DD: The Official "Post What You've Found" Thread (pics!!)

Went to throw out my junk mail today and noticed a cardboard box next to the dumpster with some cables in it. Pushed the coax cables and cable modem to the side to find a new in box ATI FireMV 2400 quad head video card, and a couple of NES RF modulators.
 
I haven't checked this thread in over a year, but glad to see there are still lucky people out there. I have yet to ever find anything laying out waiting for me to grab it... ;)
 
I guess I'll toss in my lot,would like to see more people's finds

Just note, I acquired all of this over the course of months of dding on my campus in Missouri

A (5gal?) Dewar (tested out later and it no longer has a vacuum, still makes a good thermos though)
a 10000 psi hydraulic pressure pump
Golf clubs! in a decent bag, and a couple baseball bats
Cat5 cable (about 5x25ft length, i turned them into a 100ft single cable)
A 100 ft 16AWG extension cord (needed the plug replaced)
A couch (good quality, the person got new couches and this one was a bit broke)
A set of speakers (one died about a month later, I replaced the speakers with a different set I dd'ed that sounded about the same)
POTS AND PANS Galore (all decent quality, few scratches, most even had lids)
Wire spools (huge and end-table sized)
A GDM-FW900 CRT monitor (It was actually at the Campus surplus, but was in their pile of scrap CRT's, I pulled off the scratched anti static coating, works perfectly. purchased another later for $30)
A full back desk chair
Halon heat activated fire suppressor
Machine shop stand (almost like one for a drill press but no channels or hole in the center, School forced me to take it to surplus, got stopped by the police and everything, ended up getting it for $5)
Satellite dishes 10', 4', and 3' dia respectively, Police station was tossing them, so I kindly asked and they were overjoyed that someone wanted them.

lastly by pure technicality when our van's (with 225k miles) transmission died and was to be junked I snagged captain's seat out and made a kick-ass gaming chair

I'm not going to include the stuff that has been given to me for free/insanely cheap, cause the list would go on forever.

if i get a chance i'll post up pictures later
 
A while back i managed to find a pretty decent Pentium4 machine out of a dumpster had a geforce4 ti 4200, but no hard drive and got a 17" CRT with it. Made for a pretty nice machine to play on for where I was at the time.
 
My friend worked at an electronics recycling place (like where you'd go to take that old CRT if you were a standup citizen, and didn't dumpster it lol)... Ugh, he had gotten all sorts of flatscreens, PS3s that needed new HDDs, XB360s of various conditions, laptops, stereos, etc etc etc

Before this thread was even started I dived an Apt complex... well, no... We were working on a friend's car in the parking garage and I was throwing away crap and noticed this, but got a nice Intel USB webcam. Worked great, had a dial adjustment zoom, which with the case off it had hella-crazy macro ability lol

About 4yrs ago now this guy I did some work for was tossing out his old Viewsonic LCD because it would power on-off-on-off so I asked if I could have it. Yea, as you've probably guessed already it was just needing some new caps on the power supply. A few minutes on eBay and $2 later (with many spare caps) and I had a nice working spare 17", which still works and I still have!

Scrap Cat5 in usable length is nice as well. though you no doubt won't find that any longer. Before my uncle started recycling it (owns a cabling business) I had been working for him and took a bunch that was at the end of the spool but too short of any run to be made. IF you can find some, grab it guys! A few bucks on eBay will get you at least a dozen RJ-45 keystone jacks that are tool-less, so you can make some very handy networking "extension" cables with sockets on both ends. Or make an extended length USB cable, which I made a 30-footer from some 5e :)
 
About a year ago I was dropping off some early to mid nineties boxes I had been playing around with/salvaging fans from at the local recycling station. In the heap of old PCs and TVs I could see a black case buried in the middle, it caught my eye cause it had a blue cap on the DVI output of the GPU. Then I realized there were two GPUs. I thought, whoa a multicard box! Looked around, no witnesses. Grabbed it and threw it into my truck. When I got home I popped the cover off the case (an Antec 300) and peered inside. Antec PSU, Gigabyte AM2+ board, AMD Phenom 9950 Black, DVD+R ODD, 1TB HDD, and Crossfire Asus 4770s. My jaw dropped, who would throw this away?! It must have a bad PSU or something... So I cabled it up... it booted straight into Windows 7. I installed a fresh OS and cleaned it up, and it's been my wife's PC since then!
an300.jpg
 
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About a year ago I was dropping off some early to mid nineties boxes I had been playing around with/salvaging fans from at the local recycling station. In the heap of old PCs and TVs I could see a black case buried in the middle, it caught my eye cause it had a blue cap on the DVI output of the GPU. Then I realized there were two GPUs. I thought, whoa a multicard box! Looked around, no witnesses. Grabbed it and threw it into my truck. When I got home I popped the cover off the case (an Antec 300) and peered inside. Antec PSU, Gigabyte AM2+ board, AMD Phenom 9950 Black, DVD+R ODD, 1TB HDD, and Crossfire Asus 4770s. My jaw dropped, who would throw this away?! It must have a bad PSU or something... So I cabled it up... it booted straight into Windows 7. I installed a fresh OS and cleaned it up, and it's been my wife's PC since then!

Nice find!
 
Wish i'd find something like that, i'd use it for sure.

I'd imagine some kid going off to college and his parents throwing that away.
 
About a year ago I was dropping off some early to mid nineties boxes I had been playing around with/salvaging fans from at the local recycling station. In the heap of old PCs and TVs I could see a black case buried in the middle, it caught my eye cause it had a blue cap on the DVI output of the GPU. Then I realized there were two GPUs. I thought, whoa a multicard box! Looked around, no witnesses. Grabbed it and threw it into my truck. When I got home I popped the cover off the case (an Antec 300) and peered inside. Antec PSU, Gigabyte AM2+ board, AMD Phenom 9950 Black, DVD+R ODD, 1TB HDD, and Crossfire Asus 4770s. My jaw dropped, who would throw this away?! It must have a bad PSU or something... So I cabled it up... it booted straight into Windows 7. I installed a fresh OS and cleaned it up, and it's been my wife's PC since then!
snip*

That's fucking awesome.
 
Nice find Taranabas!

I've gone to the County Landfill and picked through bins of the recycle computer/electronics bins and scored some computer parts. I look for the wireless antennas sticking out the back or like you, multiple GPU adapters on the back. The Prisoners working there don't seem to mind. :D

It's been awhile since I posted here but I'm still DD although things have slowed down. One store is onto the fact that someone's making stuff disappear (I'm not the only one hitting it) so they've started painting their throwaways. Kind of a pain in the ass but Goo Gone takes most of it off.

I hit another jackpot in software around October of last year. Ended up selling off a bunch for about $1,000.00 which allowed me to upgrade my golf clubs to a premo set of Mizunos and Titleist Woods. Great thing about selling Anti-Virus software late in the year; it's good for one year from the install date so the 2012 covers you for 2013 or most of it.

Stuff that doesn't get put on Ebay and the family doesn't want gets saved for a yardsale.
 
I found a Technics 1980's Stereo System and a newer CD Changer in the trash yesterday

Amplifier
SU-V77

Tuner
ST-S77

Equalizer
SH-8027

Cassette Deck
Forgot the model and I already gave it to a friend

Compact Disc Changer (Which is an add on from the mid to late 1990's)
SL-PD6

Stereosys1.jpg


I also believe I found the speakers that went with it last year
 
So I found a Yamaha DX7 II FD synthesizer in a construction dumpster today. It powers on but I need to get a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter to see if it actually works.

This is probably the best dumpster find for me so far.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/nw3vBn]DX7IIFD-2 by ethanqueen, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/nLuAsA]DX7IIFD-1 by ethanqueen, on Flickr[/URL]

EDIT: Found out that the soldered in CR2032 battery was dead. Already swapped in a CR2032 holder from an old motherboard. Now I just have to wait till the stores open up in the morning so I can get a battery to install. Then I can reload the synth patches from the ROM cart and I should be good to go.

These things go for around $300-$400 on Ebay, but I will most likely be keeping it. This model of synth was used for the music in quite a lot of 80's movies from what I have been reading. Watched a few demos on youtube as well and I think I will like it very much.

EDIT 2: Put the new battery in and then tracked down an image for the 3.5" floppy disk to load the stock internal patches back, and then restored them. Had to fix a couple other settings, but from what I can tell, it is working like new :-D

EDIT 3: Was looking at stuff online and saw a picture of the music holder that goes to this keyboard. I realized I had seen it in the dumpster as well so I went back and got it. Meesa so happy :-D
 
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I once found a complete Commodore 128 system, both 1581 drives, a 1703 monitor, an Okidata printer, and a slew of games. Worked perfect, as the cords were in a box next to the setup.
 
I once found a complete Commodore 128 system, both 1581 drives, a 1703 monitor, an Okidata printer, and a slew of games. Worked perfect, as the cords were in a box next to the setup.

Oooh.. nice. Quite a few years ago, I used to check a dumpster for a store that sold used books, music, video games, etc. I pulled multiple working consoles out of that dumpster.. NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and Sega Dreamcast (not all on the same run).
 
I found a working Sony STR-DE197 with a cut power cord :rolleyes: why I don't know
I took the chance and grabbed it and I replaced the cord and it works fine and I got the remote off of eBay for $3 with free shipping

The Sony receiver now serves computer desk duty with a pair of JBL MR25 speakers
much better then the Technics system I found (I gave that away but I kept the CD Changer)

I also found a Casio CTK-2000 that works perfectly that I gave to a friend
 
Found a nice PC, E8400, 9800GTX+, 550w psu, 250GB harddisk and some asus mainboard.

The person who threw it out had cut all the wires inside, psu, fans, sata cables, all cut, but nothing my trusty soldering couldnt fix, booted up nicely after installing missing ram.

The ram was missing because my competition (some other guy diving the same place as me) had taken them, he nearly always get's first, but only takes ram and harddrive, leaves cpu and everything else, but this time he didnt find the harddrive as it was installed in the bottom of the case, I hardly noticed it. :D

Also found a working E6600, the other parts in it wasnt much though.
 
I went through my deceased brother-in-law's trailer about 6 months ago and found a vintage Sunn O))) solid state amp. Of course, it's on my to-do list to get refurbished when I have the money to get it done.
 
Does on the job dumper diving count? lol

I'm a doorman in Manhattan NYC with a midnight to 8:00am shift. The best shift in the world since I am pretty much my own boss at night. I will share some pictures late but this year alone, I have found..

Five Laptops - Two booted right up but I needed to purchase adapters for them. A Dell Inspiron 1705 with some shell damage to it. The other was an older Thinkpad. A Samsung laptop that boots up as well but the screen is no good. The other two, another Samsung & Toshiba don't boot.

A LOT of computer towers. Most were junk other than an older gaming rig that had an AMD 64 x2 CPU & a 7800 GT. Another older system had a 9800 PRO in it.

Box of Gamecube/Wii games.

Box of PS2 games with a PS2 original model system, controllers, cables, memory cards, etc.

Too many DVD Players to mention

Box of DVD & Blu Rays, most were sealed but garbage movies that most people would dump anyways lol.

Way too many CD's. Everything from Jazz to old school Hip Hop.

Found a ton of other stuff as well but they are not tech related.

Will post some images later on :).
 
Does on the job dumper diving count? lol

I think it does, when my old job was changing buildings I was in charge of cleaning out the tech supply closet. There were hundreds of power cords that they were going to throw away because they didn't need them. I kept some of the nice heavy duty long server power cords.
 
Found a Sony KDL-40BX420 by the trash cans on Monday October 20th (Good thing I took it when I did as rained that night)

The TV has a small line down the screen (What causes that?) but it is hardly noticeable unless the picture is almost totally white

This is the second working LCD TV that I found being thrown away

1.jpg


The TV is now in my bedroom replacing the CRT TV that I gave away a long time ago
 
Not sure if this counts as DD, I work at a computer service place. We were going through the piles of "things no one ever picked up" I couldn't throw out the Lenovo Ideapad U310 Touch that just needed Windows reinstalled or the 24 in Dell AIO that had a bad HDD. So they came to live with me.
 
I found three XBox 360 controllers with the charging tray in virtually new condition, and the XBox headset. One of the neighbors moved at the end of the month and threw this stuff in the dumpster.
 
I kept an eye out on this thread and others to see if anyone posted about finding what I left when I moved. As I moved from my last apartment I left 2 non working turntables, a working preamp and power amp, a pair of Cambridge soundworks s300 speakers, pair of Baby Advent 2 speakers, 2 15" LCDs, 1x 19" LCD, 2 or 3 core 2 computers, a 24 bay SATA to fibre channel rackmount raid array, a pair of JBL HLS-810 speakers, kitchen table, 5 shelf wire rack.. and more I'm probably blocking out.
 
I kept an eye out on this thread and others to see if anyone posted about finding what I left when I moved. As I moved from my last apartment I left 2 non working turntables, a working preamp and power amp, a pair of Cambridge soundworks s300 speakers, pair of Baby Advent 2 speakers, 2 15" LCDs, 1x 19" LCD, 2 or 3 core 2 computers, a 24 bay SATA to fibre channel rackmount raid array, a pair of JBL HLS-810 speakers, kitchen table, 5 shelf wire rack.. and more I'm probably blocking out.

No but I'll be looking in the dumpsters more often after reading this!
 
Not Dumpster Diving, but basically the same thing.

Where I live, we have what we call "curb shopping".

When people want to get rid of stuff that they think somebody else might want they just stick it out by the curb.

We have trash pile pickup so if somebody doesn't take whatever, it automatically gets taken every few weeks.

Yesterday I found two nice plastic deck chairs.

This morning I found an old Element 32" 720p LCD TV (supposed to have 1366x768 vga but haven't verified yet). It wouldn't power on so this evening I took it apart to have a look. Turned out that it had a single blown capacitor. I replaced it and now it works fine.

It does have a single bad pixel, but not sure if it will stay or go away since it looks like the TV had been stored in somebody's garage for quite a while as it had spider webs on it.
 
Some more things that I have got from my nightly digging through the trash while at work.... lol!

Toshiba Satellite L645 - First fully functioning laptop I have found since I've started working at this job. Only needed an adapter but it booted right up. No damage at all. Updated it to Windows 10.

iPhone 5S - Was in the same bag as the laptop. Damaged screen & the battery charge was shot. It works though so I will repair it. Caught a break seeing that it belonged to the same person. Thanks to Firefox storing PW's, the person used the same PW for everything. Was able to factory reset the iPhone thanks to that lol!

Large Box of PS2, PS3 & PSP games. Plenty of Madden games to drive any gamer insane :). Box has a PS3 as well but that did not work.

Xbox 360 games.

More CD's!

JAM wireless bluetooth speaker - works. Sucks that it is pink!

CNS38vYWoAAYgXo.jpg~original


CNUT4RxUEAAzmWF.jpg~original
 
I found two laptop computers last week, a Compaq 2500 and an HP Pavillion dv 9700. I had to uninstall a bunch of stuff and I had to run endless (seemingly) updates to the Pavillion. But it is a sweet little computer. I gave the Compaq to a friend. Not a bad find.
 
Picked up a Dell XPS 13 (2012) that had a bad USB, ended up being a bad driver in windows, gave it to my son
Picked up a Lenovo Twist (2013) that had a bad wireless card and bad RAM, replaced both, gave to wife
 
I actually got A TON of parts not from dumpster diving, but from 'helping out' customers by volunteering to get rid of their old units.

Snagged an Asrock Z87 OC formula with a few bent pins, managed to bend them back and sold it.

Got an 1156 i5 dual core system (complete with RAM and PSU) from a customer who left their machine in our shop and never came back for two years.

Snagged an i3 2100, sold for proffit

Grabbed an i7 920, sold for profit.

A complete Swiftech WC CPU loop setup (240 rad, D5 pump, box res and block) (no way did I sell this)

RAM, so much RAM

Windows keys coming out my ears.

A faulty AMD 6870 that runs just fine if you downclock the core.

SO MANY HDDs from failed HDD data recoveries. You think "Wait, why would you use an faulty HDD?" I say "I don't" in actuality, many of the HDDs still had warranty, so when the customer recovered their data, I would ask if they still wanted the old drive. 9/10 times they don't. So I would take the HDD home, register the serial on the manufacturers website, claim a warranty, send in the old drive, get a new (refurbished) drive in the mail.

An Nvidia GTX 590 for $100 AU (three years ago). A guy upgraded his videocard, I asked what he would do with the old one (590) and he was like "lol, throw it?" and I was like "uh DUDE can I keep it?" and he was like "nah, I'll probably take it apart or something.." So I just flopped my wallet on the table and said "I'll give you $100 bucks for it" and he put a big 'ol smile on his face and I went home with a GTX 590 for $100 in 2013.

Mind you, All of this is legal and moral, as I ALWAYS check with both the customer and the company before I snag these items. And these are just the ones that I win the 'dibbs' on. Other employees got some other great stuff.
 
An Nvidia GTX 590 for $100 AU (three years ago). A guy upgraded his videocard, I asked what he would do with the old one (590) and he was like "lol, throw it?" and I was like "uh DUDE can I keep it?" and he was like "nah, I'll probably take it apart or something.." So I just flopped my wallet on the table and said "I'll give you $100 bucks for it" and he put a big 'ol smile on his face and I went home with a GTX 590 for $100 in 2013.

Pretty good.
 
Pretty good.

It was a great buy, but a terrible card. Configuring Surround was pretty much roulette, Monitors would completely disappear on reboots and the card ran BF3 worse than the 7970 that I later upgraded to. I sold the 590 for $350 on Ebay. PROFIT! I'm glad SLI drivers have come a long way since then.
 
* Corsair AX1200i PSU
Small bend on the fan grill ( but not hitting the fan) and missing all cables. but still nice

* Corsair TX 750w PSU

*Corsiar CNPS400W PSU

* 2x Corsair Air Series AF140 Quiet Edition High Airflow 140mm Fan
http://www.corsair.com/en-us/air-series-af140-quiet-edition-high-airflow-140mm-fan
Only have the white rim

* 2x Corsair Fan AF140L 1000 RPM
http://www.corsair.com/en-us/corsair-fan-af140l-1000-rpm-67-43-cfm-140mm-x-25mm-single

* 2x NZXT RF-FX142-NP 140mm Case Fan
https://www.nzxt.com/products/fx-v2

Now just to figure out which fan set to put in front of my chassis.


20170204_001807.jpg


I also found a corsiar HX850w PSU that is currently in my main rig
 
In value village I found a Sony HDR-SR11 in a case, with a charging dock, 35mm UV lens, HDMI cable, and, a lighter. All for $15

Out of a dumpster, I've gotten a cat tree, a couple kitchen knives, and a 500GB HDD.
 
Anybody know where I can get a replacement panel?




It is usually not worth it to buy a replacement LCD panel. The cost of the panel is usually more then the cost of a brand new TV anyway since it looks like the rest of the TV is good you can sell the other parts on eBay or here.
If you really want to fix it best to get the actual model number off the LCD panel and search that to see if there are any for sale
Also you might have to update the firmware on the TV before or after you replace the panel to match the new ones specifications
 
It is usually not worth it to buy a replacement LCD panel. The cost of the panel is usually more then the cost of a brand new TV anyway since it looks like the rest of the TV is good you can sell the other parts on eBay or here.
If you really want to fix it best to get the actual model number off the LCD panel and search that to see if there are any for sale
Also you might have to update the firmware on the TV before or after you replace the panel to match the new ones specifications

I used to work for a manufacturer in their repair center support and can support this statement. We never replaced panels within warranty and made it excessively expensive to attempt to buy them out of warranty.

Your best bet for a damaged panel like that is to see if there's a market for the boards inside it. A main or power board could be worth a few bucks that you could use toward another TV.
 
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