How do you get rid of old hardware?

How do you get rid of old hardware

  • Throw it out

    Votes: 16 59.3%

  • Give it to a company to recyle it

    Votes: 11 40.7%
  • Total voters
    27
F

Farva

Extremely [H]
Joined
Feb 3, 2004
Messages
38,147
Do you throw it out or do you give it to a company that will recycle it?

Edit: I should clarify, what do you do with your old or dead hardware?
 
I don't really get rid of them.

But when I do, they go in teh bin.
 
I make Frankenstein PCs and use them for testing purposes and dev boxes.

Really old ones go to Salvation Army
 
throw it out? what's that? i keep stuff around, usually end up using it to fix stuff on my/other peoples rigs.
 
I sell my old parts to ease some of the pain off buying a new part.
 
I try to sell everything, as I don't really have much use for more than two systems at once. Sometimes I give old parts to friends or relatives.
 
Really old stuff gets trashed. If it is usable I sell it or give it away.
 
I keep pretty much all old hardware because I never know when it might come in handy. Sometimes I get bored and piece together old boxen for the hell of it, sometimes I can use it to fix another box or sell it to someone.

Hell, I still have 30 pin SIMMs laying around. Never know when I might come across an old SoundBlaster AWE32 and decide it needs some RAM for wavetable storage. :D

I also have some old hard drives. I'm talking less than 100 meg storage sitting around. Some of them along with a couple of old SCSI drives help hold up my monitor stand as it was never meant to hold a couple of CRTs and likes to bow.

If anything, I'll keep old hardware for nostalgia purposes.

 
About once a year, I take my "old" PC stuff to Free Geek here in the Portland OR metro area. What a neat place; they use what they can to make up free computers that are donated to low income / no income folks in trade for "sweat equity" in their recycling or build groups, and recycle the stuff they can't use:
FREE GEEK can teach you how to build computers. If you agree to complete six computers, we will teach you the process. You can keep the sixth computer you complete (FreekBox spec) for your own personal use.
Click to expand...
For the win.....:cool:
 
I either sell my old stuff on craigslist, keep it for other people's systems or to build others, or donate it to Goodwill. Here in Austin, we have a Goodwill computer store called Goodwill ComputerWorks. Great deals to be had, and helps a good cause. It's one of those places you can walk around for a while, and eventually, you'll find a hellafied great deal. Or, if I need some odd part on the cheap, i'll check there first before anywhere else. Here's more info on it:

https://www.austincomputerworks.org/
 
Usually give it away, by the time I end up getting rid of it, it's not worth enough to bother selling.
 
well answering his edited poll, if it's dead its trashed.

But outdated hardware is either resurrected for new purposes; HTPC for my mom, file or web servers, or is usually passed down to other computers either in my possession or my immediated families, anything extra I can imagine I may need in a pinch I keep in storage.

My philosophy is if it works somebody can use it. I have an old 386 in my den that i'm still trying to imagine a use for. . .
 
What I think we should do is post old stuff up in the perpetual freebies thread so that our hardware can be kept within our community. I think there are a lot of people who are looking for things that you might have that you don't use. Haha. Just my .63 cents (damn California tax:p)
 
If it's completely dead, I throw it out. If it works, I'll find someone to give it to.
 
I really don't throw stuff out, I keep it around just in case. But if something is completely dead, I throw. It's easy.
 
stoney_titan said:
I horde old pc parts like a leprechaun and his gold.
Click to expand...

Me too. I've got a box full of old mobos, cards etc. My old power VR is in there along with other ancient stuff like ISA BNC network cards. Little box of memories basically. That and it's often very useful to have.

Ideally I would sell my old stuff when I upgrade, but I maul my hadrware so much in overclocking that it ends up being not very sellable. i.e. de-lidded cpus, graphics cards with heatsinks permanently glued on + v mods. That newer stuff usually ends up in a 2nd PC or something.
 
I keep all of my old PCs and also take old parts donations from others. I use them mainly to build storage boxes, router/firewalls and thin clients.
 
Old stuff goes right in the Trash to the dump, just like any good old American does, except monitors which can't fit in the trash bag so must now be brought to a special recycle place here in New York City.


Now if your a European, you have to bring everything to a Recycle place.
 
I have a group of friends that we do pass it on... if their stuff is higher quality than mine I get it and then pass down what I have to the next person.. been doing this for over 12 years now.. great system of doing it and helping out 5 others is pretty good too.
 
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