PC's from the garbage pile

[Bryce W]

In Australia, we have something called "hard garbage" where people throw out the larger things such as couches, old TV's, wood, shelving, appliances etc.. but its always clean stuff, not actual food rubbish or anything.

Anyway, this happens about 3-4 times a year, people throw their stuff out on the front lawn and the council comes and picks it up.

There are many times where I am going to/from somewhere and I happen to spot some computer parts so I take a look. I have to say Ive found some pretty decent stuff. Heres some recent stuff (all working).

Most recent find:
Pentium 333, No ram, No video, 40x CD rom, CD-RW (dont know the speed off the top of my head), working 13gig harddrive with Windows 2000/Office installed. Threw some ram and a crappy video card in and it worked beautifully.

Most useful find:
300 metres of RJ-45 cable on a spool in a box. I was looking at some pc cases which I soon learnt had most parts stripped out and just to my left a notice a little blue cable sticking out of a box. I pull the cable a little and it looks like RJ-45, I look on the side of the box "it IS RJ-45!". I open the box and nearly fainted, it was a FULL box (300 metres) of RJ-45

Older Finds:
- A bunch of low end video cards (4 - 8mb jobbies).
- 2 Screens
- A handful of 10x network cards, about 2 10/100's.
- Many PC fans (both cpu and case)
- A few power supplies. One blew up on me in a big way, but I was expecting it to.
- Many small harddrives, usually 500mb - 8gig
- Many CD Roms ranging from 2x - 52x


Anyone else ever found any good stuff? Do you guys have 'hard garbage' days in your countries?

 

[Stealth]

Yes, we do, but I don't have anyone to store any found stuff.
I did, however, manage to find a working tape drive for the Commodore 64 a couple of months back at a local flea market - a rare find that cost me 40 kn - which is under $10 AUD.

 

[Bryce W]

Its that time of the year again. Here are my finds, all working:

- 8x DVD-Rom
- Working P3 500 (256 SDRam, 10gig HDD, 32mb M64 3d Accellerator, Unknown Modem, Built in sound and lan)
- 52x Trayless CDRom

I must have looked so dodgy when I was gathering the DVDRom and the CDRom. On that day I was on the way to my GFs house when I spotted them at about 5pm-ish while it was still light, after I left my GF's at about 1am I went back for them. It was a rich area, I was wearing a black hoodie and I was armed with a screwdriver and a torch sneaking around the place. I wouldnt be surprised if someone called the cops on me.

 

[Stealth]

Newest acquisition: a set of 19 5.25, DS/DD floppies, ripe for my old Commodore 64's drive.

The way I found them: The university did an autumn cleaning and graciously dumped about a dozen old computers, monitors and cases - among them, several 5.25" boxes of floppies. Now, the problem was we had a hailstorm not two days ago so I was worried the floppies might be dead - fortunately, not only were they boxed, but both boxes containing DS/DD floppies had plastic wrapping around the disks, along with the usual paper sleeves.

And if anyone asks, I don't care if it's perceived as "junk-digging". Being the relatively law-less country it is, Croatia doesn't have regulated recycling laws. Those computers could've been stripped of elements and recycled, or at the very least auctioned to 286/386 junkies.

 

[agarath]

Hey those old 486's make great Linux (distro smoothwall) firewalls!!

Seriously get an older beater with damn near on board everything (the linux doesn't like hp onboard nics), do a thorough format, throw 2 spare nics in and install the distro... PRESTO instant firewall.

I'd have laughed if you'd told me this a few months ago..."486...its a foot rest! Maybe a mp3 server if its a n early p2 or a p3! My Guru called me on my cell and told me to come into the "batcave" he had something I'd be interested in seeing.

He had an older machine p3 800 range that he'd set aside. He stuffed 3 nics in and popped the cd in, booted formatted, installed and configured ALL IN UNDER 20 min. I was fairly impressed. I dug up a beater with a dogy xp install bought it for $30 CDN and TaDaaa!

I'd had a d-link router that gave me nothing but grief so I was amazed at the ease of install and operation...oh I had to play about with things for about an hour, but as soon as I got a full update page in the maintenance menu... I knew I had it by the balls.

I figure that if my Guru is using it to safe guard part of his server networks from external threats then its got to be good enough for me!

 

[Bryce W]

Hey those old 486's make great Linux (distro smoothwall) firewalls!!

I love smoothwalls, I currently have one running on an old P200. Though, that computer was an old PC of mine rather from the garbage pile.

Oh, back on topic, I ripped apart an old garbage pile computer I picked up a few months ago to see if it had old ram (i needed it) and I found a working 64mb Geforce MX440 with TVout in it

 

[markviens]

Not a freebie but at the company I used to work for I got 4 250GB Western Digital External Drives for $60 in total. Nothing like a terabyte of storage for $60!

 

[Bryce W]

Not a freebie but at the company I used to work for I got 4 250GB Western Digital External Drives for $60 in total. Nothing like a terabyte of storage for $60!

Really nice find markviens. Reminds me of my incident with some harddrives. I once had the opportunity of getting 4TB of storage for free. However, there was a catch. The catch was it was made up of 8 fridge sized cabinets with 4gig harddrives in them which in total made up the 4TB AND I had to come pick them up (I believe they were in an airport). Apparently the power consumption on these fridge sized harddrive racks was insane.. I gave it a miss

 

[agarath]

You might have been able to make an uber-geek coffee table out of them

 

[lcs]

Or sell them on ebay for $10 each.

 

[Bryce W]

Or sell them on ebay for $10 each.

Imagine the weight of them, Id would have needed to hire a truck and forklift to move them.

 

[lcs]

Imagine the weight of them, Id would have needed to hire a truck and forklift to move them.

Yeah I guess that is true. I live out in the country and My dad has a Backhoe Tractor and everyone owns a truck. I would have jumped on that deal but I could have moved them for free, If they were near by.

 

[camp.cool007]

Here in America it is illegal in most states to throw a computer in with the garbage (more specifically, in a landfill). Therefore it is actually pretty rare to see a computer (or parts) just laying out. At least in my town anyway.

 

[bigdippin]

Where I live in Kentucky I believe its illegal also. But I offer a free disposal service so I can get some parts from old machines. My city has a thing I believe once a month or every other month where they have a special day for stuff like computer recycling.

 

[gunslinger]

My office computer was tossed. Its a p4 2.4 GHz with 512 RAM and came with no HDD. Threw in a 40 gig drive I already had and Windowsd XP Pro SP3 and it runs great. (faster than 90% of the Vista machines I work on)

 

[mnoakes]

Computer Bits & Pieces

I love these garbage collections days, because I find tons of stuff.

I have found lots of working P3 and P4 Computers that have been thrown out. I have found a Pentium 4 - 3Ghz wih 1gb of ram with a bad hard disk drive.

People are so stupid, they are told it is broken, so they buy a new computer and throw the old out.

The last collection day which was about a month ago, I saw in excess of about 20 printers, I didn't bother as I got heaps already.

I regularly go to the local council landfill on a regular basis, as they have a special area for all computer/TV/electrical rubbish. I grab lots of gear here, spare parts / ram / video cards. I show the man in charge with what I find and ask how much for it and I have never paid any more than $5 at a time.

 

[Blues]

I was told there is a place around here that has an annual computer shoot. Now if you thought of taking a shotgun and shooting the **** out of a PC then you are correct. I am interested in this ofcourse I am sure there is some good equipment going to waste in it but shooting a computer has to be fun.

 

[Keck]

A Good Deal

I have the best experience's with recycling in my area (chambersburg,pa) As i have been offering free electronics recycling for years
i have local agreements with city government and local hospitals and business's around the area.
Its a usual month to pick up working IBM Netvista Towers Dell GX260 Towers P4's of course but plenty of PIII as well mostly with the Hard Drives removed
for security but i have a deal with one hospital that will give me all there recycling every few months all i have to do is do a D.O.D disk wipe on them
before i do anything else. the load usually includes:
20 or 30 15" flat panels(no bases)
rack servers(usually stripped)
30 PIII Compaq deskpro pc's
a few P4 evo desktop
various hubs and routers(about 10)
patch cables
laser printers
phone equipment
a few nice p4 and pIII Laptops
and more

sure i get a lot of junk but i save it up in storage and over time and 26 pallets later a nice man comes and picks
it up and gives me a check