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High Tech Junk

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the landfill-is-cool dept.

Keepiru writes "Where do old computers go? No one knows for sure, but I suspect half of them are hiding in the closets of slashdot users. " Interesting problem. Comments that many people might buy new (and throw away their old) computers come Y2k bugs, and talks about the PCs 18 month life span. Course those 18 month old boxes are still bitchin' linux desktops, but they just don't have the same sparkle as that dual xeon box either.

3 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. MIT Flea Market by SlapAyoda · · Score: 3

    There's a flea market held over here at MIT every thrid Sunday of the month. Lots of hardware ranging from microwave trancievers, to ocilliscopes, to sun machines, VAXen, to Pentium 3s. It's really cool. There's tons of stuff from like the 70s and all kinds of weird hardware junk. Like, really weird stuff. Lots of stuff is given out for free by the vendors who don't feel like bringing it home. I've gotten 9 free monitors in the past three months. It's a cool place. Check out the MIT site for more info.

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  2. Actually by aheitner · · Score: 4

    The 286 has a full multitasking protected mode.

    It's just 16bit. It works fine. The 286 can take up to (IIRC) 16megs of RAM (tho few MB's will take it).

    IBM originally came out with OS/2 for the 286.

    Interestingly, Intel never provided a way to switch out of 286 protected mode -- they figured you'd boot in real mode, switch to protected as the OS loads, and never look back (they forgot they had M$ to contend with :). To get your 286 out of protected mode you triple-fault it, which causes the processor to reset.

  3. Where to old computers go? by rde · · Score: 3

    Where to old computers go?
    Silicon heaven. Duh.