news/news.html

COMPUTER REUSE RESOURCES:

National Cristina Foundation (donated to people with disabilities)
http://www.cristina.org

TEN TIPS FOR DONATING A COMPUTER
http://www.techsoup.org/products/recycle /articlepa ge.cfm?ArticleId=524

Nonprofit Technology Resources
http://ntronline.org (Philadelphia, PA)

COMPUTER/ELECTRONICS RECYCLING RESOURCES:

Consumer Education Initiative (industry website with pointers to electronics recycling services in your area)
http://www.eiae.org

Elemental, Inc.
http://www.eleminc.com (Philadelphia, PA)

Recycling Services, Inc.
http://members.aol.com/rcyclngsrv/ (Pottstown, PA - about an hour north of Philly)
[more responsible than Elemental Inc.; brings stuff to Supreme in NJ]

Supreme Recycling
http://www.supremerecycling.com (on the central coast of NJ)

COMPUTER ENERGY EFFICIENCY:

Energy Star Computer Equipment Standard
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=po wer_mgt.pr _power_management

Just high traffic areas in general

[matty619]

I live on a busy street in San Diego near the beach, it's not a bad area, but I can put out ANYTHING on the sidewalk and it will be gone in a few hours. Old monitors, keyboards, anything. -M@

What's so special about recycling PC's ?

[llzackll]

You always see on some TV show or newspaper article that throwing away PC's with the rest of the garbage is bad for the environment. Maybe so, but why do they always single out PC's ? Pretty much every electronic gadget in existence uses the same stuff found in PC's..

Re:What's so special about recycling PC's ?

[BiggyP]

the most obvious thing i can think of is lifespan, your average desktop computer has a pretty limited useful lifetime, for a normal user that is,(maybe longer now than previously was the case, but still) when compared with televisions, fridges, or most household appliances for that matter.

more unwanted computers sent to developing countries is one possible way to reduce the problem, oh, and big companies like Del and HP allowing organisations to sell on old hardware rather than either stockpiling it(in which case it becomes totally obsolete by the time anyone outside gets hold of it) or sending it back to them for "disposal"

Re:Two options

[Reziac]

Yeah, I see ads like that in the PennySaver all the time -- "Complete P100, internet-ready, only $179" is very typical. You gotta wonder who is buying 'em, or if possibly we're all in the wrong business!!

Even tho a P200 is in a range that I hoard for personal use, there are so many freebies around that I'd be reluctant to pay anything for it, unless it included add-on cards that I'd normally cough up a little for anyway (frex, a Courier V.Everything, an AWE64, or a Matrox G200 -- been paying $8 to $20 for 'em on eBay, incl. shipping). People I know have found complete P3 machines as curb fodder, which oughta tell you the real retail value of anything that's not slick with WinXP.

Chicago

[TheViewFromTheGround]

I know I'm posting late, but in Chicago, you've got a couple options:

• PCs for schools -- this organization, quite poorly named, a wonderful recycling and training center. I'm mentioning this before my shameless plug precisely because they're probably the better recipient of a general donation. Ask for Willie Cade.
• My group, the Invisible Institute. I work in the housing projects, and we give out lots of PCs and Macs to families who live in public housing. We're not so formal about things, but the computers are assured to go people who desperately need them, and who live near-Third World conditions and I install a lot of the systems we give to folks with Linux.
• Eerie Neighborhood House -- these folks are awesome, and they always need computers.
• The CUIP (I think) program at the University of Chicago, which does computer work with Chicago public schools. Google for "Ben Lorch" and "university of chicago"

Re:Two options

[Reziac]

Yeah, really. By the time you've decided which model you're buying, it's already old news and worth less than you're about to pay for it!

At least antique cars (or even merely middle-aged muscle or luxury cars) can go back up in value, well into 5 figures. Computers are lucky to HAVE an antique value. Frex, this PS/2 Z50 someone gift me, which I gather is a "collector's item" as computers go ... complete, all original, works perfect, even still knows the date. (Not bad for a 15 year old 286.) As is, collector value is maybe $25. *IF* I had the original IBM *packaging*, its value rises to about $100. (As of last time I checked, couple years back.) Big whoop!! Hardly worth the trouble.

Contrast that with last year's commodity hardware -- common as dirt and worth just about as much.

Facilities in Hennepin County, Minnesota

[indros13]

I'm not sure how widespread the practice is outside our metro area, but Hennepin County (which includes the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) has drop-off facilities where computers and other electronics are recycled. Very fast and convenient drop-off. Oh yes, and free as well.

Linux thin standalone MP3 player?

[stuartkahler]

Is there a precompiled version of Linux that would fit on a floppy, USB drive, CDRom ISO, or boot from LAN that is designed to be an MP3 player? I would really like to downclock one of my old computers so that it doesn't need a CPU fan, strip out the HD, and set it up as a dedicated LAN MP3 player in my stereo rack. Some sort of slave setup where any computer on the LAN can send it commands to play MP3s from any networked hard drive. Or it could browse the shared directories on it's own, of course. Unless there's already a device out there for less than $100 that does this...

Charity or the Kitchen?

[Jafar00]

Why not either donate the old hardware to charity or set up the old machine in the kitchen and let the wife browse for recipes on the internet with it? :)

1 billion PCs sold by 2002

[proto]

The barometer no one mentioned on /. so far is how many PCs were sold? In 25 years we hit 1 billion by 2002. And 2 billion by 2008.
I wonder what are the numbers of cars, tvs, stereos sold compared PCs? Don't they all eventually end up at the dump/junkyard?

earth911.org

[comeonpilgrim]

I used http://www.earth911.org/ to find local places that would take my old (non-working) parts for free. They even took old laserdisc players and walkmans.

locally in central PA.

[/dev/trash]

There is reclamre. http://www.reclamre.com

PC Disposal

[Byteguy]

I know there is at least one in the Seattle area, but you didn't specify geographic location

instarx, take a look at this

[GPS Pilot]

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/bush.htm

Re:instarx, take a look at this

[instarx]

Thanks, I'll research it further and if false I'll change the quote. However it doesn't change my opinion of Bush's intelligence - I've heard him speak with my own ears.

what drives apps

[cinnamon colbert]

(2024, kid going to college) K: Dad, this is embarrassing ! how can i use this old computer of yours, it only has a terabyte of ram, and like, this measily attobyte hard drive. D: in my day we got by with a gig of ram and were happy K: yeah, well I guess you just want me to me like a social outcast from the other side of hte tracks or somthing. Like, I want to run MovRep (an app that takes a full[dvd+ quality] movie and replace the main character with you, seamlessly) D: Listen young lady....

WinCycle

[mrbeaton]

If you happen to live in the NH/VT area, WinCycle is a nice option.

If its usable, they will fix it up and donate it to schools, etc. If not, they'll accept it for a very small fee (25 cents/lb or so) and make sure that it is properly disposed of (ie, working parts removed and reused, no working parts recycled).

Re:You lazy fucking American!

[Pieroxy]

U.S. - 10.082 trillion
France - 1.51 trillion

Well, al little too easy. You are bashing AC because he pull out random numbers, but you do the same. You could, with the same numbers, deduce that California is less wealthy than the US, even though it is not true, just because it has less people.

US: 263 million people
France: 58 million people

US GDP/people: 10,082/263=38.33
FR GDP/people: 1,510/58=26.03

Well, all of a sudden, US are 1.47x better than France, not 10x.

You just proved once more than you can make numbers tell you anything. Thanks.