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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?"
Recycle it
Are you sure it isn't going to cost you a fortune later to get rid of the stuff you don't salvage?
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
and a bunch of useless tubes full of leaded glass.
Laser CNC should be plausible with a lot of the parts from the VCRs / DVDs, assuming you can get or already have the controller boards (or are "electronic" enough to build them from reclaimed bits).
And what else is leaded glass used for?
Yeah, build on of those.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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!
I can think of a use for all the crt's. Here in RI we're still waging the marriage equality battle and the bigots like to bus them in. So I thought to be funny - I could get there ahead of time and setup a bunch of monitors around the room and just have it cycle through the faces of the supporters. Talk about an art installation.
and a tall building.
Don't forget the crystals.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
At worst...maybe make one and only one pass through to see if anything is genuinely useful. But one thing I've found is...quit just gathering stuff that *might* be useful some day for *some* project.
That type of thinking lands you where I once was, and to where a number of my friends are, namely they have workshops, garages and even spreading into their very HOUSES just heaps of junk. Stuff piling up everywhere.
I've basically given myself a new mode of action. I have about 2-3 projects, things I can and will realistically get to in the next few months. I will collect things for those, buy them, or otherwise attain them.
Anything else, I pass on.
I've made up my mind, that I will not move a ton of useless, outdated shit around any more.
I'm still going through my stuff after the last one.
I found books, tons of stuff, tech stuff that was outdated. Into the trash.
I had a number of CRT monitors, I kept only the ones I needed for computers I have that do not yet have flat screens. The rest of them...in the trash.
Old SGI workstations? In the trash.
Old network cards, old ram, keyboards I didn't need, etc....in the trash.
I'm actually once again starting to have a home office where I can find stuff I actually need to do the things I'm actually working on.
I still have a ways to go, but I'm unloading. I make enough money these days to where I can buy new or used stuff WHEN I NEED it for something I'm currently working on.
This also keeps me from getting into too many projects at once....and never having time to finish one. I have one friend, that bless his heart, he is like a cat and a laser pointer, always seeing something 'new' to start on, yet rarely finishing the last interesting project last month and way beyond, and yet, still accumulating stuff for all of them.
I know people like this...they have rooms that look like an audition for the tv show "Hoarders", and while I don't think it is so much a mental problem for them, it is the MO of always seeing possible treasure in a pile of shit, harvesting it, but never getting to it.
I figured out, the garbageman is my friend. I find something I've not used in awhile, it simply goes into the trash can, and they haul it away for me.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
19" CRTs with 100-degree tubes are highly prized by collectors/restorers of arcade equipment. (The 19VLUP22 used in Tempest used a 100-degree angle of deflection, rather than the more common 90-degree deflection. The game was prone to burning holes in the phosphor under certain hardware failure conditions, and a collection of 80 or so CRT TVs may have something useful in them. Black-and-white 15" and 19" tubes are also useful to restorers of vintage gaming hardware.)
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.
Absolutely agree with this. I accumulated things for over 25 years and have spent the last 10 slowly throwing things out. I'm a lot more selective now on what is actually worth the space in my house.
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
for what you'd pay in electricity and labor in just a short order, you could make up for by buying higher-quality cheap LCDs...a quick scan at amazon shows there are new and refurbished lcds for $50. There's very little use for a CRT.
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.
Laser CNC should be plausible with a lot of the parts from the VCRs / DVDs, assuming you can get or already have the controller boards (or are "electronic" enough to build them from reclaimed bits).
He said DVD *players*, not DVD burners, I don't think he can even melt wax with a 5mw DVD player laser.
A 150mw laser diode from a DVD burner laser might be able to melt plastic, but it sounds like a lot of work for little gain. Blu-ray burners are said to be closer to 1W.
But if you value your eyes, where appropriate laser goggles since an errant reflection from a powerful laser can quickly cause eye damage.
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!
because if a wife saw you come home with all that junk she wouldn't let you in the house
Six weeks after getting married my wife calls me and said she saw a computer sitting next to the dumpster at her old apartment and do I want her to pick it up for me. I knew right then I'd made the right choice.
Before throwing electronics away make sure to check the appropriate regulations in your area. Many of these things are actually classified as hazardous waste under various jurisdictions and must be handled differently than normal trash.
What a piece of junk!
I am quite sure he meant using the MOTORS in the device, not the lasers.
Good-bye
Why don't you put things up on freecycle instead, maybe someone can find a use for them rather than making more e-waste.
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. :-)
Couldn't have said it better.. the only thing I would add is find your local recycling center (most county/city gov offices have them in some capacity) and drop it off there, rather than directly to the trash.
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
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.
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Agreed completely.
But everywhere you used the word "trash", the reader should infer the word "recycle". Many communities have recycling centers that will accept electronics for free.
For the adventurous among you, you might consider attempting to recover the precious metals yourself. I have a friend who recovers the gold from plated card-edge fingers. His last run of perhaps 14 old ISA bus cards yielded about 20 grams of gold. The drawback, of course, is that it uses corrosive chemicals, including nitric and hydrochloric acids, which have to be safely disposed of.
John
Time machine? That has potential constructive uses...so it's just not evil enough.
With all of those lasers, I'd hope somebody could come up with a schematic for building a death ray. I've always wanted to have my own death ray.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Of course, that's what rock quarries were made for: What you can't throw in the dump goes there.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Hmm...I'd almost agree, though IMO one should never give up the opportunity to throw a perfectly good CRT off of the side of a building. They make awesome noises when they hit the ground.
Haven't you ever had to throw a big piece of glass away, and you ask yourself: Why am I just going to "throw" this away without breaking it first? Honestly I rarely if ever throw away big pieces of glass without breaking it first, and I think everybody here agrees. CRT's are equally fun to destroy.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
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.
Windows 3 on a 486? You're being generous.
I'd go with Windows 3.11 on a 286 with a Hercules graphic card.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
A person who keeps things around because they "might be useful" is not the type of break things "just because it would be cool". Completely opposite personalities there. The reason it's being kept around is because the person sees value in it. Destroying it is devaluing it.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Although psychically provocative, blowing up CRTs spews lead around. Those things should be disposed of properly.
Go shoot watermelons with a .222 - about the same level of visceral satisfaction.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
I second this. Go through and strip out what you might need for backups and spot fixes like wires and connectors, and pitch the rest. I've kept a ton of old hardware mostly for naught. Technology simply progresses too quickly to make any of it useful and the fuss of wrestling with old hardware just isn't worth your time.
Now, if anything is decent you might want to consider donating to a non-profit or a high school for kids to tinker around with.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And putting it on YouTube.
What are you talking about? There is only one matrix movie.
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
Please turn in your geek card. CRTs still make fine monitors for computers and video game systems.
Take it all there and sell it.
Do you have a boat?
Bah!
Windows 95.... on a 386!
Yes, it can be done, I've seen it.
It even had AOL muh ha hah hahh
No, I've been hording electronics since my college days. You would be amazed how much old computer junk I had packed in a college dorm room. But... CRTs which I couldn't use, less than VGA, nonfunctional, I used to enjoy throwing them out the 3rd story window of the study room.
Also, old, nonstandard computer cases were fun to get rid of. Now... I really was hording, for example, cases which I could get a standard footprint motherboard into given a nibbler and a hacksaw and a LOT of elbow grease I kept. It was mainly ones with non-standard spacing between the expansion slots and junk like that I tossed, after removing floppy drives, pathetically small hard drives, controler cards, etc... I used to throw unusable cases down the garbage shute. I would do it at night when people were sleeping. I always did it from the top floor and always at an angle so it bounced betweeen the metal walls several times on the way down.
Talk about a waste of resources. I'd bus in a bunch of environmentalists to protest your vainglorious "art project".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
if losing substantial real estate on my desk just to have a substantially lower quality picture via a device that uses substantially more electricity and which causes problems for my eyes which an LCD wouldn't, for some reason means I should "turn in my geek card" - then fine. The display on my desk is 37" - getting an old CRT that big would mean 200lbs, 2' deep, hot, and tired eyes in minutes if I were anything closer than several feet away (ie - not a desk monitor). The display in my emtertainment room is 65" - I don't even want to think about what CRT might have ever been that large. Tell ya what, keep the geek card, sounds like I don't need it. I'd much rather - as I posted originally - have a 17" for $39.99 than deal with an old "free" CRT." I suppose if I don't ride a horse and carriage to work, I should turn in my geek card for that too?
Well, the electricity would come from the State house. That way it's no biggie.
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.
Whatever you do, don't throw it in your ordinary trash. The only thing worse than paying $1000/month rent for a house full of junk is ruining our environment with something that does have value. Check your local area, electronics recycling is a value proposition for some metals (e.g. gold) but also for the rare earth elements in capacitors and hard drive magnets.
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.
You should look up the definition of a "bigot" because you seem just as intolerant of their opinions as they are of yours.
Amen to that!
Btw: For a News for Nerds website there seems to be a lot of left-wing platitudes posted here (and often highly rated by mods). Don't nerds tend to value logic over emotion and thus tend to political neutrality or libertarianism? That has certainly been my anecdotal experience and I think I've crossed paths with a variety of nerds.
In all seriousness:
In addition to the clutter aspect, it may be worth considering the potential adverse health effects of having piles of old electronic equipment kicking around. Depending on their age, they may be leaking polychorinated biphenyls and/or banned flame retardants, etc.
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
Windows 3.11 on a 286 with a Hercules graphic card.
And a 2400 bps modem. Hopefully you can still find a copy of Trumpet Winsock around somewhere!
Before throwing electronics away make sure to check the appropriate regulations in your area. Many of these things are actually classified as hazardous waste under various jurisdictions and must be handled differently than normal trash.
Here's how they're handled differently: Non-hazardous waste it placed in a nearby, sealed, sanitary landfill. The hazardous e-waste is piled out in the open in undeveloped countries where it freely contaminates their local water supplies.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
You're right....player. Oh well.
Oh, and here's the spec on power output of various burner lasers: http://elabz.com/laser-diode-power-output-based-on-dvd-rrw-specs/
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.
Wait, Why was this modded down?
This is the crux of the problem. Not putting things in the recycle chain because you believe there is still a useful life for that 386 is exactly the problem. You save it, you pawn it off on some kid or some church and they leave it in a garage or something. Just take it to recycle. Maybe they do the right thing, but its almost certain that pawning it off on someone else does nothing good for anybody.
Get it in the recycle chain even if you have to take it apart and recycle the plastic, the chassis, the transformers etc separately. Your time is free to you, but if a recycler has to pay someone to sort ewaste, chances are they will just shred the whole mess and bury it somewhere.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
for what you'd pay in electricity and labor in just a short order, you could make up for by buying higher-quality cheap LCDs...a quick scan at amazon shows there are new and refurbished lcds for $50. There's very little use for a CRT.
Some of us (Arcade collectors) prefer to keep things as original as possible and still repair / cap CRT's to maintain that. Sure LCD's may be cheaper or more energy efficient, but it's like an old muscle car that gets 6 MPG, you know what you're getting when you buy it and would rather keep it original.
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.
While the amount of lead in a CRT makes up a significant fraction of its weight, the lead is vitrified and not much will escape into the environment, even if the glass is shattered. More lead would likely enter the environment from the melon-destroying bullet shattering on a rock. That's still no excuse for littering the ground with broken shards of glass.
John
You forgot to add that many times it's sorted by children in unsafe conditions
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The collect the precious and heavy metals and sell them. Profit!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yes agree completely. I'm a hoarder so this goes against my instincts. One way I deal with electronics in UK is that I give them to a recycling charity that will make a little money and provide a little employment from it. I give books to charity shops. I have a sneaking feeling that there should be a recovery program for this [maybe there is?]: I am powerless over books, electronics, cruciform screws and assorted leads and my house, garage, garden and toolshed has become unmanageable...
.... he collects wires' huh!
One of my friends introduced me to their smallish child [now in their 20s, this was some years ago] with 'this is
On y va, qui mal y pense!
And yet... he's right! I did the exact same thing. I lusted after SGI workstations for a long time and ended up with someone giving me an Indy (no head, no power cord, just a box). I love the way it sounds and feels when you use it. But... I never actually had time to do something with it and it stayed, along with a very old tiny Sun workstation, in a heap in the corner and finally when I moved the second time I got rid of it and a bunch of old towers and crts that had been taking up living space. Where I live it can cost $40 per piece to take away but I found a place that would do it for nothing.
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
Agreed completely.
But everywhere you used the word "trash", the reader should infer the word "recycle". Many communities have recycling centers that will accept electronics for free.
And there lies the problem. They "take" the stuff to "recycle" and cash in on it themselves. What would I get if I were the one who did the favor to send it to recycling? Not a fucking thing. So, aside from aluminum and other metals, which the local recycling center actually pays for, everything goes to the curb in bags. Straight to the dump. As soon as they give me incentive to recycle glass beer bottles, I will. As soon as they give something in return for the profit they will undoubtedly make off computer hardware, I'll think about it. As soon as they give me a reason to recycle stupid plastic bottles... well, nothing will change, because plastic will never be worth shit. As for paper... well it'll continue going in the garbage; they easily have enough tree farms out there to keep paper products in supply. And if they run out... well maybe they'll legalize hemp and stop relying on such slow-growing plants.
And, dare I say it, movies. Even with a "full-screen" CRT TV I always bought the "original" wide-screen versions of DVDs. I have watched movies on many TVs, and nothing, NOTHING beats the contrast of a CRT. On a CRT, black really is black. I wish they still made TVs like they used to. LCD/LED, plasma, DLP--you name it, they all pretty much suck in comparison to a halfway decent CRT.
If video games weren't designed to run in HD/wide-screen these days and you could actually read the text on the screen, chances are I would prefer CRTs for those too. True, there are wide-screen CRT HDTVs, but I don't have one. But with older non-HD gaming systems (GameCube/Xbox/PS2 and before)... CRT is a must. Call me crazy, but I actually *like* the scan line effect... I tend to enable it whenever possible when using classic game console emulators. The high-res "HD" textures on a modern TV also tend to give things an unnatural plastic-y look... what can I say, I guess my preferences lean toward the old style...
Calculate the number of square feet this stuff will occupy to find out how much your "free" stuff costs per month
I understand what you're trying to get at, but this is specious reasoning. You pay $X a month for that space whether or not you keep junk in it.
Your logic only follows if you were specifically living in a house that size in order to store things, and you then threw away everything you didn't need in order to sell your house and buy a smaller one.
Throwing out your hoarded trash makes your house nicer to live in and has apositive impact on your mental health, but on it's own it doesn't save you money.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
One more difference: it costs at least 3 times as much to dispose of e-waste "properly".
That seems rather short-sighted. Just because you think something is not useful doesn't mean that someone else might not have a use for it. Just because you have something that just sits around and is never used doesn't mean that's what everyone is going to do with it.
Why not? Windows 95's minimum requirements were a 386 with 4MB of ram. The killer part of the minimum configuration is the 4MB of ram. If you can manage to 16MB or more in there it's not too bad.
With that mindset we would never recycle anything and would all be living in a junk yard.
Recycling frees resources for others to users. Hording doesn't.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Seriously? Do everyone a favor and recycle your old computers and electronics. The reason for recycling them is to keep hazardous and toxic materials out of the environment. It's not a money making scam - it costs more to recycle a computer than what they can resell the raw materials for.
Divide your rent or mortgage by the square footage of your house+garage+basement. Calculate the number of square feet this stuff will occupy to find out how much your "free" stuff costs per month. In much of the US it has been upwards of $1 per square foot per month. So each 19" CRT or "pizza box" Sun or SGI is probably costing a couple of bucks a month depending on how high you can stack them. Is it worth that to you? For most stuff and most people, the answer is sadly no and the value half-life of technology is decreasing every year as manufacturers lock consumers into their planned-obsolescence trap.
If you'll get enough enjoyment out of it, by all means collect it. I hope slashdotters haven't lost their nerdy mojo and are just trying to hoard the good stuff for themselves. But in case people here really lack imagination, here are a few items that might be worth keeping:
Whatever you do, don't throw it in your ordinary trash. The only thing worse than paying $1000/month rent for a house full of junk is ruining our environment with something that does have value. Check your local area, electronics recycling is a value proposition for some metals (e.g. gold) but also for the rare earth elements in capacitors and hard drive magnets.
My approach would be to find a small business with an electric furnace. Melt down all the crap, separate out the gold and other precious metals, and then sell the scrap metal b y the pound. Metals are worth money. You could probably extract more tnan a few troy ounces of gold.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
2400bps is pure luxury, 300bps would be a better punishment.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Lead-containing silicate glasses are relatively reactive, chemically. Don't do it - send them for proper disposal. If nothing else, within a short time (years to decades at most), a dry-stored landfill of CRT tubes, broken or not, is going to be worth smelting. To reclaim the lead.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Besides, a light gun will *not* work on anything else than a CRT
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Besides, a light gun will *not* work on anything else than a CRT
Correct!
Windows 3.11 on a 286 with a Hercules graphic card.
And a 2400 bps modem. Hopefully you can still find a copy of Trumpet Winsock around somewhere!
I have that winsock driver if you need it. ;-)
Not a problem in New Orleans, you put it in the trash can, they will haul it away, they're not picky.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The SGI's are old Indy's I think...and unless you know how to reset them to get logged into them....they're useless.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No, I meant trash as it put in the trash along with the refuse from the kitchen, broken bottles, old cans, etc...the stuff the garbage men pick up when you leave it at the curb.
I don't have time to haul shit all over town to wherever a recycle center may be. I also only own a 2 seat sports car, and I would have to make a LOT of trips for this to haul it all away, and frankly would likely risk messing up the interior of my car, so no...I did mean the trash.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
CRT monitors are, except for their size, superior to LCD monitors. The picture would not be of lower quality at all. It would have better colour and true black. Getting tired eyes is not true either, as you can adjust the monitor's refresh rate (something you can't do with LCD monitors which are locked at 60Hz).
But, sure, if you value your real estate that much and need huge monitors, be my guest. Just don't spread lies about CRT monitors.
There are few CRT HDTVs, and they never existed in Europe (where I live). We didn't even get real HD Ready TVs (the ones we got had 748 lines), which sucks when HD consoles mostly output a HD Ready image. Nowadays we have to make do with Full HD TVs which scale 720p to 1080p.
I don't have a HD console yet, but from what I've seen at friends, you're not alone; the graphics also look like plastic to me.