What to do with computers/components that aren't really worth anything?

[mamamia88]

My old dell broke down so I replaced it. While waiting for replacement in mail I was using a netbook that I spilled a pint of water on so it's useless. I took the hd out and smashed the disc with a hammer so that is out of the picture. What should I do with all the old parts that won't fit in my new smaller form factor pc?

[d-cosner]

Oh.... You could have saved the netbook. My kids dumped pop in a laptop before. All I did was wash the parts, let them dry a few days and put it back together. Save the parts and get another hard drive. Also, instead of smashing a hard drive just write zeros to it with the manufacturers utility. It's very doubtful that the average person could get anything off the drive after doing that.

[mamamia88]

Oh.... You could have saved the netbook. My kids dumped pop in a laptop before. All I did was wash the parts, let them dry a few days and put it back together. Save the parts and get another hard drive. Also, instead of smashing a hard drive just write zeros to it with the manufacturers utility. It's very doubtful that the average person could get anything off the drive after doing that.

I was simply too lazy to wait many hours for dban to complete and I have 2 laptop drives already in my drawer and a wd 2tb drive so i don't really need more storage. Plus destroying things is fun. I may just buy a cheap ssd and see if I can save the netbook but it is painfully slow anyway

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

why would you smash the hdd, i assume it was not fried
you can use that in something else or make a external usb one out of it for about $10

[sudodus]

Oh.... You could have saved the netbook. My kids dumped pop in a laptop before. All I did was wash the parts, let them dry a few days and put it back together. Save the parts and get another hard drive. Also, instead of smashing a hard drive just write zeros to it with the manufacturers utility. It's very doubtful that the average person could get anything off the drive after doing that.

I keep old computers that still work, and I use them to test that the light-weight flavours of new Ubuntu versions work in them - you can join the iso-testing of Lubuntu and use that old netbook. Even Xubuntu might work well for someone who wants to use such a netbook for modest tasks (it might not play high-definition video).

http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/

[mamamia88]

why would you smash the hdd, i assume it was not fried
you can use that in something else or make a external usb one out of it for about $10

Because I am kinda a hoarder of computer stuff so I already have 2 laptop drives in my drawer and a desktop drive if I ever need one. I couldn't be sure it wouldn't fail within a week so I didn't want to pawn it off on someone on ebay and risk negative feedback. This way I don't have to wait forever for dban to finish.

[stalkingwolf]

d be a race horse.
I may just buy a cheap ssd and see if I can save the netbook but it is painfully slow anyway to you it is painfully slow. to some one that has no computer at all it would
be a race horse.

[mamamia88]

d be a race horse. to you it is painfully slow. to some one that has no computer at all it would
be a race horse.

True but, a painfully slow race horse if anyone has ever used a computer before. I did throw a hd i had lying around in it and installed windows 7 but, i have no desire to use it. Also I probably need to superglue the back cover on because I just ripped it off because I had no desire to waste time dismantling it the right way. I got it for free myself from a family member who bought it at a pawn shop and then let it collect dust and gave it to me when i helped them clean. I have a phone and a tablet that are more fun to use so I have no idea what to do with the netbook. I already have one netbook acting as a home server of sorts.

[deadflowr]

Because I am kinda a hoarder of computer stuff so I already have 2 laptop drives in my drawer and a desktop drive if I ever need one. I couldn't be sure it wouldn't fail within a week so I didn't want to pawn it off on someone on ebay and risk negative feedback. This way I don't have to wait forever for dban to finish.
That's not the real reason, you did it because you really wanted to smash something with a hammer, didn't you?

[mamamia88]

OK you got me

[sudodus]

There is also an environmental aspect of keeping old hardware alive

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/dec/14/toxic-ewaste-illegal-dumping-developing-countries

See the following link which helps deciding what is useful (and what isn't really worth anything)

Old hardware brought back to life (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640)

[Bucky Ball]

There is also an environmental aspect of keeping old hardware alive



In Australia we recycle old computer parts. Not sure what your options are re. that in Indiana, USA. Have you checked?

My policy is to keep parts employed for as long as possible. Unsure why you would smash to pieces a perfectly functional HDD. :-k

[SeijiSensei]

Our city's has strict rules on disposing of computer components. I'd read your community's rules first before doing anything.

[Bucky Ball]

Our city's has strict rules on disposing of computer components. I'd read your community's rules first before doing anything.

Same. And I'm happy about that. ;)

[Roasted]

I work in IT full time, but I also do tech work on the side. Part of my side job is to take old computers and repurpose them. I actually have a "Donate Your Old Computer" heading on my web site for this specific purpose. I built an image with Xubuntu 14.04.1 and customized it to be very basic yet easy to use. I also aimed for it to be a little more ChromeOS/Windows 7-ish with the layout of the taskbar, menu, etc. I don't particularly care for this type of layout but it's more familiar to most users to boot, so it works out a little nicer. Hardware wise, basically anything P4 and above I'll utilize. Some systems simply don't make the cut, so I'll yank the RAM and HDD and anything else that might be viable, then I throw it in a to-be-recycled pile. The local township here has a 4x a year recycling date on their calendar. I mark that in my phone and keep an eye out for whichever upcoming Saturday the next quarterly recycling day is. I'll pull the seats out of the van, load up, drive over. By the time I throw the van in park and open the door, six people are there ready for me. I unload in minutes, go home, and that's that. In short, I'll utilize the hardware as much as remotely possible, but you get to a point where the hardware just simply doesn't cut the butter. Even if Xubuntu runs on it I need to make sure the browsers have enough hardware resources to breathe for simple tasks, and that sometimes is more of a deciding factor since Xubuntu itself is relatively light.

I have a tower with a bunch of IDE and SATA slots in my home office. It sits open most of the time and boots to a DBAN CD (no internal HDD) and of course it's disconnected from the network or any external devices (because that's crazy talk when messing with DBAN). It's my little dedicated "destroy all the things connected to it" box. I fire it up, nuke all HDDs connected, and then those drives go into a different pile where I'll pop them back in to computers and reuse them. At this point, that Xubuntu 14.04.1 image I spoke about comes into play. I boot Clonezilla Live and pull the image over my local home network. Then I use GParted to expand the drive beyond that. One system might have an 80GB, others may have a 160GB, so I built the image on a 40GB drive and just expand it depending on what size HDD is in the target machine. In the future I'll probably just rebuild it in a virtual machine, then boot to Clonezilla in the VM to upload and boom, there's my image. Given I had a 40GB drive sitting there I just ran with it like that.

The image itself, along with the desktop UI changes I mentioned above, consists of a wide array of common/useful software. Firefox, Chrome, Skype, Gimp, LibreOffice, the primary and secondary educational (Edubuntu) pack, Google Earth, Dropbox, VLC, OpenShot, Kdenlive, Thunderbird etc etc. This is one area where the Ubuntu Software Center is rock solid. Despite it's array of "meh" factors, it at least provided me with a great tool for software discovery. I hand these systems out to people who are in a financial hardship where buying a computer isn't really a possibility. I particularly work with families with kids, since that's my most frequent exposure given I work IT in a school district, but it's certainly not limited to that audience.

With my current setup, it really doesn't take much time, but it admittedly took a little time to get things sorted, set up, etc. I bought a few storage racks to house all of the systems in my home office (which is in the basement of my house), etc. All I really do is crack open a tower, pull the drive, DBAN it, check on it once a day, whenever it's done I kick off the DBAN box and put the drive in the ready-to-go pile. Every so often I'll spend an evening just popping drives in each rig and pulling the image over the network with Clonezilla Live.

In a nutshell, that's my setup. It works well and puts hardware in the hands of people who can utilize it while being a little greener in terms of waste. I get no money from this. It's all donation based, from the user who gives me their systems (to which I am very thankful for) on up to the time I spend rigging them together in a usable fashion. It's just my happy-feelgood way to tie two loose ends together.

[sudodus]

Our city's has strict rules on disposing of computer components. I'd read your community's rules first before doing anything.


Same. And I'm happy about that. ;)

+1. There are special containers for electronic scrap at our recycling centers.

But what is worrying me is that organized crime is getting into the recycling business also in Sweden. They get paid for recycling but dump it in West Africa (which is much cheaper).

[sudodus]

...

In a nutshell, that's my setup. It works well and puts hardware in the hands of people who can utilize it while being a little greener in terms of waste. I get no money from this. It's all donation based, from the user who gives me their systems (to which I am very thankful for) on up to the time I spend rigging them together in a usable fashion. It's just my happy-feelgood way to tie two loose ends together.

After writing about organized crime and their contribution to the environment I was very happy to read you post :KS

[SantaFe]

d be a race horse. to you it is painfully slow. to some one that has no computer at all it would
be a race horse.

You want slow? I had an old CTX 486 laptop with 32 megs ram. I installed Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) on it and gave it to my grandma. ;)

She doesn't seem to notice it being slow, but then she just uses Firefox & Thunderbird mostly. ;)

[Mike_Walsh]

There is also an environmental aspect of keeping old hardware alive

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/dec/14/toxic-ewaste-illegal-dumping-developing-countries

See the following link which helps deciding what is useful (and what isn't really worth anything)

Old hardware brought back to life (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640)

A BIG +1!! =d>

Couldn't agree more. I'm not a 'green' fanatic by any means, but the rate at which we, as a species, are throwing away newer & newer stuff is becoming ALARMING...

And in my humble opinion, stuff made 20 years ago will out-last stuff being made today. Ever heard of 'in-built obsolescence'? It seems to be a major subject being factored into manufacturer's marketing strategies nowadays...to shift more & more new stuff, faster & faster.

Does make you wonder where it will all end.


Regards,

Mike.

[fkkroundabout]

slightly old but very eye opening documentary on where loads of old electronics end up - being stripped for scrap metal in basic and toxic ways
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDSWGV3jGek

and hopefully in the future, old parts could be put together into a supercomputer:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/25/7891771/puzzlephone-modular-smartphone-concept-turns-cpus-into-a-supercomputer

a company named keepod is trying to bring android to old computers in the developing world:
http://keepod.org/

reminds me of the simpsons episode about springfield becoming a landfill, because the mayor was taking payments ?
on the opposite end of the scale, i'd say it is important for everyone in the world to have internet access, but of course this comes at the great cost of a capitalist conceptual-kind-of-machine

[leclerc65]

1- Compaq 2000, XP & Office (for my wife to use as a word processor) - no internet
2- Compaq 2000, Lubuntu (banking)
3- Toshiba Duo Core, XP, for archiving, and my Canon scanner , no internet - all sensitive informations are kept here

For hackers that (if) succesfully hack into my main desktop, surprise, surprise... nothing of valuable for them there.:p

[mörgæs]

Alex Eagle, I have repeatedly jailed your off-topic posts. Please stop posting more of that kind.

[mamamia88]

A BIG +1!! =d>

Couldn't agree more. I'm not a 'green' fanatic by any means, but the rate at which we, as a species, are throwing away newer & newer stuff is becoming ALARMING...

And in my humble opinion, stuff made 20 years ago will out-last stuff being made today. Ever heard of 'in-built obsolescence'? It seems to be a major subject being factored into manufacturer's marketing strategies nowadays...to shift more & more new stuff, faster & faster.

Does make you wonder where it will all end.


Regards,

Mike.

True about in built obsolescence but if i had to rely on a computer from 20 years ago as my only computer I would go insane. Heck a family member offered me this one for free today and I don't even want it for that price.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

in the us i know best buy offers free recycling for old computers/monitors
i dropped a couple of old tvs and monitors off (all tube based)
only one of the monitors worked and the picture was horrible

i think that hp will run dsl (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/)
or you can gut it and load it with raspberry pi(s)

[kurt18947]

True about in built obsolescence but if i had to rely on a computer from 20 years ago as my only computer I would go insane. Heck a family member offered me this one for free today and I don't even want it for that price.

I have one very similar to that. I upgraded the RAM to 512, installed MX14 (midweight Debian distro), an Ebay PCI video card,USB 2 card and ethernet. I have about $20 in it. I use it as a bittorrent server for a handful of linux distros. It will work for web browsing (no flash) and basic office tasks but it's .....'stately':)

[mamamia88]

I have one very similar to that. I upgraded the RAM to 512, installed MX14 (midweight Debian distro), an Ebay PCI video card,USB 2 card and ethernet. I have about $20 in it. I use it as a bittorrent server for a handful of linux distros. It will work for web browsing (no flash) and basic office tasks but it's .....'stately':) I already had a netbook lying around for that purpose running 24/7 for months on end just fine.

[Alex Eagle]

Sorry morgaes, I don't even remember what I put! :-D I don't remember you constantly jailing off-topic posts of mine either. In fact, I think I stay on-topic if I'm honest. Don't recall having gone off topic for quite some time now. :-)

Anyways, to everybody on this thread; has anybody even answered the title question yet? I can't find a post that addresses what you can actually do with compontents that aren't worth owt.

In my opinion the whole thread is now off topic. The only good topic-addressing post is post #20. But even that is off-topic in part.

You want off topic? Join physics.stackexchange.com and get ready to have your every other word cut out of what you post.

[Sasha_Aderolop]

Depending on how recent your parts are, there may be folks willing to buy them. But, instead of heading to Craigslist or eBay, the first place we'd check is a hardware-based forum with a dedicated selling section, like Hard Forum the Overclock[dot]net or Reddit's . You'll want to be careful you don't get screwed, since there isn't a big organization behind the sale, but a lot of people have had good luck selling, swapping, and buying parts on forums like this.

[Bucky Ball]

As above. Another alternative. There is also a Market (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=38) section on these forums. Not sure how much action it sees, but the first post will go to the top of the New Posts list, so worth a try. ;)

[Ko_Char]

Recycle at local Bestbuy/Staples (or may be Goodwill) stores. They accept broken devices.
You can search for places to recycle at http://1800recycling.com
Be sure not to throw away in your trash bin.
Read your state laws. http://1800recycling.com/state-guidelines
I had old working desktop and laptops, but I recycled them because I ended up using my faster laptop.
I'm not a tester, so installing Ubuntu without actually using it is a waste of elecriticity and bandwidth.