What Should I Do With My Tech Junk?

Thomas Matysik writes "I'm attempting to de-clutter my house and I've hit a rough patch: the computer room. I've got a bunch of wires, hardware and software that (I think) were useful at one point in time, but these days it doesn't do much more than take up space. Selling it seems like it'd be a huge hassle and it seems really wasteful for me to just pitch all of this stuff in the dumpster. I've considered giving it away to Goodwill, but I'm afraid that's not the right sort of outlet for this stuff. My question: what should I do with all of my tech junk?"

Comments

I Keep My Junk

[kmsigel]

I've been working at home as a consultant (software engineering) for over 15 years. Doing a lot of embedded programming, I've accumulated lots of custom and COTS hardware over the years that I almost never use. The problem is the word "almost." On a rare occasion some suspected bug gets reported and I have to dig out some hardware that I haven't used in years and get it working again. After verifying that the suspected bug is really user error, I then pack it away in the basement.

So for me, I just keep everything. It's all worthless, anyhow. How much would someone pay for a Hayes 2400 baud modem? Or a 68040 based Mac running System 7? Or an 802.11 (not a, b, or g) Access Point? I also have early 802.11-draft wireless equipment if that sweetens the deal for anyone. :)

Re:Bring it to a recycling centre

[Kadin2048]

I'd have some reservations about taking it to many "recyclers". Some actually perform the recycling and metals reclaimation themselves, but many more just take all the equipment to the Third World (Africa and South Asia seem to be popular) and dump it there.

Anyone taking old IT junk for free or without charging significantly for its disposal is almost certainly dumping. Although there is a significant precious-metals content in them, it's not (yet) worth the labor required to reclaim it in the developed world. (Which is why you don't see people soliciting e-waste in the same way they do scrap metal or junk cars.) It's a lucrative business when you can employ starving children to do it, but not so much otherwise.