Printable View
Its inevitable in every work place that old PCs hit the skip at some point.
Aside from re-allocating them as Jet Direct boxs and other computer purposes (first 20)
I had to come up with places to get rid of them.
Giving them to other staff members is not an option because I hate doing home support questions.
I used 40 or so p75s and now have a perfectly level front lawn.
What do the rest of you guys do with your old equipment ?
A while back there was a project in my town to collect older pieces of hardware (not older then 486).
A group of students organised it and they fixed up all the computers and send them to romenia.
Perhaps there is some sort of charity in your town that would be very happy with the computers.
Also there might be skools that would love to have them.
Just some suggestions.
noODLe
I'd use 'm to play with cluster knoppix
I'd like to see if 40 x 75Mhz is faster then a 3000Mhz puter :)
or else set them up as simple browser boxes and sell the whole lot as a "cybercafe for sale" :D
There may be a recycling facility nearby should you not wish to deal with them ever again. Here in the US it is getting to the point that schools will not even accept really old machines and recyclers are finding that the chips are still valuable if extracted carefully. Some recyclers may charge you a small fee to take them off your hands.
I find old PC very useful to:
- For dedicated NIDS purpose, (there no real time constraint)
- and also for dedicated Routing purpose (ZEBRA, GATED, LRP, ...) its cheaper than a Linksys or a CisCo...
a teacher in high school once gave out outdated pc's for smashing sessions (similar to the fax machine beatdown in the film "office space") for students who had a hard time with computer classes but were willing to pull through it. Basically, if they would complete the class, even though they hated computers, he would give them a chance to destroy one and take out their frustations.... once they passed the course.
Old computers also make good clubhouses, and with a little enginuity you can make a nice set of armor out of the outsides of cases. stack them a few high and you have a coffee table.
mboyle, did you really do the lawn thing, or was that sarcasm? sorry for being naive if it was.
just out of curiousity, why was this in the security forum? are we making castle gates out of our old cpu's?
literal security, using computers.
I was serious. I dug out about the top 2 layers of clay/muck from my garden. I then put down
the 40 base units and poured concrete between them. (looked funky at this stage and was going to leave it.
I then covered them up with turf and my lawn was still is completely flat.
These people know how to make the most out of old computers.
http://www.kaybuena.com/CompCarnage/Report.html
Sorry I don't have links handy, but there are plenty of organizations that will take older PCs and ship them to third world countries for use in schools that cannot afford to buy PCs. It's a worthy cause and can provide a decent tax write-off.
Just a thought.
allen, if you find those links could you post them or pm me. i have several old pc's (25mhz on up) that i would like to be put to use, even in missions or something in the middle of africa (although i would rather not pay shipping to Kenya)
I keep all my old computer. I use them to learn more about computers, and figuring out what i can and cant do. I also practice case mods on them.
Usually,
What I do if I have a massive stock pile of junk is put it all on ebay. Throw together a reserve of like 400 bucks and make them pay for shipping. Hey it's free money. Sounds like it too late for you though because you already dug them a grave.
Scat
you could just do what the othe people said....just give them to a school or ship them to a country in need.....or you could try to use the old parts and either remake them or sell them...just a thought, i gave most of my spare parts and cpus to an old elementary school