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?"

Comments

Recycle it

[Anonymous Coward]

Recycle it

Sometimes "free" is still too expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it isn't going to cost you a fortune later to get rid of the stuff you don't salvage?

Components

[webmistressrachel]

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 :-)

Re:Time machine

[cayenne8]

Nah...just throw the shit OUT.

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.

Re:wall of monitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of a use for all the crt's.

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.)

Sadly, it's barely worth it.

[Animats]

If you go to Weird Stuff Warehouse in Silicon Valley, you can get enough cheap previous-generation stuff to build a data center.

• 1U rackmount servers, $50. Working, just obsolete by a few years.
• Rack-mount networking gear. Working, just about 1/4 the density of current gear, and 100Mb/s, not gigabit Ethernet.
• Rockwell 12-channel GPS module, $8.95. Nothing wrong with it, it's just 71mm across, which is huge by mobile standards. Good time standard.

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.

Re:Time machine

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Time machine

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Why don't you put things up on freecycle instead, maybe someone can find a use for them rather than making more e-waste.

There's Gold in them there CPU's

[bobstreo]

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/

Re:Time machine

[plover]

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.

Re:Time machine

[An dochasac]

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:

• All modern hard drives contain strong rare-earth magnets.
• Laser printers have unusual optical devices. Older ones might have helium neon lasers (watch it, the power supply is far more deadly than the laser beam!) But even more interesting are the acoustical optical crystals which can modulate any light source in a fraction of a second.
• At the current price of copper, a CRT yoke magnets and flyback transformer might bring in a few bucks. But first figure out what you're going to do with the rest of it.
• Tantalum "Super capacitors" might be of value just for the rare-earth content. But you'd need a lot of them. Better to donate to an electronics recycling charity.
• Laser disk players also have Helium neon lasers, beam splitters, high quality servos and optical components.
• Early projection TVs and video projectors and studio cameras and projectors might have a cold mirror (interference infrared filter) as well as an interference filter/mirror optical device for splitting white light into red, green and blue channels.
• VCRs, Printers have strong motors, gears, solonoids and other electromechanical parts.
• Ocilloscopes often contain unusual high-persistance phosphors. Build yourself a scintillation radiation detector or see what happens if you shine a UV LED onto it.

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.