It’s time I cleaned out the old stuff sitting around the shop.
I’ve got quite a few XP era systems, P4s some with HT, and a few Core2s.
For a while I had a bank of then running Linux doing the SETI thing.
Now they are just taking up space. I’ve given/sold cheap a few to HAMs who needed something cheap to control radio stuff.
There are no computer/recycle places in the area. And I have a tough time sending something working to the scrap heap.
I don’t do ebay or paypal, so parting them out is not really an option.
I’ve put XP back on a few and have some that dual boot XP and Linux.
Other that something to run vintage games or old software.
Any other ideas? Planters? Cup Holder Towers?
All the Best,
Jeff
I do keep one of each era. You never know when something will show that needs a 5.25” or an old tape drive.
A customer of mine is in the clothing manufacturing business and still uses XP machines. Mostly they run obsolete macs that I can mostly deal with. I am rather lost with the old XP stuff. If you would like, you can PM me and I can ask him if he would be interested in them. He has a FEDEX account so if you can get to a FedEx place shipping would be easy.
Someone I Know™ got tired of playing footsie to legitimately get rid of a bunch of old CRT monitors and teevees, so went about it piecemeal.
Snip the glass nipple in the back of the CRT to kill the vacuum, then bust up the glass into small shards (buncha nested garbage-bags and a hammer), and dump into a used resealable bucket (cement, plaster, etc.)
Bust up the plastic, toss into garbage bags. Blowtorch anything that doesn’t fold/spindle/mutilate easily and stomp it flat.
Pull the circuit boards, send ’em along to generic electronics recycling.
In the meanwhile, if you want lots of free magnet-wire, you can keep the yoke, etc., and use the wire from that. No need to toss everything…
:+1: If it’s old enough to have been running XP recycle it. Then as zoulas states, buy a r-Pi or a few and use them to run any of those suugested things. Less power use, smaller footprint. I do have a weather station on a r-Pi and another hooked up between the antenna and the TV.
Plus many people are not well versed with software and/or comfortable working with hardware, or in fact doing anything with their hands. I wouldn’t trust my 33 year old son-in-law to fill my car tires with air
If you have a Goodwill or other electronics recycler you can take it there. PC repair shops might also take them. XP boxes are a tough bit to crack. I hate throwing them away esp if you use old software that doesn’t work good on Win. 10. I use a 2004 Compaq notebook as my logging machine since it works fantastic with my logging software.
LB,
Disk Farm? You have no idea. I’ve got more old HD than I (and a few friends) can lift at one time. Going all the way back to MFM and RLL.
I found an invoice the other day, one of my first for hardware.
I sold a 120MB Priam drive to someone in 1987(?) for a Unix system.
For… Wait for it…. $1200.
I was the low bidder by $800. So the other two computer shops were really trying to stick it to them
This was back when DOS couldn’t handle more than 30MB.
May make a wood shell for one with a CRT in it for Steam Punk look.
All the Best,
Jeff.
I have a few older computers that I put to use providing scanner feeds to Radio Reference. They didn’t have any feeds from my area and out here in the sticks and the police, fire and EMS are all still using FM on VHF. A few cheap craigslist old scanner finds and a audio cable and I was in business.
Used one for a ACARS decoder. Aircraft text messaging. Fun to let it run for a day then check out all the aircraft and flights you were able to receive.
Had one running for Packet radio for a while but that seems to really dead in my area so that didn’t last long.
Got a shortwave radio? Decoding marine weather maps is kinda cool.
These uses might not be everyones thing. Maybe someone else can use them for that if they are into radio stuff. Most stuff going digital and SDR’s are making a lot of this stuff obsolete I imagine.
Ha! I am the local PC repair shop. Always good to keep some of the oldies around.
Last year a guy came in and needed a DOS app to run. It used fancy ASCII character based “graphic” screens. The darn thing wouldn’t run on anything newer than a 486. The DOS VMs and emulators on newer hardware were all too fast for the software. It expected some sort of timing that was returning too quickly. I only had one 486 on the shelf and I wanted to keep it to run some tape drives.
Eventually I found an emulator that I could slow down enough to run the thing.
Some of the old Core2 systems can use older quad core Xeons and with a few MB of RAM with a light Linux Distro make nice starter systems.
But the omnipresent smart phone has replaced so much these days, few want to mess with a desktop system.
I find very few want to mess with hardware at all these days.
SIGShooter, I have a few customers I wouldn’t trust to fill up a tire. If they knew how, which most likely they don’t.
Had a friend who when her twin boys got to driving age, she had them changing tires and checking fluids.
Sure enough, some of their friends had to phone home when faced with a flat.
I base PC retirement age on YouuTube. If the system can play a video without much stutter, then I don’t feel bad passing it on to someone.
I really hate dealing with the old Laser Printers. Perfectly good, but a set of color carts for the out of date printers costs more than a new version. The old business class printer are almost more than I can lift in my dotage. I often bundle them with a “Office System” with the warning that the only way to keep them fed is with ebay refill carts.
I didn’t think about arcade systems. If I ever get my wood shop setup, I may have to give that a try.
I hate dumping working stuff. I have non-fond memories of a 21” 1600x1200 CRT being tossed into the CRT recycle bin at a local recycle day.
Darn thing cost me $2200 in the Win95 era. Still worked perfectly fine.
Oh Well…. At the very least, I’ll have a pile of HD magnets to stick on the fridge. And my stack of old CPU coolers and case fans is a thing to behold…
All the Best
Jeff
Sadly I’m not. Once when a 120v wired smoke alarm at home went off due to smoke from cooking his solution (and his friends with him) was just to yank it off the ceiling. The fact that it arc’ed and smoked didn’t seem to bother them, or that there were scorch marks on the ceiling .
I see the same kind of mentality with many his age and I think it’s because the USA has become a disposable society where people don’t have to maintain or fix things. So common sense dealing with mechanical/electrical/etc things just isn’t there anymore.
Always good to keep some of the oldies around.