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Ask Slashdot: Projects For a Heap of Tech Junk?
yenrabbit writes "A friend has just told me he has 80 CRT TVs, a stack of DVD players and hundreds of VCR machines, all broken and all mine free of charge. I can already think of a few awesome components I can extract (flyback transformers for high voltage contraptions and so on) and have a few ideas, such as DVD lasers, that I can build. But what else can be made from such a treasure-trove of components, and how would one go about processing such a large volume of stuff with the least amount of effort? Also, I don't have access to online shopping so I'd also like a pain free way of salvaging many simpler parts such as resistors as well."
Another reader sent in a similar question: "The other day I went down to my University's property disposition center for the first time. In addition to mundane things like chairs and desks, it also had a wealth of technological devices, from old PCs and monitors to obscure medical and chemistry equipment. Honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed. I just don't know what I'd do with a old gene sequencing machine or a broken oscilloscope. Any ideas for fun projects? Or better yet, suggestions on how I can figure out which machines (or their components) are worth playing with?"
Just do it.
Recycle it
Use all the crt's to recreate the architect scene in the third matrix movie.
Although the DVD and VCR's can be exchanged for cash, the rest is just (somewhat) hazardous waste. Even if you scrounge around, remember you've got to get rid of the stuff eventually, and you can't legally put TV tubes in the trash in most countries.
Are you sure it isn't going to cost you a fortune later to get rid of the stuff you don't salvage?
So you take the tubes out of the monitors, and put in 5 gal fish tanks. Take the power supplies and poof! You now have your own anodizing plant. Just do small parts :))
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
leave it, unless you plan to properly dispose of said e-waste when you are done making junk with junk. most of the time throw-a ways aren't worth dealing with---its why their being thrown away
... they are not nearly as straightforward to use as you might have imagined, even if you thought it would be difficult to use. If you don't have access to a way to purify your DNA for it, forget about it. Even if you could purify your DNA well, you would still need the supplies (primers, buffers, molecular-grade H2O, etc) to run the reactions and then the software to analyze the results. And then once you get one reaction to work you have to set up and run many many more to sequence even one important gene to a meaningful extent. That said, don't even dream of sequencing your entire genome at home with an older sequencer (or any other that you could afford on the kind of salary that a slashdot reader is paid).
If you want some of your own DNA sequenced, send it off and then throw a big crazy party with the time, money, and space you saved by not attempting to do it yourself.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You quite rightly said that it'll be full of:
Coils, ferrite magnets, capacitors, resistors, various discrete transistors and IC's, wires, motors, transducers (build a whacky digital backup medium using VHS tapes!), chassis pieces to build new projects on, raw materials (steel, plastic).
If you can't think of anything, don't take it on. Recycling at the component level is VERY labour-intensive - one idea (and I don't want to give too many for free because this is my business) is to train volunteers for accredited qualifications in electronic repair and servicing (City and Guilds do a good course at different levels with almost that exact name). While they're learning, they can be labouring :-)
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Beowulf cluster.
And call yourself a Ham.
;o)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ideas:
* Give them to kids as an arts-and-crafts (not electronics) project.
* Give them to kids who know enough to not electrocute themselves or burn down the house as electronics projects.
Skip the tube TVs though or make a rule that they aren't allowed to open up the TV: They have lead in them and you don't want the legal or moral responsibility of having kids around lead.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Also, I don't have access to online shopping so I'd also like a pain free way of salvaging many simpler parts such as resistors as well
Save yourself the time and effort and get access to online shopping. Frankly, even if you have to wait a month or two, or place a bulk order, it'd be worth it. Standard rolls of resistors and capacitors are cheap.
Not only that, but in modern technology most stuff is going to be surface mounted and useless to you. You'll probably find through-hole components in the VCRs, but it takes time and effort to desolder stuff, and you're left with tiny leads... all for a part that in bulk probably costs 2 cents. You should really only be doing this kind of salvage if you're trying to fix your spacecraft on Mars.
That said, it might be worth desoldering large or unusual components if you think you might have a use for them. If any components or daughterboards are connected with ribbon cables, etc., it's easy to remove those.
Wear gloves. If you don't, you're going to end up with cuts all over your hands, not to mention dirt, dust, adhesive, and who knows what else.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
EGA monitors are pretty rare these days. If you find some, offer them to the folks at the Vintage Computer Forums, they'll be appreciated.
VCF would be a great place to find good homes for a lot of these items actually. Things like EMS cards for XT machines, or anything EISA.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
and a tall building.
My parents owned an electronic business up until the late 80's. There was all kinds of piles of things to play with. Eventually we had to pay big bucks to get rid of it. I kept a few of the tube audio amplifiers, a tube tester, an most of the SAMS modules just because. Hell I even broke up the yokes of the crt's (at least a hundered of them) and reclaimed a lot of copper but that was no where near the price we had to pay to get rid of the rest and that was in the early 90's.
Word of advice when working around CRT's, get something to short out the CRT under the anode to the chassis before dismantling it. They hold a charge even months after their last use. To break the vaccum on a CRT without causing an explosion, tap and break the glass at the tip by the pins. It will be a nice slow hiss.
You can't build anything different with a DVD player, a CRT, and a VCR if you have one of them or a hundred of them.
because if a wife saw you come home with all that junk she wouldn't let you in the house
go get a girlfriend. WTF is the point of sitting around messing with all this stuff?
No?
How strange
Old useless equipment + sledgehammer + $3 to take a few swings = money for charity
I am officially gone from
CRT's have negative worth. We have a lot of CRT monitors sitting around gathering dust. I try to get people to just get rid of them the most benign way we can. They're worse than worthless. If you were standing on the street and someone handed you a CRT monitor, your net worth would drop.
It is unfortunate that many colleges in war zones have had their equipment destroyed.
My father donated computers to a college in Africa. He had contacted the college president, and he said what he would take or would not take.
The photo copy machine at the giant state university was going to be sent to Africa, but the copier company did not have a repair person in the country let alone the continent. They did not send the photocopier.
That is why it is important to see what college needs, then just sending them your junk.
Pollute the groundwater in a third world country!
That's what everyone else does with them.
Well, you could always fill your house with em ... then your S.O. and/or family can call A&E and tell em you're a hoarder so that Mat Paxton will come to your house and throw them away for you.
Just make sure you kind of resist the cleanup effort first - cuz you know ... all those projects you wanted to do but never got around to.
Or just wait a few years till you're genuinely unable to get rid of em and you're at the point of pooping in a bucket, then call A&E for reals.
Have you ever seen that show Hoarders.....
It is a good thing you asked ahead of time as to how to process and manage this stuff.
Too many people jump on things like this without a game plan and end up like the guy you are getting it from and just give up and pass it to the next guy.
If you go to Weird Stuff Warehouse in Silicon Valley, you can get enough cheap previous-generation stuff to build a data center.
That's all working stuff, not junk. It's kind of depressing. Most of the gear there was valuable only a few years ago.
There's a service in Oakland CA which takes discarded desktop systems. They check them out, try some board swaps to get them to work, clean them up, build them up to a minimally usable standard, wipe the hard drives, install Ubuntu Linux, and send them out to schools that need computers. That's about as good as recycling seems to get.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
There can be dangerous stuff inside those machines.
If you have, or come across, any laserdisc players, may I strongly suggest Ebay? They aren't made anymore, I've never been able to find anyone who can still repair them, yet I still actively collect anime laserdiscs (http://www.otakubell.com/LDs/), and am not alone. I have 4-5 players, and if I can't find anyone who can do repairs, I wouldn't mind obtaining 4-5 more (once I move to a larger house, that is).
I must admit I am somewhat of a techno junk hoarder. However I found so many good things dumpster diving over the year. In addition to PC boards with resistors and caps, I also keep a look out on gear trains, and mechanical parts - laser printers are fun to digest. And of course stepper motors.. Always get stepper motors.. I made an XY table for my CO2 laser using nothing but printer parts. I have parts and circuit boards of devices in my "grave yard" that I look at now, and think - once upon a time this was a $2000 printer, or this was a top of the line monitor - now lay in wait in pieces for my next project.
I Love dumpster diving!
What a piece of junk!
Take it all, stack it six feet high in your house, and get yourself on an episode of Hoarders. Don't forget to find a friend or loved one willing to gasp at the sight of your hoard, shake their heads, and emotionally appeal to you to get all that junk out of your house.
If there is a place you can donate to a less-fortunate destination (local or overseas school, library, etc) then make this your priority.
Else, if you can sell it in bulk on Kijiji/Craigslist for cheap (think $1 per monitor), then sell it, and donate the money to a good cause. They mightn't benefit from monitors and VCRs, but they can certainly use the money. I suggest in bulk, because you don't want to be supply-chain-managing a bunch of crap, do you?
Else, if you can recycle it, do so. Hoarding a bunch of worthless archaic junk that you can't get rid of will just mean you're hoarding a bunch of worthless archaic junk that you can't get rid of!
Else, build a time machine. :-)
Mate, I'll agree with the lot of the stuff you threw out , but really , binning equipment like that is just not on. Your geek card should be torn up in front of you and you should be restricted to using Windows 3 on a 486 for the rest of your life.
Seriously , those things are collectors items - you've been pretty foolish. Even if you didn't want them someone else would have but now they're just landfill. A real shame.
Some things you can't do with LCDs; tinker with the electronics until you have an unscanned beam of electrons from the back of the monitor tube making a bright spot on the screen and use a magnet to move it around. Make it safe for kids to touch the display and work the magnet. Set up an after-school event to talk to them about relativity, charge, atomic structure, bremsstrahlung, X-rays, the LHC etc.
I used to mess up TV pictures with a magnet when I was a kid, it was fun to distort the actors on screen, but a lot of kids today may not get that experience. It's not a big thing, but I believe the experiences all add up.
Nullius in verba
There are some nice optical parts in DVD/CD players. They're usually glued in, but a little heat applied to the metal sled w/ a soldering iron and a toothpick will pop them loose w/o damage.
But the truth is except for scavenging copper, if you don't know what's in it, it's probably of no use to you. However, you might learn enough taking a few things apart to justify the time spent.
Have Fun!
Gold is at 1,573.00 an ounce today.
Here's a link to check out cpu prices based on gold content:
http://www.ozcopper.com/computer-cpu-gold-yields/
Scanners and printers are a good source of hard polished rods and bushings, belts and stepper motors with pulleys. You can build 3D printers and small desktop CNC mills with these parts. Old business-grade hardware usually has better parts too such as thicker rods and stronger motors.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I'd highly recommend seeing if you have any local Hackerspaces/Makerspaces in your area (we have some awesome ones going around Texas). There you'll find people who want to "tinker" with old or new technologies, including education (it is a great experience to tear apart an old disk drive to see how it works, for example). Visit the worldwide hackerspace wiki at http://www.hackerspaces.org/ and look at the world map; or visit some individual hackerspaces and tell them what you've got (Houston has TXRX labs at http://www.txrxlabs.org/ ). Good luck.
This is a great idea, and one that my wife often uses to get rid of things around the house we both decided are no longer needed.
BUT, freecycle can also have a hidden "cost"; your time and energy. On numerous occasions, we had people respond to a freecycle ad offering something, and then they turned into a no-show. That means we were stuck at home waiting for them to arrive, or alternately, hauled items out to the curb or doorstep, only to have to bring them back inside after they sat out all day and night, not getting picked up. That's on top of the initial time/effort required to make the listing for the item(s) in the first place.
It's great when the plan comes together and your junk becomes the next person's much needed item, in a quick and easy transaction. But it's just human nature that it's only going to work like that some of the time.
Personally, I've gotten to where I'd rather attempt to sell most of my items on Craigslist or even eBay, vs. freecycle. At least that way, I'm financially compensated in some manner for the effort required to do the listing -- and will generally come out far ahead of just that.
For example, I used to work for a steel fabrication company, and they had a "web press machine" out on the shop floor. Basically, it was just a big contraption with air compressors powering a punch on a moving arm, over a conveyor belt. Steel beams would roll up to it, and the machine would punch holes in the ends of them where the connector bolts would go when the beams were installed.
The whole system ran an MS-DOS based program on a desktop PC installed in the metal cabinet that served as the "control panel" for the machine. Then, a couple of 16-bit ISA controller boards were installed which interfaced with the machine itself.
The guy who supervised the initial installation and servicing of the web press made good money repairing this obsolete computer hardware, primarily because even a computer-savvy individual at a shop using such a system would probably not have access to older systems with ISA card slots that could run the special controller boards needed for it. Piece of RAM goes bad? Ok ... how many people will be able to run out and grab a replacement 72-pin SIMM of the right speed for one? Failed power supply? You have a spare AT type with the power button physically attached to wires coming off of it, as is needed for the external power switch mounted in the metal control panel cabinet? He even designed the cabinet so it held a full size 15" CRT monitor just right so it had its screen up against a slanted piece of plexiglass on the control box. If you didn't have another similar shape/size of CRT to replace it with - you were in for some interesting jury-rigging to get a modern LCD mounted in its place in there!
So many people wrote the old hardware off as trash, it created enough scarcity for people like this with special purpose devices to use the stuff on purpose, so they can command a premium for the repair parts.
And putting it on YouTube.
Out on the street with a FREE sign. Instant gratification and problem solved. Helps to have a good location (e.g. corner lot at a corner with a stop sign) but in the end it will all go, lol.
I come here for the love
Good Luck with the DVD Lasers, they are IR, so you won't be able to see anything.
Take it all there and sell it.
Do you have a boat?
Beowulf cluster.
Duh.
While you will find makers and hardware hackers on slashdot your mostly going to find kids who don't see the value in any tech they can't get a faster framerate than their friends playing the latest games on.
You should be asking this on Hackaday's forum or better yet on your local hackerspace's IRC channel.
Something like the stegosaurus from the movie "The Squeeze".
OHHHH yes. And even better, they complain about YOU, saying YOU didn't put it out when YOU should be complaining about them being a no-show. Somehow these deadbeats are buddies with the people running the group, because they invariably stay on while YOU get kicked off. Even better are the THIEVES, who steal anything else they find near where you left the free item. It's not worth it; the scumbags have killed Freecycle.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If you have to ask on /., you really shouldn't be here in the first place.
If you don't mind some light, but hard work, bordering on drudgery:
an old CRT has over a pound of copper in it. Older ones have quite a bit more.
When you get down to old processors and other circuitry there are some people who are able to salvage the gold out of them, but the parts need separated first. When I was in high school I helped sort and strip and salvage a couple hundred 286, 386 and 486 computers that were being disposed of by some large local businesses as a "donation" to the school my mom worked for. There was a jeweler who took the processors and gold plated connectors for cash. I know a large coffee can of parts was worth over $100, and we generated quite a few can fulls.
Circuit boards can be recycled and have value once separated and in the pounds of materials.
Parted out there is a good possibility of a few hundred dollars worth of salvage in that pile. Even sheet steel has significant salvage value once you get to 100 pounds of material.
There is a reason junk collectors, people who take all the salvageable trash off the curb on trash day, can do this instead of having a "real" job.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
And in case you did not get it: DO NOT COLLECT JUNK!
From that lot of junk you can probably only recover the metals: gold, aluminium and steel.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Save up enough CRTs for a decent capacitor bank. You're well on your way to being a supervillian.
Every time I see a post like this, I'm reminded that I have been down this road myself, and seen my family members suffer for it.
If this is tempting, be honest with yourself, and look at your track record. I'll bet that you have alot of parts lying around for projects that are still "in progress". You have a reason that they are still "in progress", but realistically, you are never going to complete it. They are all waiting on something, and that thing they are waiting on is not actually in progress.
Now you want to take in enough derelict electronics to fill a shipping container, because having 53, low power, invisible, assorted brands and designs of IR lasers, still buried inside their cases, is somehow better than not having them.
Do yourself a favor and tell your "friend" to hire an electronics disposal company. He should be paying you to take all that crap off his hands.
When the day comes that a flyback transformer or DVD laser is the last part needed to complete your Tesla coil or whatever, $5 in gas money and Craigslist will get you your part.
I see so many people doing this and I swear they are just as bad as those horders on that TV show. In the end it's pure shit. But you can't tell the person that. He thinks it's worth more than all the gold in the world.
Congrats he gave you his headache
responsibly get rid of all non functioning tv's. Tv's used to be a gold mine back in 80's there is really nothing of use (except dangerous power supply circuits). Keep a couple of functioning tv's with coax connectors. There are a lot of fun projects that use this as an output device.
make quick work of the vcr/dvr. The vcr has a step up power supply, might be useful (pull the circuit intact). They have lots of gears and moving parts that can be modified. The cd/dvr's have dangerous (uv) leds. Only harvest if you know what your doing.I'm not a big fan of the brushless motors in vcr's, you have to cut out the mounting hardware.
Floppy drives have small steppers and old printers have bigger steppers. Hardware drivers have to be built, but these are precision motors.
Radios are a lot of fun to take apart.
Read some beginning articles on the web. Try to take apart circuits in tack, much easier to incorporate in future projects.
Actually taking the device apart isn't that big a deal; use a solder wick, solder sucker, toaster oven or blow torch. I prefer to chop and cut up boards to get to what I want. If your going to harvest the cheap stuff, resistors, caps etc, you will spend more time than you want separating them.
good luck, my wife will only let me use one storage closet.
in electronics. When I was a teenage geek, a ham up the street gifted me with a number of things including a marvelous "boat anchor" surplus shortwave set. And lent me a number of other things like a working scope. It was a great learning experience. If something wasn't working or couldn't be made to work, I salvaged components from it. My parents had no idea I was debugging 400 volt tube circuits. Somehow I survived.
PC boards etc sell for scrap on Ebay, for example.
I'd tear down everything. You can scrap steel cases, copper separated into different grades (ask your scrap dealer how they want it), aluminum, lead batteries etc.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Personally I'd take about 8 or so Pentium 4's if they have it and store them in a closet just so I can set up a Gog Lan party whenever I want.
very selective in what I save or salvage. I am a Ham Radio operator, so I do save pretty mich all copper wires and cables. If I don't use the wire. I can sell the copper. I just got my first LCD monitor for my desktop system. The system is a refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre, and the monitor is a Lenovo ThinkVision. I did save the old 19" crt as a spare, as it works pretty well.
I really don't like the new wide-screen monitors. TV sets were standardized on the 4:3 aspect ratio (width to height) after much research into the easiest aspect ratio to view. All of my friends agree that the wide-screen TVs and monitors SUCK ASS. I will not be buying a TV or monitor or laptop with a wide screen.
I am in the middle of replacing some poorly shielded mic cables with some salvaged (in very good condition) rg-58u coax cable. Much better shielded, and much less expensive than buying mic cable from a supplier. I found that saving non working things that I might (or might not) use later mostly just got me too much junk laying around. Now I try to keep from collecting too much, and periodically go through stuff and discard things I haven't used or don't think I will use soon.
The collect the precious and heavy metals and sell them. Profit!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I've been doing computers and electronics for a long time (25+years). I've been 'given' a lot of old hardware. Some of it you can do stuff with, but usually its just plain too old to do much with. Example: "Oh, I have 10 old computers, I can make a beowulf cluster from them", except that you fire all 10 up, and you are sucking down 1600 watts, and get 1/4 of the total performance of starting up one new machine (which only sucks up 600 watts). You have created something that sucks more power, gives less performance. I've recycled computer cases, and other components (power supply, dvd player, I even moved a 1.44" floppy drive around through 3 or 4 machines till about 2 machines ago when I just went to USB sticks and never looked back (I had a big fat gob -more than 200- of old floppy disks, moved all of it to a single dvd, written several times so that if a part of the disk goes bad its in more places-- and got rid of the lot. I recently bought a 16GB micro-sd. It has gobs more storage than all the usb sticks I own. The smallest holds more than all of those floppies. There is no going back. Cases, power supplies, fans, heat sinks. You really can't even keep memory, processors or the rest around. Recycle the rest.
CRTs are a curse - either to the community it gets dumped in, or the person paying or disposal. The glass is infused with lead. Separating this responsibly is energy and cost intensive. If they are destined for landfill, everybody concerned ought to be shot in the groin... Twice. Same goes for Flouro tubes which contain mercury.
On the other hand, Circ boards and CPUs have reclamation value and libertarian types have taken to hoarding PM bearing scrap. Just look on eBay to gauge market and *perceived* value. Anything other than desktops are labour intensive. Beware the dust from old PCs which contains degraded fire retardant which is now banned as a carcinogen.
Dont fuck with DIY Aqu-Regia, mercury or cyanide treatment. Leave the lethally toxic to the professionals. You will improve yield/cost and life expectancy.
If you can use the components for fun or profit more power to you. Just be aware that high voltage caps from CRTs and PSUs can hold charge for years, so take care when assembling that home-made Tesla coil.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
When I was back there at MIT, you could be pretty sure that somebody would be glad to get any piece of high tech debris. (Quite likely, that person would be me....). It's frustrating to me that out here in the world, nobody sees the possibilities in the stuff. Hell, even for mechanically minded kids to just disassemble for practice, kind of like med students do cadavers.
Keep in mind that you'll eventually have to get rid of all of the parts you don't keep (which is likely to be 95% of it). Getting rid of that much tech is likely to have some associated costs. Many municipalities charge you excess disposal fees after you put out 2 or 3 TVs, let alone 80 of them. There are also various hazardous waste items you may have to contend with, such as batteries.