Ok so I am going full time in Feb. Feb. 22nd to be exact. That will be the day I will be a full time computer guy and business owner. Now I bought a crap ton of stuff from a former computer repair company. Roughly 20 towers of all makes and models of varying ages. I know what to do with the old stuff it is going to be broken down and recycled. I have some Dell towers with Pentium 4s in them, should I keep them? I have a butt load of laptops, some broken down all the way and some with screens robbed and memory ripped out along with the HDDs. I guess I will test the best laptops and recycle the rest. I have laptop boards out of the chassis, like 10 of them. I do not know if they work, should I scarp those as well? I get $1.60 a lb for mother boards at the scrap yard. Now for the RAM. I have about 20 PC3 memory chips for laptops, It is a no brainer to keep these. I have 16 PC2 memory chips most of which are 512 MB and just a few are 1 GBs. Should I ditch the 512s and 256s and just keep the 1 GBs? Do you guys run into using smaller PC2 memory chips? I also have one 256 DDR 333 for a laptop, is that worth keeping and also one 1 GB SODIMM for a laptop, Keep? And then I have a stack of DDR and SDR for towers, Is the worth keeping. The reasons I ask all these questions is I want ot have some stuff to start on, but I also see that some of this stuff can generate cash for recycling very quickly that I can apply to start up cost. I hate clutter and luckily for my 99% of a computer is recyclable. I have tons of power cables, network cables ect. I also have a bunch of old HDDs. Laptop and desktops. I think I will just ditch them Unless they are SATA and work. I have some that are ATA and just 80 GB or less, I think I will just recycle these. What are some things you have found worth keeping around that isn't the normal hard drive or memory chips? Off the wall stuff one may have to scramble for that I may have and shouldn't throw away.
Spare Parts for New Business
- Thread starter atlasmike
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BrentfromZulu
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First off, your post is hard to read.
P4's are useless. Some might argue C2Duo being useless nowadays.
If someone needs a old stick of memory, I would buy new always. As a customer, I would want new Ram and new Hard Drives.
P4's are useless. Some might argue C2Duo being useless nowadays.
If someone needs a old stick of memory, I would buy new always. As a customer, I would want new Ram and new Hard Drives.
Sorry Brent, I posted that from my phone. Next time I will just wait till I get to my computer to write a post.
carlitos31
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depends on the situation
old parts can be useful. A guy that has some sort of expensive machine that only talks to windows NT machines just had me install a hard drive on his old tower, so a windows NT re-install, that tower would only see 20 GB hard drives ( or smaller capacity). Not only he didnt mind paying my normal rates, he tipped me $100 because his business depends on that machine.
Of course now we have a image of the drive so next time this happens it will be easier to get him back up and running
old parts can be useful. A guy that has some sort of expensive machine that only talks to windows NT machines just had me install a hard drive on his old tower, so a windows NT re-install, that tower would only see 20 GB hard drives ( or smaller capacity). Not only he didnt mind paying my normal rates, he tipped me $100 because his business depends on that machine.
Of course now we have a image of the drive so next time this happens it will be easier to get him back up and running
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YeOldeStonecat
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Old parts come in handy, as "spares". We constantly have a storage closet filled with old desktops, old towers, old servers both towers and rack mount, old routers w/power supplies, old switches w/power supplies, etc etc etc. I call it the "bone yard".
Couple of times a year it grows too big, overflows...and we throw out (haul to the scrap metal place) the oldest/least useful. We don't do residential so we don't keep a supply of residential grade stuff...safe for some laptops. So the models of business model workstations, and of course servers...is relatively simple to keep.
Sometimes you need a part "now"...and while yeah it's nice to order a new one, it's also nice to be able to pull a still useful "used" part to put back into service and get a client up and running..at least until you can get new parts ordered and installed later.
Couple of times a year it grows too big, overflows...and we throw out (haul to the scrap metal place) the oldest/least useful. We don't do residential so we don't keep a supply of residential grade stuff...safe for some laptops. So the models of business model workstations, and of course servers...is relatively simple to keep.
Sometimes you need a part "now"...and while yeah it's nice to order a new one, it's also nice to be able to pull a still useful "used" part to put back into service and get a client up and running..at least until you can get new parts ordered and installed later.
Ed_Zipper
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We never sell used parts, we give them away for free. I don't need $25 that badly. The worst thing anyone can say is Ed gave me something for free and it broke.
RAM, if it has a lifetime warranty, is always new.
RAM, if it has a lifetime warranty, is always new.
glennd
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td;dr
congrats on going full time and good luck. my short answer is keep everything. after a while you will figure out what you need, what people in your area are looking for and what is garbage. i really wish i'd kept those 5 inch floppy drives though :-(
congrats on going full time and good luck. my short answer is keep everything. after a while you will figure out what you need, what people in your area are looking for and what is garbage. i really wish i'd kept those 5 inch floppy drives though :-(
River Valley Computer
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We have three retail locations - the main one stores a BUNCH of used parts going back to the late 90s.
Last week we had a client come in and wanted two 5 1/4 floppy drives for an - are you ready - an Osborne Luggable. Guess what ,we had them. He was with the Instrumentation Group at the nuclear plant near by and they use it to communicate (via MS-DOS) with some of their instrumentation. We were heroes. This has happened a lit - but if you are limited on space DON'T do it. It will get out of hand.
There are 4 other repair companies in town and they call us constantly asking and buying parts from our olde' stock.
Last week we had a client come in and wanted two 5 1/4 floppy drives for an - are you ready - an Osborne Luggable. Guess what ,we had them. He was with the Instrumentation Group at the nuclear plant near by and they use it to communicate (via MS-DOS) with some of their instrumentation. We were heroes. This has happened a lit - but if you are limited on space DON'T do it. It will get out of hand.
There are 4 other repair companies in town and they call us constantly asking and buying parts from our olde' stock.
Krilus
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Wow,
I'm not sure if thats awesome or if someone should be fired for allowing such old equipment to be used
I'm not sure if thats awesome or if someone should be fired for allowing such old equipment to be used
SpaceSquad
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Great outlook on this - no bad mouthing can possibly happen. I worked at a PC shop here for awhile that would put "refurb" (read:used) drives into machines...so often they would come back with failing HDD
I would keep the towers that are C2D or newer as well as the laptops that are dual core or greater - for parts...laptop parts are great to have around, especially if it's a common model (HP G6 series, etc). I don't have anyone call me to fix a P4 desktop or 10 year old laptop - my hourly rate is more than it is worth. I do a data transfer in the case of a machine that old.
cypress
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Congrats on going full time. I really don't think you will get much or need the P4 towers. Outdated stuff. I actually just trashed a couple this past week. Pulled out the hard drives of course.
