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Homeless Wires?
BladesP9 asks: "I'm in the process of moving. As such, I have stumbled upon no less than five boxes of wires and various parts. Everything from PS2, SCSI, FireWire, USB and God knows what. Having forgotten all about this stuff I know I will never be needing any of this again as long as I live. Not to mention the roughly 100 boxes of 10 pack 5.25 inch floppy discs. I could just throw all this stuff away, but I am feeling somewhat guilty about that. Is there anywhere I should look to donating this stuff? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing 'Goodwill' would really get use of, but I hate to throw away perfectly good hardware and media if someone could make use of it. I'm looking for suggestions. My wife has given me until the end of the week to find a home for it or I have to take it to the dump."
I'll take it.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
A bulk-buy on eBay. Charge shipping + $1.00. Sort by cable type.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
1. Clean out closets
2. Find hardware/media
3. Sign in to EBay
4. ???
5. Profit!
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
My wife has given me until the end of the week to find a home for it or I have to take it to the dump.
While you're at it, why don't you take your testicles, too? You don't seem to be using them. You should be ashamed of yourself for admitting such a thing in public. You don't bring home money? You don't run your own house? I bet she made you give up all your cool rock band tee-shirts after she moved in, too?
What a tool.
My company has always given stuff like this to local churches. While they may not specifically be able to use it, they may be able to spend the time prepping it for sale. Look at the retail prices for USB and Firewire cabling... They'll either be able to use this stuff or sell it off for a decent profit.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
eBay isn't sensible for stuff that costs more to ship than it's worth.
Post on Craigslist and get some local geeks to come pick it up.
Well if you are in the Austin area there is Good Will Computer Works
This may be obvious, but ... eBay?
;)
Tell them you saw The Virgin Mary or whatever in it and Golden Palace will pay you thousands.
Free Geek has a list of links to organizations, which (like Free Geek itself) promote computer reuse and recycling. The stuff you've got really doesn't belong in a dump, even if it's reached the point of being of no use to anyone.
If you're not near any of the places listed, please consider shipping your stuff to one of them. Most are nonprofits, which means you can compensate for some of your cost with a tax deduction, and you can feel good about knowing that your old crap is either being given to people who wouldn't otherwise have access to it, or is being taken apart and disposed of properly, rather than taking up space in a landfill and potentially leaching nasty chemicals (mmm, heavy metals).
is always a good bet.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
You need to let your wife now who makes the deadlines in the house. If this was already done you wouldn't have this problem at all.
Stupid things kids do.
My wife has given me until the end of the week to find a home for it or I have to take it to the dump.
<audio src="whipcrack.wav"/>
Hide them beneath the floor boards
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
DIY Parts
Craig's List
FreeCycle
eBay
I have had a 'study' for years full of junk (as my wife calls it).
Now that I am moving I am finding that I need very little of it.
Still it hurts to throw it out.
My advice:
- Email techie buddys, you never know
- Free buy and see magazine?
- Dump
Thanks
Jay
Hi I am ready to take/buy the floppy disks from you !! contact me asap.. Thanks. walburn@gmail.com
http://freecycle.org/
http://freecycle.org/
Kind of like Ebay! Except you get a warm, fuzzy feeling instead of money =)
Gnash Gnash Gnash
I'd say either keep it, or give it to a friend with a big closet. As soon as you get rid of it, you'll come up with some project or inherit some cool device and be all, "I know I had the right connector here somplace.. Curses! It was in the box I gave to goodwill!"
||:|::
With 100 x 10 = 1,000 5"1/4 floppies, you could tile your garage wall and have them "out of the way" while still holding onto them.
Look for a university that has a chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery. We take *everything*, and make working systems out of it, to use for student projects, community centers, charity, whatever. So we can use anything at all, basically. (If you're in the Baltimore area, the Johns Hopkins chapter is truly amazing at this.)
Man, the poster sounds like the packrat rednecks that live in my town..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Why not weave them into a nice artsy basket. I'm sure your wife would love that. Look here for inspiration.
If you don't get rid of that stuff by the end of the week, you should just give everything to your wife.
... oops, I gotta run! my old lady is calling me. BBL.
Or take her to the dump.
Hopefully, you were kidding about her giving you a deadline. If not, well you should definitely give her a piece of your
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Not sure about the dump in your locality, but where I live, just before you enter the dump per se, there is a steel building. There you will usually find hundreds of items that people think are too valuable to throw away, but they have no need for... I dropped off a few old computer chasis and an older printer, monitor and some cables one Friday afternoon. Found something else Saturday morning, and by the time I got back there, the stuff I had dropped off Friday was gone to a good home. See if there is something simialr in your area. If not, talk to someone about starting something like it
I reject your reality
I'm sure Good Will would take it to sell in the Good Will Store.
Here in Pittsburgh, Goodwill has a store specifically for used computer hardware. I've been there a couple of times for one thing or antoher, or just to browse. Given what I've seen, they certainly wouldn't have any compunctions about taking in a load of random computer hardware and connectors, so long as the stuff wasn't obviously damaged or otherwise useless. If you're going to go this route, find out where your local Goodwill office (not store - office!) is, tell them what you have, and ask them where you can take it.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Or my other option is to smuggle it into work and put it in / on an empty desk, especially right after someone leaves the company. Problem solved.
The schools around here don't want "old crap". There's a huge school budget deficit, so they make sure and only spec brand new, state of the art hardware for the schools. Go figure.
OTOH, a lot of local *students* might be interested. Check with school computer clubs, or try finding where the local geek kids hang out.
Check in local papers (including the cheap traders), and any local usenet ".forsale" groups.
I advertised twice on austin.general with large lots of "junk", and within hours had several people wanting to come haul it off. One guy traded me a SCSI card and some install help for one of the lots, because he wanted to do something for it.
Tell the lazy bums to get a job. Why should I work hard all day to support a bunch of homeless wires.
I would love to create a museum for computers (which should, of course, include a special section on historical libre software!). If you are in Europe maybe you could consider donating this stuff to me. I hope some day I will have the resources to start a museum project.
I have a box of misc cables, I sorted it and found 25 spare power cords. But ONE of the cables is suspect. Back in the early days of the IBM PC, they announced a major recall of power cords. Tens of thousands of power cords were shipped before it was discovered one idiot worker was wiring the hot wire directly to ground, and would definitely cause a short, maybe a fire. The store I worked pulled all the defective cables before they got to customers, but not before one got to ME. I am certain that one of my spare cables is one of the recalled cables, but I have never been able to determine which one. I never used the cable, it went right into my spares box before I learned of the recall. So I'm afraid of touching ANY of my spare power cords, for fear of playing russian roulette.
If it's at all recent, I can almost guarantee that stuff'd get snatched up on Freecycle. Go there and quit asking silly questions on Slashdot.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Why not build a bopamagilvie and call your Eustace, enk?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
For all of you posting about how he shouldn't take that attitude from his wife...
Consider that maybe, just maybe, she is right.
My wife has been after me for 12 years and three homes to throw out some old boxes of "important stuff." I put my foot down and refused to do it.
12 years later I finally got around to opening those dusty museums of a ME I'd rather forget!
Bell bottoms? Check.
Sleevless velour "muscle shirt", size extra-small? Check.
300+ floppy disks of Apple II games that I swapped for at fairs, but never actually played. Not once. Check.
Mouldy hammock. Check.
100+ pounds of wires, integrated circuits, resistors and capacitors scavenged from an ancient mainframe being throw out by my university that I was sure to use someday for some project. Check.
One precious copy of Playboy with the one and only Nancy Drew, Pamela Sue Martin? Check.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
How about donating it to your local college?
It doesn't even have to be the CS or similar department. You could donate it to the art department. I'm sure they would love to have such odd materials.
Pretty Pictures!
Check out Freecycle and see if there's something in your area to facilitate this.
This sig no verb.
Try Lemon64.com, look for the forums.
Get a new wife.
Isn't it just a little suspicious that there's only a one-letter difference between 'garage sale' and 'garbage sale'?
At least in my city, there is a huge freecycle community, and if you were to post that on freecycle, there would be a hundred geeks offering to come pick it up, or even help you tear it out of the walls.
Definately consider Freecycle.
we shall follow the ways of Johnathan swift, and
use his book "A Modest Proposal" as a guide
It's about eating babies!
just replace the babies with your equipment
(don't have to)!
If I understand you right, you have a lot of old hardware and cabling.
Before you dispose of them (however you decide), take pictures and send it to a website that archives these pictures. Especially if you have a lot of old hardware or obscure cabling, pictures of these may be a little hard to find, for people who're looking for some exact shape or model of old cabling.
VGMusic.com's Gallery is an example of such a website. (though with a slant toward gaming consoles). For example, if you're looking for a picture of a wire connecting a male 9-pin serial to a male telephone cord, the site has one at wires/w-m_9Serial-m_Tele.jpg.
Or go ahead and make your own website, or look for another one. I'm sure VGMusic's page is not the only such one, nor the most popular. It's just one I happened to notice once and bookmark.
"They'll either be able to use this stuff or sell it off for a decent profit."
Hmm. Nuns with 5.25" floppies. They cant go too far with that.
While youre at it, send them BNC ethernet cables, tokenring cards, EGA video cards and those giant Soundblaster ISA cards. They'll wonder why www.vatican.ca doesnt come up on Netscape 3.0 running on Windows 95. And why the heck doesnt USB work.
I've seen countless Pentium1 PCs under the rain out in driveways around here. Check their prices on eBay. In most cases the sellers are trying to make $$$ from shipping and 'handling'.
More realistic is sending them off to Mosques running FreeBSD. Chances are they dont need graphics cards and X
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
In the time it's going to take you to type up your question, read all the responses, and research into the useful responses, you could have packed up 2 or 3 rooms. Dump the shit in the garbage.
at http://www.greendisk.com/Greendisk. $5.95 for up to 20 pounds plus shipping in the U.S. (Try "media mail" from the USPS for discounted rates.)
Check the ARRL for listings of Hamfests in your region. Offer the whole box or two up for a few bucks, or sell the stuff piecemeal for 25 or 50 cents a pop. Even if there isn't a hamfest in the area for a month or two, say you will sell your stuff there. You might be able to buy some time that way. The hamfest will also give you the opportunity to acquire new junk as well, so be prepared to defend any items that follow you home, or keep them in the trunk of your car until the coast is clear.
If you are not currently using it, dispose of it.
If you don't mind shipping them (I'll pay) I'm interested in the floppies. wizard_woa at hotmail dot com. Thanks.
I doubt it but if you have a bluetooth adapter hanging around in that box-o-junk, I'll gladly take one off of your hands. I also accept hard drives larger than 1G and ram of the PC133 variety. (Size is unimportant, I'm not that kind of guy.)
(I could really use a bluetooth adapter that anyone has. I recently lost mine and am very heartbroken. I've been looking all over but can't find it. It's the only communication that my iBook and Nokia 3650 phone had with each other. They dearly miss each other and hope to sync up their contacts soon!)
Keep the cables and take you wife to the dump.
*ducks*
I got rid of over 300 lbs of functional and non-functional computer parts by giving them away for free. If you put those boxes up for free on craigslist, you'd have 20-30 prospective new owners that wqould come and take it off your hands.
To find out if the cable is a suspect, check in the plug if it says " Multilec", that is the name of the company who made those (I know, i use the work there, the company finally died in 2003).
The real history was that this is lot was the pilot of a production deal done with IBM, the specs in the wiring color were misunderstood, they were allready backordered at IBM so they shiped them without testing, they found out about it until some PC blew up.
What I did was to separate it into three smaller boxes, and then drove down to the goodwill dropoff late at night and skillfully slid each box into the night drop-off slot.
There, I GAVE it away.
It's not my problem if they throw it out because they don't know what to do with a SCSI-1 to SCSI-1 cable, or boxes of 5-1/4 disks.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
If you're like my household, for every box of 10 year old tech goodies, there's at least 3 full boxes of decorations, scrapbook junk, and other girly things.
Make a deal with your wife, you throw out 10lbs of junk, and she does the same.
That's fair, right?
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I bet ya'll got a pet possum livin in you ass too.
If you are in edinburgh here's my "must do" list
- Curry at King's Balti (it's BYOB so a case of beer should do three of you)
- For a decent pub in that area try the Abbey
- For something trendier my wife and I love Bar Kohl on George 4th Bridge, not very scottish but they have an impressive vodka selection.
- Obviously the castle is a must-do if you are into that kind of thing (not so exciting for a native)
For more traditional food (depending on your wealth) I can happily recommend the Witchery. For something a bit more affordable try the Marque (there are 2 of them i think).
Also don't try to do it all.
I can spend weeks in the hebridies islands, another week or two for orkney - trying to do a rushed tour of everything will leave you exhausted.
Bear in mind that it may take a LOT longer to get places. Travelling interstate here you can easily keep up an 80-90mph average, in scotland (particularly in the north) you'll average nearer 40.