What Can You Do with Old RAM?

sruchris asks: "Over the past 10 years or so, as friends and relatives buy new computers, I end up with the spare parts that they don't want. I've now have quite the collection of unused PC100 and PC133 SDRAM. Does anyone have any practical or creative uses for spare SDRAM other than giving it away? I have various sizes from 32MB to 256MB. My first thought was a giant RAM drive. Does anyone know of an adapter that would take, lets say, 10 sticks of SDRAM and give me an IDE or USB connector? I know people have made jewelery, fishtanks, litterboxes and furniture out of old computers parts, but what can we do that's pratical with a box full of old RAM?"

Comments

Gigabyte's i-RAM

[jgaynor]

Try Gigabyte's i-RAM:

Anandtech Review

4 slot, PCI, makes a great swap file drive for pshop or premiere.

Re:Gigabyte's i-RAM

[Anti_Climax]

I've only found 1 website selling these and it's a lot pricier than the original reviews lead on. Apparently there's only been 1 run of about 2000. Here's hoping for more.

Give them to me (or sell them)

[oldosadmin]

I'd say to give them to someone who might use them (like me), or to sell them on ebay. Some people still use that type of ram.

Re:Give them to me (or sell them)

[MrResistor]

That's probably the best suggestion.

Remember that this stuff wasn't just used in desktop PCs, but also in a wide variety of special purpose systems. For example, I used to repair video servers, which were basically a PC with a crapload of custom hardware, and each one uses a bare minimum of 5 72-pin simms (max 11, IIRC). There are hundreds of these things still chugging along doing their jobs quite nicely, keeping broadcasters like DirecTV going, despite the fact that some of them are old enough to be running NT3 on a 486.

Somebody has a use for them, and you might as well collect a little beer money from it.

That said, the ramdrive idea is cool, but it get's mentioned every year or so and there don't seem to be many of them out there, especially ones that use older form factors. If I had the know-how, though, I'd make one. I'm not convinced it's as unreasonable as some around here would have us believe.

Re:Gigabyte's i-RAM - DDR ONLY :(

[jgaynor]

I take it back - the i-RAM is DDR only :(. Still useful for those with extra memory though.

freecycle

[dr_leviathan]

http://www.freecycle.org/ -- basically a local free exchange of stuff that you would otherwise throw away

I found that via an old entry on http://www.makezine.org/blog/.

There have times where I wished I had some older memory to fill out an old liquidated machine I was resurrecting, but I've always had spares of the smaller sized memory cards while wishing I had the larger capacity cards. That is and abundance of 128 MB cards that I would like to trade ALL for just one 256 MB card. The low end stuff of any generation of memory cards is basically useless in my experience.

Anybody want some 128 MB PC100 cards?

Wanna sell some of it?

[unitron]

I'm in the market for 256 MB PC100 sticks (or PC133 if it'll work in old BX chipset boards), or maybe even 128 sticks if really cheap.

You can email me at coastalnet.com

Send PC100 RAM to us... We still use it!

[Anonymous Coward]

We continue to build up SME Server based systems,
  like the one we put into a returned soldiers'
  rehab centre in South Australia, cost-free.

  We've got some Compaq Deskpro's that work fine
  in that application... they take PC100 SDRAM.

  Adding more RAM makes our servers go faster;
  each of these boxes have room for 3 RAM modules.

  If you were going to dump them, dump them here:

        GPO Box 222, Adelaide 5001, AUSTRALIA

  TIA :-)

Donate them to a school

[jcaplan]

I work at a school as a computer teacher and tech support person. I have essentially no budget and I scrounge what I can. A bunch of 32MB PC100 or larger DIMMS (or SIMMS for that matter) would be put to great use. Remember corportate users upgrade much more frequently than schools do. I have a long list of machines that need more RAM. If you don't want to send them to me, check with local schools - they might be delighted for some extra RAM. Just make sure you talk to the right folks.

The lack of budget isn't all bad. It allows be to have a persuasive arguments for setting up a SAMBA file server (headless 200MHz Pentium, 96 MB RAM, 4GB storage and heavily used) as well as Open Office, the GIMP, Blender, Audacity, etc!

(Those interested in sending old RAM my way may contact me at: kittyspam a t comcast d o t net. Don't drop the word spam from the address.)

Thanks very much,
Jon

PS I also can make use of 20GB+ hard drives!

Sell on Allegro.

[SharpFang]

allegro.pl
In Poland, 128, 256, 512M SDRAMs run at prices high enough to exchange them for DDR400 equivalents with lifetime warranty.
These chips are what allows older computers - P2, P3 - to run smoothly and be usable in modern world. Used computer salesmen battle for them - because P3 600MHZ with 512M RAM will run faster than P4 2GHZ with 128M - which still is a common config available from retailers. Giving more RAM to the old boxes gives them a new lease of life and allows them to serve poorer people for many years. You can have such a computer, complete set, for $30, $50 - and it's more than enough for websurfing and home office, accounting etc. Only games require more.

Re:Don't forget!

[Arcane_Rhino]

Yes. It is always best to go to a professional.