What do you do with your old hardware?

[scubasteve]

I pull out the hard drives (for security sake) and any other components that may be useful in the future (DVD drives, graphics cards, memory) and put the rest out with the trash. I probably should find an electronics recycling program...but I can't say that they excite me...based on reports like this:

China - Salon.com

I suppose the best thing that I do is "reuse" since I build systems for personal use. The systems that I toss tend to be old laptops and old systems that family members give to me to dispose of safely (which usually just means pull the hard drive).

...and yes, I have a large box of old hard drives sitting in my basement...awaiting a better plan...or a large electromagnet.

 

[Dinesh]

I resell my old hardware.

 

[UrbanBounca]

you shouldn't throw away electronics, it's very bad for the environment.

I can't say that I care, honestly. I live in the country, and have nowhere to recycle them.

 

[Fantail]

I like to keep the pior build around for back-up, that has come in handy not just for myself in the past.
We have OCRRA in the central NY area. Perhaps other cities have similar programs. Have recycled about 1/2 dozen beat monitors & a TV or two that way. Now what actually happens to that junk? *shrug*

 

[bigmck]

there is always craigslist classifieds: jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, events, forums if you list it as free for pick up it will probably go very quickly. also local schools or universities will often accept donations or direct you to a source that does, as a benefit donating to a school is tax deductible.

In my neighborhood, getting rid of things is as simple as putting it in front of your house by the street. Give it two or three hours and someone has stopped by and grabbed it.

 

[pparks1]

I rarely do extensive upgrades to any old PC's...rather I usually just buy all new parts and put together a new box. Once I'm done with that, I usually just shuffle around the older boxes to upgrade my Linux workstation, my server box, etc. I usually will keep the older boxes for a few years and they just sit around for a spare in the event that I ever want to test anything (but with Virtual machine technology, it's rare that I ever want to use physical hardware).

On occasion, I have sold a part here or there at work to a friend..but not for a large sum of cash. The rest of the time, I take it to the nearest recycling station where they take it off my hands. I honestly don't think attempting to sell the parts on eBay would garner enough profits to cover shipping expenses and the hassle of packaging everything up.

I also have the neighborhood situation where you can just put something out on the curb and within an hour or two somebody stops by and takes it. Not sure what they do with any of this stuff...but I don't care either.

 

[TimStitt]

I build spare PC's for the local school's, for friends, family, little old ladies, whom-ever wants them. My wife is happy to just get rid of the hoards of computer junk that I have lying about (although it multiplies like gremlins).

Dead hard Drives with personal data get opened and the platters removed . Another colleague in the industry uses old hard drives for target practice.... it's surprising how many 9mm's it takes to make decent mess of your HD (more than I expected).

 

[CoolioG]

Shoot.....it.....

 

[Lebon14]

I always keep my old stuff... I currently have :
- An Intel mobo with an already mounted P4 (LGA775) and fan
- 2GB of 566MHz DDR2.
- An ATI Radeon X600 Pro by Sapphire (256MB)
- an LG CD/DVD drive (burns too)
- Multiple extensions lying around
- Mice...
- etc, etc

It's nice to have those... because if I have to do somebody's computer, if he only brings his/her tower, I have everything already to plug it up ^_^

 

[fseal]

Electronics recyle yard...

I generally use my computers to the point that none else wants them. They trickle down the chain from primary to backup to firewall to junkpile, then the recycle yard.

So much money burned up! I always remember what I paid for that (whatever) as I'm tossing it out. $3200 for a 386-25 with one meg of ram. $750 for a V7 VRAM video card with 512k of ram? Once paid $1000 for one gig of ram in some machine. Oh well...

 

[madtownidiot]

I donate my old desktops to the salvation army.. cheaper than paying $50 to have the city come pick them up. By the time I get done with them, they're not worth anything anyway

 

[CoolioG]

I keep them, which has lead to a huge stack of old 4gb internal hard drives in my house. When I see a old computer that needs saving at yard sale or something...I save it.......and never use it again. I could sell them but they would only go for 10 cents a piece.

 

[valtonray]

yeah you can keep 4gb on a sd card now.

 

[CoolioG]

yeah you can keep 4gb on a sd card now.

You can keep 32gb on a sd card now :shock:

Oh, well. Those PCs were good back in the day of dial-up and floppy disks.

 

[madtownidiot]

They"re still good for old games like doom 95

 

[Orpheous]

I just inherited another 8 Pentium 3 desktops
Anyone need a DosBox box?

 

[noobvious]

I just inherited another 8 Pentium 3 desktops
Anyone need a DosBox box?

You should put together a Franken-puter that runs all eight of those CPU's...lol

 

[Orpheous]

Something like this?
I'd still get better performance from a single Core 2 Quad, and MUCH better power efficiency. But it would be kinda fun to build

 

[noobvious]

Something like this?
I'd still get better performance from a single Core 2 Quad, and MUCH better power efficiency. But it would be kinda fun to build

That's way too complicated for my burned-out brain cells to even think about building.
Maybe DocBrown could build you a flux capacitor to power it all.

 

[D3ftOn3Z]

Usually i sell them off..To buy myself some new hardware.