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Hardware

Obsolete Hardware Piling Up 259

Posted by michael from the and-Fresh-Kills-is-closing-soon dept.
loosenut writes: "The SF Chronicle has a lengthy article about the disposal or recycling of old computers, many with toxic components. If you are like me, you probably have a couple of 486s and Pentiums sitting in a closet somewhere. What is to become of these ancient beasts?" Read to the end of the article and it notes that Europe is planning to force manufacturers to recycle their products at the end of the product's lifespan.
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Obselete Hardware Piling Up More

Obselete Hardware Piling Up

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  • A suggestion (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Please, people, I implore you as someone who's job it is to support working computer systems.

    If your computer is sufficiently old, say, slower than 333-500MHz, dont give it to someone else -- DESTROY IT!

    Old technology (and the people who, unknowingly, cling to it) hold us back in so many ways.

    We shouldnt have to have things like ISA, serial or parallel ports, floppies, POTS modems, etc on modern systems -- they're there because of the curse of backwards compatibility. Our systems would be so much faster better and more stable than ever, if we could remove every last vestige of that obsolete buggy-whip junk.

    I'd urge manufacturers that still have drivers and technical information on these products to destroy every copy of it -- the quicker these products die off and become useless boat anchors, the better off we'll all be.

    C'mon now...technology was MEANT to be disposable.

    It's just a tool, dont get attached to it! When it's lived out the lifetime of it's product cycle, bury it, burn it, crush it, or otherwise redender it permanently inoperative -- the tech support workers of the world will thank you.

  • try aol for free for 30days! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward



    Are you tired of high lag times in games, low bandwith, and a long time logging in and having your web site keep being hacked into?

    Then AOL internet is for you.

    Infact, I was just playing quake3 arena on a 28.8 modem with very high ping times using AOL. I GOT DOWN TO 450 ms! Beat that mindspring!

    With AOL internet webspace you get a cracker proof site that is very secure and high performance based. After all most crackers love AOL and would never touch a techy website thats on AOL because they know real geeks use AOL!

    Those guys at AOL sure know how to make a great internet experience, their service is just so cheap compared to a regular ISP rates.

    With AOL you know you are having quality. Just log into slashdot with an AOL account and mention how much you like AOL and watch your karma go straight up. Slashdoters and hard core internet users love AOL so much that even Alan Cox has an AOL address.

  • 100% recyclable cars in Germany? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IIRC, doesn't Germany force car manufacturers there to produce their cars (for the local market only?) in such a way that they could be 100% recycled when they are, er, dumped?

    If this is true, then why not force computer manufacturers to make their hardware to be ~100% recyclable (heck, even s/w makers could probably rethink their packaging!)? I am sure there can be a way of not using non-reusable plastics and similar materials in the making of computers/peripherals/etc.

    The ultimate might be: since form factors are quite standardized, why not encourage re-use of parts from used computers, like the chassis? Instead of trashing it, why not recuperate a perfectly sound piece of (passive) hardware like that?

  • The world needs a better recycle/tradein program (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @11:32PM (#187341)
    Computer companies age soon going to have to provide some sort of incentives for tradein of old machines before we're overrun with the obsolete beasts of yesteryear. In some cities such as where I live it's hard to dispose of monitors, the city simply won't take them and does no provide any suggestions. You can't imagine how many ancient 12", 14", and 17" monitors are in my basement. Luckilly they do take old worthless computers so I (and more importantly, my wife) were able to get rid of the old 386, 486, pentium, and early pentium II machines.

    The computer world simply travels far too fast to keep up with the disposal of machines that have outlived their usefulness, we need a better program to handle these old clunkers.
  • Serial ports, null modems, and Telix.
  • I don't see why any hardware should be disposed of, a older 486 can still do work if it's given the right task. I think we are too quick to decalre computers useless. think before you send it the way of the buffalo!

  • Of course, the Linux server can add up as a firewall/internet gateway! What more would a small company want?

    How about security?

    Having your main fileserver double as a firewall is a Bad Idea. Throw a little 386DX33 and a pair of NICs up to handle your modem or DSL line. I'm not certain if a 386 can handle a full T1 (I know a P75 can fill the pipe without problem) but the message is the same: Firewalls work best when they also aren't full of doors, windows and conduit holes. Keep the network firewall seperate.

  • Many of the public schools don't need computers. They need textbooks! Funny how they often can afford new team uniforms every year, coach salaries, etc., but can't seem to find the money for basic things like books. Now it would certainly help if they could use the same books every year (we did...my algebra II textbook was from the 60s...math at this level doesn't change, so why buy new books -- teacher's & principal's opinion). That is, if the little shits did lose or tear them up.

  • You must abuse your systems something fierce. Everything in my frist computer (386 sx/20, ~ 1990/1991) still works. I have a couple other systems at least 5 years old, and if I never stuck a screwdriver in an MCA slot while the power was on, my 286 from '88 would still be working too.

  • Man, I love the Goodwill Computer store here. It is so bad ass. Did you see the Apple Lisa they had running? or that NeXT cube? I called one of those computer museum things about them.

    the only thing I can imagine bad about using such old computers is power consumption. but I haven't done any research on it so I'll just leave it at the level of potential concern.

    -l

  • At least my wife thinks that our home is where old computers come to die.

    But seriously, a thought that might be a little offtopic but still on the subject is the vast ammount of computers that isn't getting "trashed" due to linux and enthusiasts that makes use of "obsolete" hardware.

    There isn't any numbers on this but I know from observation that most people into linux keep old computers (sometimes collects them) for minor services like a home built firewall/router.

    The point I'm trying to make is that if it was a windows world you would have _a lot more_ computers getting "recycled".
    The effects could be that few would write drivers for older hardware and hence the hardware gets older faster raising cost.

    // yendor
    --
    It could be coffe.... or it could just be some warm brown liquid containing lots of caffeen.
  • > Correction: Windows NT runs on many more old machines than Linux does.

    Hello troll.

    Show me NT on a 386DX-40 with 120 Mb disk and 24 Mb of memory that can actualy do something.

    // yendor
    --
    It could be coffe.... or it could just be some warm brown liquid containing lots of caffeen.
  • If you are around Montreal, Canada, I would come pick up the Atari ST. A 512 ST was my first computer ever ... fond memory of hours lost to Dungeon Master ! Paying the shipping ain't worth it, but if you are around Montreal, mail me at egoyer at praeneste dot com. I'll be pleased to help you get rid of it ... :)
  • I see all these comments on how it's a waste to throw away or recycle old hardware and how even the oldest machines can be configured to handle certain tasks, but I just keep thinking if it's really worth it.


    If you send away an old computer to a school they might initially do a small saving compared to buy new equipment, but in the long run I believe the school will suffer enormously from having a diverse range of out of date hardware. The service costs must get enormous since all computers are very different and old parts keeps breaking down and have to be replaced so things will have to be reinstalled. All computers will also have to be configured individually since some are too old and slow to run the same OS and programs as the latest ones. I can understand the benefit of a big company donating a large batch of almost identical computers to a school though, but I also believe that donations to schools just are second grade sollutions, government should push in enough money to keep the schools with a healthy machine park since the kids are our future and investing in their knowledge is a good investment. Graciously providing schools with old equipment that is "just enough" might in worst case actually counteract its purpose since it then might get harder for the school to demand money for new equipment.


    The second idea of keeping them around as routers and firewalls is also something I see as doubtful in the long run. Compare for example the power consumption of an old 486-66 with a modern dedicated router without any moving parts. Add to that other factors as the likely breakdown frequency, space requirements, noise generation, air flow needs and risks like causing fires due to old dusty hardware that will run very hot if a fan breaks down and I doubt that it's a saving in the long run.


    Giving them to schools and institutions in third world countries or just playing with them yourself or giving them to a relative who might need a second word processing computer to use when the kids play on the family's main machine might still be a good idea though, but I doubt many of the suggestions given here.

  • We love old 486/Pentium boxes here! Our firewall runs on freesco [freesco.org] and thanks to the LTSP [ltsp.org] project, we have equipped everyone's desktop with a low-cost X terminal. There is a write-up [gbdirect.co.uk] of what we have done for anyone who cares. The beauty is that we have incredibly low cost-of-ownership, don't care if anyone breaks in and steals the stuff and it is totally silent in operation. The biggest complaint in the office now is the noise of the damn clock ticking. It has been a wonderful experience, they don't break down, you can boot one up from anybody's desk and get your own desktop ... send me as many as you have got!!
  • Yeah so far this year I have found a working Apple PowerBook and two working laser printers in trash heaps near my home. Sick! I clean them up and either keep them if I don't have one already (like the first laser printer) or give them to public schools.
  • What you fail to relize is that 60% of the technology being made right now is created by people who learned to do things with these very 286/386/6502 computers. (The other 40% is by people to whom the concept of a personal computer was far fetched) There's this creeping black box mentality that's taking over the tech world that tries to limit low level contact beyond what is neccesary for abstraction. There are some fundamental skills that can be learned when the entire cpu can be understood by an individual without computer aid. I will admit there are a few embeded systems that similarly fill this role, but you can't afford to outfit a class with them.

    As example my old Apple ][+ has been a stereo controller, midi synth, assembly teacher, x10 controller, and lego mindstorms precursor. All this with me building the controlling hardware... at age 7 thru 16. (well, i wasn't allowed to solder till 10, but breadboards are better anyways). I learned some fundamental logic skills that will be usefull for all time. Where as I run across people (young-un) that never had to deal with less than a Pentium that have trouble with complex boolean logic.

    Where was I rambling with this? My argument is that old hardware taught the current generation fundamental skills that are used today. Until you can prove that something else fills this requirement it is logically sound to attempt to teach the current learning generation (5-18 years) about this same hardware.

    And as a total asside, the power issue is valid but schools represent a large enough capital force to invest in alternative energy. (There are a couple of schools in my state that have erected wind generators. I'm sure the SW could look into solar, several schools built on garbage landfill are using methane generators)
  • Sounds like a covert way to send our trash to the third world -- and it doesn't solve the long term problems.
  • But it seems that the environmental problems are primarily caused by the "advanced economy". And if there are "hackers" there, they'll need better equipment than 286s.

    Not to mention there's the basic issue here that this idea really doesn't solve the basic problem that the equipment is basically hazardous waste -- all it does is hand it over to those who have no chance of disposing of it safely.

  • I don't agree that the advanced economy does cause them. Computers are clearly far less toxic than e.g. cars

    In an advanced economy, you'd have cars as well (-; In any case, it's simply not true that giving a country computers will cause a shift to a high-tech based economy that would make pollution go away (there are a ton of very questionable assertions in that statement). The problem is that giving them computers would not have a major impact on other problems (I doubt it would destroy polluting industries, for example.)

    Are computers "hazardous" waste?

    Yes, they definitely are. (did you read the article?)

  • more foreign developers who will work 80 hour weeks for $25K a year for whatever US company will sponsor their visa.

    No, they earn substantially more than $25k. IT job market, tight ? There are still a lot of people with no talent, no qualifications, no skills, and no interest who can get jobs.

  • Office (Score:1)

    by battjt ( 9342 )
    ...and I'm a Linux bigot.

    Being able to configure Linux helps me as a software developer, but wouldn't help _most_ people.

    Operating Microsoft Office, or a clone like OpenOffice, is required in today's professional environment.

    Joe
  • I've got a 6 year old 486/33 Thinkpad running RedHat 4.0 that's been my printer server for the last 4 years. It will be retired in a couple months (donated to Goodwill Computers in Austin TX) to be replaced by a state of the art Pentium/133, 32M RAM, 13.5 GIG IDE disk, running Debian. I expect that machine in that configuration to provide completely satisfactory service for the next 6-8 years as a printer server, file server, and eventually network firewall. Once it becomes a firewall, I'll probably put OpenBSD on it.

    To be truthful, my two major apps are vi and g++, and that machine was NEVER inadequate for those tasks. The only reason that I have a superfast Celery 300A was to run Jane's USAF.

    To make even better use of old hardware, that P/133 machine won't have a monitor. It's going to be configured with a serial line console, and my Compudyne 25Mhz 386SX laptop running MS-DOG and a term program will sit right on top of it. I bought it in 1992. With a bit of creative thinking, I finally found a new use for that thing.

  • yes, but not one I own.

    --

  • I'm doing my bit. (Score:4)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Thursday May 31, 2001 @12:42AM (#187362) Homepage Journal
    I'm saving classic Macs from landfill by turning them into aquariums. My little page is here [optusnet.com.au]. If anyone in Perth, Australia, is interested in one please drop me a line.

    I still haven't found a good way to dispose of the monitors and power supplies though...

    --

  • Drool,
    really.. I think that people should start sending me their old hardware, I'm a complete hardware freak :) The best I've ever manged to get was a 25mhz 486sx /w MCA from a hospitol dumpster... there had been an AS/400 but it was already striped before i got there :(

    Indys, yummy.
  • Well, actually, they are. Sort of. Virtually all current LCDs have some sort of backlight, and many older ones are actually flourescent tubes.

    BTW, I've heard that the backlight in an LCD uses up to 25% of he power budget on a laptop. Can anyone add to this?
  • I heard a while ago as well that places such as Africa actually OBJECTED to receiving 'old' computers as they 'didn't want to become the dumping ground for the rest of the world'.. They even said they would 'only accept a P166 or higher' ... sounds a bit of a snooty attitude to me. Free is free.

    So maybe you can't give them away.

    PS: Not sure where I heard that story, if anyone knows it too and has a link .. that'd be great.
    --
    Delphis
  • Hmm, my small LAN is running a pre-MMX P166 as a firewall/proxy/webserver. Since a pre-MMX 166 doesn't requre a fan, and since the AT desktop case contains a fanless power supply, the only moving part in this computer is the hard disk. If not for the fact that we're stuck running NT4SP5 on the machine, it would be maintenance free...but as it is now, I just have to reboot it once every two or three months. There is NO single system solution currently on the market for a reasonable price that could take over the duties of this one computer, and still require as little maintenance.
  • For those of you in the SF bay area (or Palm Springs), Computer Recycling Center [crc.org] is a good way to get rid of equipment you don't want. As the article mentions, they do their best to redistribute computers to organizations that need them. But even if a computer no longer works, they'll salvage parts from it for reuse, and recycle what they can of what remains.
  • More modern computers have lots of power saving features, so that whilst they may consume more energy whilst computing, they consume less for the 95% of the time they are doing nothing.

    So it could be argued that dumping your old energy consuming computer is good for the environment.

    P.S. Anyone want my 6502 BBC Micro and 68K Atari ST ??
  • I work at a recycling center where we do recycle computers.
    The older units (386s and 486s) my mother is regularly suggesting we make a cluster.
    I usually shot the idea down.

    But then I can afford current systems so a 486 cluster isn't exactly useful for me.
    She however is quite happy with a 486 laptop...
  • I'm all for the enviromental attempts to save the usefulness of the old PC's. But the material disposal of things we've already made is hard to get away from, eventually. It's a bridge we will have to cross, because that old 8088 is only going to run for so long.

    If you have an old PC (or whatever) in your house, and you find a use for it (and can afford the power to keep it running.. not trivial here in CA) then kudos to you for the reuse part of the environmental equation. As to donating them to someone else.. they are going to suck a lot of power, and will eventually have a hardware failure. How long are old Pentiums designed to run? What will be the failure rate of the older hardware? I'm sure it's longer than the planned lifecycle today, but still it's not infinite.

    As to the "give em to schools" option.. I would argue that schools need newer and better machines to teach people on, nothing sucks more than having to learn to tolerate Windows on an old POS computer which barely runs Windows itself and won't leave much room left to run anything useful. Additionally schools don't have much money for competent tech support/administrators and older machines generally require more of that.

    Compatibility problems would be more frequent and troubleshooting is also bound to be more difficult.. since the hardware is old and not manufactured anymore.

    For Example: Just the other day I was working on an old 486 PC w/modem (14.4) and forgot that you have to change a jumper to change the com port it runs on. Probably took me 2 hours to figure that out. How many people who didn't have a 486 in the first place are ever going to be able to fix shit like that?

    let's spend some thought and find a useful and environmental way to junk em before, it's a bridge we're going to have to cross.

    Just my $.02
  • Actually, I have a couple of 486/66's with X on them that run apps from my Athlon machine. The Athlon doesn't feel a thing, and the kids can use NS6, Moz, irc clients, hell, they can even use Staroffice, and all at the same time!

    For reference, I have 384MB RAM in the Athlon, but RAM is so cheap nowadays...

  • Re:solutions (Score:3)

    by Katravax ( 21568 ) on Thursday May 31, 2001 @12:32AM (#187380)

    I WANT COPIES OF MS DOS 1,2,3,4,5 WIN 1.0 (exists?),2,3; NT 1,2,3,4

    There was no NT 1, 2, or 3. NT started with version 3.1 (there was also a 3.1AS). The versions of NT went 3.1, 3.5 (very short-lived), 3.51, 4.0, Win2K. Also, and trust me on this, you don't want a copy of MS-DOS 4.x <g>. It was the worst of them all. As for Windows 1.0, look here:http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?View Item&item=1241862826 [ebay.com].

  • U.S. trade groups, which argued that many of the alleged health risks weren't proven.

    Yeah, lets prove it's bad for you before we do anything. Doing anything before there are thousands of dead people to back up the "alleged health risks" would be bad for big business and we cant have any of that, now can we?
    No siree..

    -henrik

  • Okay, there is some hardware that is unworkable in the Internet age. A 4.77 MHz PC/XT with dual floppies and a green-screen counts as "unworkable" and should be junked.

    Sounds like the beginnings of a serial terminal to me...

    But seriously, your ideas are great and to the point. I would much rather donate time than a few ducats.

  • I WANT COPIES OF MS DOS 1,2,3,4,5 WIN 1.0 (exists?)

    Yup, and you can see screenshots of it (and MANY more) at http://pla-netx.com/linebackn/guis/ [pla-netx.com]

    --
  • Switches often contain mercury, as do the fluorescent bulbs that light up liquid-crystal displays.

    IANA electrical engineer, but I'm pretty sure LCDs aren't made of little light bulbs.

    Come on, people, where's the cluefulness? Am I the only person who noticed this?

    -grendel drago

  • Remote terminals (both Linux and MS) (Score:3)

    by Trumpet ( 42631 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @11:32PM (#187391) Homepage
    I'm not sure if this is really relevant - but (once you've got Linux or BSD running on old hardware it seems to make sense to run them as X terminals.

    I've been involved in a project where we are using a number of low end Pentiums without much ram as X terminals to a more powerful machine with plenty of ram running StarOffice and displaying on each of these old machines.

    It seems to work well at the moment, we are still in the testing stage, but it looks like the management of the machines will be much easier than the current Windows systems elsewhere.

    I've also tried this same project with these machines running a stripped down version of Windows 95 and using Microsoft's Terminal Services client as the shell=. In our office, (since most people have Server on their machines) this provides a quick and easy way for them to access their machines from just about anywhere.
  • People collect this stuff. Aquariums, VAX bars, door stops, or even (gasp) running them for fun are all common activities for classic computer collectors.

    Depending on how old the equipment is, there might be a small army of collectors eager to pick up or have shipped any surplus hardware you may have, at no cost to you. Got a bunch of old 486s? Don't hold your breath. Got an XT or an old 8-bit system? Probably. Got a PDP-11 or a VAX? Hell yeah! For an example, I just hauled a VAX 8600 system from Austin, Texas in a 24-foot Ryder truck to my home, where it now takes up nearly half of the garage.

    Note: If you absolutely must turn your mac into a fishtank, VAX into a wet bar, etc., I beg you to *please* make sure that your machine has already been gutted for parts.

    --
    SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)

  • Re:The developing world needs them (Score:3)

    by tapiwa ( 52055 ) on Thursday May 31, 2001 @12:00AM (#187398) Homepage
    I am working on a scheme to get such hardware to schools in southern Africa, especially Zimbabwe.

    If you would like to get involved, drop me an email.

  • Well, one thing I know about old chips is that you can't even hold a soldering iron to them or they'll melt. I hardly think a blow torch will help.
    ------
  • How many people have a computer that gets hard drive head stick? The school had assumed it was dead when they gave it to me. After a few (difficult to pull off) twirls of the massive hard drive, it rumbeld back to life.

    Ah that brings back memories. Although it was bearing stick in my case, due to thickening lubricant. The solution I found involved a moderate whack with a hammer or other heavy object... Not recommended for mission critical data, but that particular system had been retired to driving a dot matrix printer reserved for printing sheets of precut wire labels.

  • I'm currently looking for "old" computers to play with at home, and I came accross the following link when searching for "surplus computer new zealand" (for some reason I currently live in NZ) using the Google (http://www.google.com/ [google.com]):

    Computer Access New Zealand Trust

    It's maybe not directly relevant to the article, but it's definitley relevant to many of the threads I've read here so far.

    You can probably find something similar in your community.

  • The Yellow Network Coalition [ync.org] takes donations of old computers, mostly 486's, and refurbishes and tests them, installs linux, and donates them for use as IP masquerading servers and user workstations.

    I gave them my 486/100 after many years of hard service, and they have it in use somewhere.

    They're good people, and give free lessons on how to do network administration, firewalling, linux administration and the like.


    Mike [goingware.com]

  • History has shown that when there is stuff people get rid of in mass quantities, the few items that survive the great purge eventually become incredibly valuable antiques. I would not be the least bit surpised if 150 years from now that Dell 486 in your basement would fetch a small fortune. Maybe one day my great-grandchildren will be on the Geek Antique Road Show showing off great-grandpa's inspiron that ran linux as well as some other weird proprietary OS that everyone forget about.

  • HP will accept old computer components for recycling. If you have 10 or fewer items visit http://warp.external.hp.com/recycle [hp.com]. They will charge you $13 to $34 per item. They accept all brands, not just HP.

  • I don't think your first point is valid; though it depends on what a school would be doing with those machines. Let kids learn how to do stuff with them, I'd imagine. And for that, it doesn't matter if they have to be configured individually and reinstalled - it may be an admin's nightmare, but for the kids, it's a learning experience. If you had the choice between letting your kid learn how to install and configure Linux on a 486 versus how to operate Micro$oft Office on a 1.2GHz system, what would you prefer?
  • Good points, although much of it comes down to time==money. When you're looking at volunteers, hobbiests, and the like then time!=money and it might be worthwhile to keep them running.

    But more to the point, what about the computers that are running perfectly but are old? I don't think anyone would object to running a P-100 or
    the like until it failed. (except the brainless idiot who claims that a PII/450 is the bare mininmum to do anything functional) In fact, there are places I know of which collect old systems, configure them identically, and use the entire computer as a FRU. If something dies, the whole computer is swapped out in a minute with another one.

    As for the settings via jumper, it's good for people to have obsolete knowledge in some ways. If nothing else, you can at least say, "I remember when..."

  • Read the article? (Score:4)

    by MonkeyMagic ( 118319 ) on Thursday May 31, 2001 @12:03AM (#187428) Homepage
    Read to the end of the article and it notes that Europe is planning to force manufacturers to recycle their products at the end of the product's lifespan.

    This is Slashdot. You'll be lucky if anyone bothers to read the start of the article.

  • I have a crappy P133 AT box sitting in the corner. Rather than throw it away, I installed Linux on it and now it makes a fine router/firewall for my network. Now all my other machines share a dial-out ISDN connection, with the box doing all the masquerading, routing, DHCP, DNS and HTTP proxying. Basically it's life would be over by now if Windows were the only choice.

    BTW I tried installing OpenBSD and FreeBSD on it before Linux but I was less than enamoured with their support for ISDN. Linux works like a charm and I'm very happy.

  • I think you have to be careful pointing out exactly who should be responsible for taking care of the old computers. If I buy a computer from Dell, IBM or similar, then I can easily point who should take care of it. What if I buy the parts separately? A processor from AMD, memory from Viking, and so on - who is responsible then? I think that it's stupid to put the responsibility on the companies, because sometimes you can't point out one single company, and sometimes they are gone when you want to recycle your computer... I think that the government should put a small tax on computer purchases, and then the government pays a recycling company once it is time to retire your old computer.
  • I don't know what your running, but we where using a 166 for a firewall. It was fine until we went over 2mb on the connection, and upgraded to a 300. For a server, any Pentium Pro or higher class system should work fine, unless you've got more than 10-15 users on it.
  • This take-back-your-old-products sheme is allready in place for refridgerators in many European countries.

    Correct. In the Netherlands it's not only for fridges, but for all kinds of household appliances. You pay the normal price in the shop plus a removal fee (verwijderingsbijdrage in Dutch, I wonder if the Fish knows that word *grin*). These funds are then used to recycle the stuff after it's obsoleted. You don't just throw stuff in your wastebin here (at least, there's quite some legislation about what you can and can't throw in there), I always take my special stuff to the right box on the dump. Once in a while, they empty that box and recycle all the stuff. Takes a little money, but that's what you pay your removal fee for.

    But honestly, I like the idea of sending this stuff to developing countries. Question is, what kind of hardware would you send them? I mean, when I ditched my old 486, it was not because I had no use for it anymore (as a matter of fact, it served as my home web and FTP-server and was also dial-in/gateway machine). The reason was that after a long life of hard work, it just died. I wonder if anyone in a developing country has any use for a dead machine. If you send this stuff, you'll have to revive it first. Which costs money.

    Maybe the idea of our removal fee could be applied to this scenario: you pay it when you buy your hardware and will be used to make sure that every wasted machine sent to some developing country actually works. I think it wouldn't cost much more than the way we do it now, but I think our environment surely would benefit from it. I'm not an environmentalist, but with George W. Bush on the wheel, the rest of the world has to pace things up in order to compensate for this genius.

  • Rather than "recycling" them, why not set up a scheme to distribute them to places like India which are crying out for the technical resources to train their huge potential developer base?

    You could grade every old PC for power, then load it with free software - e.g. a 386 becomes a simple file server, a decent Pentium gets XFCE and can be used as a developer desktop. Then distribute them to the voluntary sector in the developing world.

    David

    Freedom of speech won't feed my children
  • Actually, I think that public schools ought to, for the most part, subsist off old, donated computers. Before you think I'm trying to kill our children, here's why:

    90% of the computers in public schools are just used as big, expensive typewriters. I keep on seeing things about how such-and-such school got another million dollars to upgrade all their old 400 MHz typewriters to new 800 MHz ones. Even an 8088 is perfectly sufficient for most of what they do; why do we keep spending money that could be put to a good use on keeping up with the pointless upgrade treadmill? Same goes for computer science classes and so forth. A 486 is plenty for such stuff.

    I agree that that they can't make use of everything, and it's a good point that ancient hardware might be more trouble than it's worth, but old computers are everywhere if you ask around. I sure a good deal of them would fit the requirements necessary.

  • Old PCs are what's holding us back. Unless it's an Athlon or Pentium III you're planning on donating, just throw the darned thing out. Giving a school a Petnium or Pentium II is just giving them troubles and grief. The schools are far better off getting grants and (money) donations for new machines. A 1 - 1.5 GHz machine will be usable for at least 2 or 3 years, anything older will become obsolete much faster. Don't get me wrong, old hardware is fun to tinker with, at home, if you have the time *and* enjoy that sort of thing. It's not something to donate to a school or other local organization unless you are willing to fully support the machine. Do your local school a favor and put aside $1 a day until you can buy them a shiny new machine and/or maybe a few good reference books or accessories.

  • terminals around the house, for the kids (Score:3)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @11:26PM (#187468) Homepage
    I don't know about you, but I could always use a few spare machines as terminals, webstations, etc. With 32 MB RAM, even a 486/100 is quite usable under X with a slim kernel (read: don't compile in everything under the sun) and a light window manager such as blackbox. Mozilla 0.9 is too slow to use, but Konq works fine. Setup NFS and NIS properly and administration is a breeze.
  • I volunteered to revive freeboxen - which I had only just joined when it closed down. The maintainer was looking for volunteers, but then ignored my message. Freeboxen.com was awesome.

    Eventually things won't be useful anymore, so recycling will be essential. But reusing them until then is wonderful, esp if it saves someone making something ELSE that would have to be recycled.

    Until then, I want freeboxen back, even if I have to run it.

  • solutions (Score:3)

    by loraksus ( 171574 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @11:44PM (#187472) Homepage
    1.)
    freeboxen.com - awesome site - people will pay you to get rid of your old stuff. Free parts,
    nm, scratch that, it seems to be down, kind of permanantly.

    2.)
    local hs/college computer club / whatever
    - set up a beowulf of 486's or pentium 100's.
    - hundreds of things to do - linux
    - computers for the poor with win 95 (because you got the licenses for free) / linux (fsck licencing)
    - keep the 8086, sell on ebay in a few years, or practice soldering/desoldering.

    3.) (shameless begging)
    For really cool, working stuff (200mhz up computers), I'll take it off your hands - really! I'll even pay for shipping! Well, the boards anyway. I'll take any working dimms for free too! Any HDD's greater than 1 gig are great too!

    I WANT COPIES OF MS DOS 1,2,3,4,5 WIN 1.0 (exists?),2,3; NT 1,2,3,4

    Ideas:

    486 as a firewall / internet router and / or windows 3.1 demo machine, play gorrilas.bas with ms qubasic on dos 6.2
    - learn about motherboard repair, get a logic testor, a mboard repair book.

    286 - put Commander Keen 1 + 2 on it. Run demo in endless loop or untill you rip out the pc speaker cause the sound effects are bleedin' annoying.

    8086 - put really, really old abandonware on it.
    - calculate pi to x million digits,

    Of course, you need a screen for this - so you keep 4-8 lbs of lead out of the landfill and get a nice space heater in one wonderful deal!

    Hmm, old software.. some un named person in my college formats the hdd's of the new dell 700 mhz machines and places Dos 3.1 on them. Managed to install Desqview on a box as well (with dos 5). Funny as hell to see the software and the sysadmins pissed. Runs really fast too (except for desqvies, which sorta ran)

    The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit:
    Pissing off hyper caffeineated /.'ers since Spring 2001.

  • There was an interesting article in a recent Acorn User magazine, about developing computers for use in third world countries. One of the main concerns with regular (ie. x86 based) pc's was the power consumption, and their use in areas where the power supply was extremely limited. The solution was small, ARM processor based machines, which ran on a tiny fraction of the power compared to their x86 counterparts. I believe they were getting the consumption so low, they could run the machine off a small solar panel. Good news for countries with plenty of sunshine and not so many power outlets...

    Ok, drifting off-topic a little. I wish I had the magazine with me so I could find a link or two. Anyone care to oblige? :)

  • between $20 and $60 per month per machine

    Perhaps if you live in California or somewhere else where energy prices are outrageous. I run 10 machines 24/7 at my house and my total bill is usually around $60. That includes all the other power hungry appliances (TVs, Dryer, Fridge, AC, etc.). If I was paying $60/machine my bill would be well over $600. I don't know where you are getting your figures but you need to check them again.


    Enigma

  • I'm really surprised no one has posted this yet: National Cristina Foundation [cristina.org] is a charity designed specifically for redistributing donated computers.

    I should also point out the NewDeal [newdealinc.com] software, which provides a nice, memory-light operating system for even the puniest old machines.

  • Maybe I'm the only developer who could use more hardware, but 486 and pentium class systems are welcome donations to xMach [xmach.org], and I especially need more systems to test code on, such as my work-in-progress of integrating ipfilter.
    --
  • When manufacturers have to cover the costs of recycling, he said, "it creates a powerful incentive . .to reduce such costs by designing products that...
    As of the 1st of june Belgium(Europe) already has this system of manufacturars forced to take back let's say your old refrigarator. But it will not make them design products that go longer: .. of course it is again the good old customer that pays the costs of recycling, the Belgian government invented a new tax so that we have to pay about an extra 5% for every household and electronic material.
  • We don't all live in California.

    Now that must be big news to a lot of slashdotters!

  • I've scraped together a load of miscellaneous hardware from closets/drawers around my computer room, and am in the process of turning the resulting P100 system into a home stereo (minus the amplifier that is). Old desktop case is just a plus - fits nicely in the stereorack along with the amplifier. Stuff in a soundcard and a CD-ROM drive (cheap-o thing, no speed needed), and you have a pretty neat CD player.

    Add a hard-drive, Linux/BSD and mpg123, and you have an MP3 player.

    Add ALMB [freshmeat.net] or similar software, and you have an interface that can be controlled via IR or a small keypad. With LCD displays and keypads from Matrix Orbital [matrixorbital.com] you have one mean looking stereo!

  • You told exactly what was on my mind. Until 6 months ago I used my old P120 (32Meg RAM) laptop with 95 and I could do anything I needed. Okay, coding Java was not an option, but surfing chatting email, making my timesheet, ebanking, such stuff... I could even play MP3's while using the computer, provided I put it on mono.
    Why did it run well after all those years? Simple, one thing I was very picky at was memory consumption: this means, if I don't need the service, I just don't run it. The Run, and Services key in the registry were closely watched by me. Cleaning up the registry regularly helped too. Don't install every shareware proggy you come accross, etc.... Probably this memory paranoia came from my old DOS days...and the registry paranoia quickly came after my first W95 reinstall. Besides, I never came across a program that didn't want to run on 95 so "upgrading" to 98 was never an option. (NT4 neither, because I realise the hardware couldn't have supported it beyond SP3)

    The problem with factory defaults is that they are a common denominator of what Marketing (?) thinks will be usefull. ) I have seen newly bought preinstalled PC's with 64Meg RAM (this was some years ago) that had a memory usage of 80Meg in idle! (That is: directly after bootup)
    Ever noticed how many icons most people have in their icontray? (and that is mostly the top of the iceberg) Realplayer, why do I want that running all the time? Same for that ICQ webdetect agent: come on, I know when I'm online. Oh, and one big spoiler...needed for nothing at all: in Start-> Startup folder you'll find Office Startup (OSA.EXE), now honestly, I don't care that Word starts up in 1 minute or 3 minutes....I have to wait anyway, let's use it to make some tea.
    Besides, if you wondered what happened to the P120? It is happily running it's old days as a Linux experimental machine. :-)

  • That is still delaying the inevitable, do you still use any 8086's or 286's or how about those old MFM hard drives? 14 CGA/EGA monitors? Eventually its all gotta be disposed of or recycled.
  • The problem is for $150 you can buy a router that does masqing, DHCP, portforwarding etc AND is a 4 port 10/100 switch, is smaller, quieter and uses less power. Don't get me wrong, I have a 486 running e-smith (which I can't praise highly enough, BTW) for my home network access, but for Joe User one of these little devices is the way to go.

  • The long-term solution, which most folks won't like, might be to charge a deposit on the hardware or complete systems at sale. Just like the deposit on glass bottles in some states [Michigan comes to mind], you get an economic incentive to give them back afterwards.

    If the money would be managed in the interim, given a five-year shelf life of most components, the interest could be used to bear the burden of the costs of extraction, and the principal could be returned back to the individual.

    Running simple cost thoughts here, using compounding interest at 3.3% [what my credit union gives on a savings rate], a five-year investment on $100 deposit for a full system would garner $17.63--probably not enough to cover the extraction and recovery costs, but enough to ameliorate them.

    I do understand the desire of many here to re-use old machines [working on getting my 850MHz T-bird finished so I can turn my P166MMX into my home LAN firewall myself], but at some point, the hardware does stop working. Those schools do have to junk the boxes at some point, often because the adults don't have the technical knowhow to fix them, the district doesn't have the money to pay them, and no one will let the kids play with it to get it back running.

  • My former employer, Global Monitor [globalmonitor.com], deals in ancient hardware. Often they will pick it up for free, and sometimes they will even pay for it, if you have a lot of old working (sometimes even non-working) 14" and 15" monitors, for instance. Some of the easier fixes are done in-house, others are sent overseas where it is cheaper to fix them. Their warehouse is a virtual museum of old computer junk. I've spent many an hour perusing all the stuff up there...
  • Slashdot readers can do an incredible amount of good in their own community, wherever they are from! Please understand:

    Okay, there is some hardware that is unworkable in the Internet age. A 4.77 MHz PC/XT with dual floppies and a green-screen counts as "unworkable" and should be junked.

    But a LOT of what is being junked these days are things like VLB 486 machines, low-end Pentiums. They should go to schools, community centers, and churches. I know, there are lots of arguments against this:

    1. They are full of old parts and are likely to need lots of repair and maintenance.
    2. They are too slow to be worth anything.
    3. Much faster used machines (compared to, say, a 486SX/25) can be had very inexpensively.


    The answer to all of these questions is YOUR VOLUNTEER TIME as a computer expert. I give my time locally to a number of small computer centers and networks which are not for profit. Here are my answers to the concerns above:

    Regarding #1 (Repair and maintenance): Yes, a power supply fails every now and then in "my" networks, or a video card goes bad, or a monitor. But part of what we're talking about is the glut of older hardware. It's not a big deal for a Slashdot user to swap out a power supply, a video card, a monitor -- and older hardware of this type is in ample supply. Yes, a school will have trouble justifying $400 in repairs to get an old 486 PC fixed, but the average Slashdot user can cannibalize three old 486 PCs into one working one that will help 10-20 kids in a matter of 30 minutes or so without needing spare parts or incurring expense. It's a matter of having the correct knowledge to get this older stuff working.

    Regarding #2 (Slow): A 486/25 may be too slow to run Internet Explorer 5.5 under Windows 98 for streaming media -- it's true. But put Windows 3.1 and Netscape 3 (you can still download it at Netscape.com) on a 486/25 with 8-16 megabytes of memory and it's about fast enough for WebMail. Stick it in a corner of the community center and write "For E-Mail Only" on the front of it. Donate or get somebody to donate a little of their time to help people learn to use WebMail. Then try telling a little Russian grandmother that's just made contact with her children in Russia for the first time in 15 years that the machine is too slow to be worth anything. She'll tell you that it was worth something to her to have this public e-mail machine there.

    Regarding #3 (faster machines for cheap): Cheap is not the same as free. You can tell a school that they shouldn't bother with a stack of 486/66 machines because they can get Pentium II 233 systems for only $100-$200 each. Or you can donate a day and help them get 10 of those 486/66 machines running enough for kids to type a report or two and visit a few simple Web sites -- even if slowly -- costing the school nothing. If they don't have the cash, they don't have the cash. Telling them just how little cash they really need isn't all that helpful.

    Here are some examples from my own experience:

    A local church wanted to get three computers in a small network for their members to do Web, e-mail, family history and a few other things. They had someone in for an estimate and nearly died. So, they decided to try for just "a computer" (that's right, one) but decided they still couldn't afford it. Over the course of a weekend, I was able to get for them six PCs (mostly 486/66 machines) at $5.00 each from a local university who was basically tossing them. A bunch of 640x480 VGA greyscale monitors were free from the same place. "Useless" was written on top of each of them in black marker. At work, a pile of 10b2 ethernet cards and a bunch of coax had been laying around in a closet for a long time. I asked, and I got them. We booted up the machines, cleared out the cruft and just left Windows 95 behind. Installed the network cards, wired them all up, stuck a 56k modem and Linux and masquerading on the last one and 'ta-da' -- a six user network with basic Web, e-mail and applications. Slow? To me, dog slow. To them, a godsend. They didn't have anything else. One weekend.

    Another anecdote: I got wind of the fact that a local government office was paying to have a moving company haul a bunch of 486 and low-end pentium machines out into the desert and smash them to bits because they had depreciated into oblivion. I contacted the agency and was able to get the machines and a bunch of color 640x480 and 800x600 monitors donated. Some of them needed work. Out of about 20 machines, about 11 good ones were assembled, mostly by swapping power supplies, drives, monitors, etc. Took the better part of an afternoon. A local surplus software company donated a bunch of Windows 3.1 and vintage 1995 "multimedia encyclopedias" and other early multimedia titles, including a few storybooks-on-a-CD. The systems went into a local school in a poor neighborhood who only had to foot the bill for a few sets of headphones for the kids. Those kids don't care that the machines won't run Office 2000, Netscape, or Quake II. They're happily using Compton's 1995 and Grolier's 1994 encyclopedias to write reports with Windows Write and print them to an old beat-up HP LaserJet II. All it took was knowledge and time to turn "old junk" magically into "classroom computers." My investment: a Saturday, a few blank floppies, a little sweat and nagging a couple of my friends to come and help out.

    Yes, I've returned to both of these places once or twice to make repairs, but it's no problem. I have access to plenty of spare parts and each repair usually only takes an hour or two at the most -- if that long. True, there is no money in these budgets to repair older systems if they break down, but as long as someone with knowledge and old spare parts from our present glut is around, no money is needed when something goes wrong.

    The point:

    Part of what decides whether old hardware is useful or not is whether those with the knowledge to make it useful are willing to do so. Giving two Saturdays a month or just say the morning hours of every Saturday, you as a knowledgable Slashdot reader can make a lot of people happy by connecting them to the information age. This especially applies to those of you living in metropolitan areas where those on the "more ghetto" side of town often aren't fortunate to have access to computers or to have been the beneficiary of a made-for-TV Microsoft commercial about giving computers to poor folks.

    Saturday LAN parties are great, but smiles are great too.

    Just start asking around -- make it known that you're a computer professional and you're willing to give some of your time to your community to make technology happen for those who can't afford it. You'll be swamped with needs in no time -- needs that you can help to fill if you're willing to give a little time and to work on old hardware.
  • Sure one of today's computers can do the same job 50 times, but what if it doesn't need to be done 50 times? A 486 as a linux-based firewall is still ample for virtually all home connections and it provides the additional security of not having your firewall rules exclusively on your main system.

    Other uses include:

    1. DNS Server for small networks.
    2. Email server for a small network, or maybe something like a syslog server.
    3. Educational insturments for teaching clustering, etc.
    4. Inexpensive and scalable clusters for supercomputing needs
    5. Countless other simple tasks.
  • If you have old computers like 486s sell them on ebay. Me or someone else will pick them up. They're pretty handy. If you get 20 or more of them into some extremelinux or beowulf action it makes a dandy Tribes ][ server.
    If you have other old computers, specifically apple][gs's, they are still good. If you didn't know the apple ][ gs can do everything that your pc you are using right now can do, except 3d stuff. It has tcpip, cd burners, games, AIM, ICQ, netscape, everything. It's slow, but it works. Did I forget to mention Wolfenstein 3d for the apple ][ gs? How about my C=64 with the 14.4 modem? Old computers are still good.

  • Okay, lemme think about it.

    Using the Linux Router Project, its possible to use a 486 as a router with no hard disk, only one floppy disk. A 486 doesn't need a fan on the CPU, if it has a properly sized heatsink. However, you still have the P/S fan, unless you want to see about grabbing an old Macintosh machine and adapting the P/S over (I assume its possible, any info?). Therefore, with no hardware hacking, you are reduced to 1 fan (in the P/S), and a floppy disk drive as the things that are most likely to fail (because of the moving parts), and the fan should be the only cause of noise once the thing boots. With hardware hacking of the P/S, there is no extra noise.

    As for dust, any machine can be dusty, I don't see why a properly cleaned old machine will gather dust faster then a new machine. Any machine does need proper air flow if it generates heat, fan or no fan. The only remaining factors are electricity and size. The electricity cost should be offset by the low/free cost of the hardware, and for those who are interested in conserving energy, reuse of an older machine with a higher energy draw is probably less energy then manufacturing a new machine. As for size, well, I can't win them all. :)

  • I agree that schools, daycares, community groups, etc. could benefit from old hardware. It's so inaccurate to say that giving them old 486 and Pentium boxes would saddle folks with out-of-date software. Exactly what does Office2000 give that Office97 doesn't when all somone need is word processing to print the church newsletter, for Pete's sake?

    Anyways, one of the biggest sources of old hardware is, of course, corporations. I work for a very large corporation that freed up over 5000 old desktops in a few short months (part of a concentrated replacement effort). I had the idea to give these PCs away - good for the community and good PR for the company. We had staff ready to reimage the machines on their own time!.

    Well guess what? The legal department got involved and felt that, legally, the only way to ensure that the hard drives had no confidential data on them was to pay an outside firm to remove each drive and drill a whole in it! I am NOT making this up. In the end, the cost to do this was prohibitive ($200/PC), so the machines were mothballed in a warehouse and, mysteriously, have been slowly disappearing out the door.

    So, we all lost on this escapade and no one really knows what data was left on them anyways. Anyone else encounter similar problems recycling old hardware out to the community?

  • Take-back obligation not new in Europe (Score:3)

    by vkt-tje ( 259058 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @11:22PM (#187534)
    Schools are very happy to receive your "old" Pentiums.
    Call your local primary school and ask when they will come pick it up :-)

    This take-back-your-old-products sheme is allready in place for refridgerators in many European countries.
    I'm no environmental fundamentalist, but I like this kind of nature care better than (say) Ozone speed limits .
  • Schools are very happy to receive your "old" Pentiums. Call your local primary school and ask when they will come pick it up :-)

    Not true. I've worked at several companies in the past few years who needed to dispose of a fair number of PCs (ranging from 20 to 2000 depending on where I was working) and we never could find a school or library that would accept them. They always claimed that there was too much trouble involved in reconditioning and standardizing them for their environment, or that they already had newer computers and didn't need a bunch of old P166s, or they only use Dells and we had Compaqs. And then they whip out the whole software licensing issue whereby your donation to them is fairly useless unless they shell out cash for an OS or become non-compliant (schools around here just don't use Linux), so suddenly your donation of 30 "free" PCs has a $4500 price tag on it.

    We've always just ended up calling a recycling place to take them away. Some of them will pay you $20 or $30 per unit for them and then clean them up and resell them or ship them to Ethiopia or wherever they think that they could be used. Either that or let employees have them. You'd be surprised at what kind of junk clueless secretaries will take home if they are in the "it's a free computer" mindset.
  • The power switch was tied to the old broken power supply from a second proprietary cable!

    I had that happen once. I pulled the power supply and switch from another even older machine and frankensteined it into the case of the broken system. Sure, the power switch was on the back instead of the front, but that just makes it harder to accidentally shut off my file server now. :-)

    My point, unless the old system is in good working order I find no point of using it. If it works it will break in a few months it is also pointless. Systems are engineered to break down after 3 years.

    Not true. I bought a 386sx in 1992 that is still running. As is the 486-80 that I bought in 1994, the 486-120 and the X5-133 (AMD chip) that I built in 1995 and numerours Pentium and 6x86 based systems that I built in 1997-1999.

    What you're referring to is planned or programmed obsolesence. Appliance manufacturers do it for things like toasters and clock radios and whatnot. The rationale is that they can sell more units if they design them to only last a couple years. But you don't have to worry about engineered obsolesence in the PC industry because in 2 years the system (even if it is in like-new working order) will be technologically obsolete and "too slow" to be conventionally useful.

    Dr. Demento: "I took a fish head out to see a movie, I didn't have to pay to bring it in."

    And actually, that's from the song "Fish Heads" by The Buggles, and if I'm not mistaken the lyric was "I once took a fish head, out to see a movie, I didn't have to pay to get it in."
  • I had a Sony 200ES monitor that would cost $200 to fix--not worth it. So, I put it out on the curb with my trash the night before and it was GONE within 20 minutes.

    Well, that's the rub I guess. I've had a lot of old HP Laserjet II and III monstrosities die on me in the past few months. It would have cost us at least $100 apiece to get them all looked at and repaired, and then they'd still be shitty old slow printers. So I took the money that we would have spent on repairs and bought a couple LJ 4100N workgroup printers and chucked the old ones. It just wasn't worth the time or effort to fix them.

  • C'mon now...technology was MEANT to be disposable.

    disposable
    adj.
    Designed to be disposed of after use: disposable diapers; disposable razors.

    By the dictionary definition of disposable, I'd argue that the adjective doesn't apply to either computers or technology. And even if it did apply to computers, there's nothing that says that something that is disposable is supposed to be thrown away if it is still useful. And most old PC's are still useful.

    When it's lived out the lifetime of it's product cycle, bury it, burn it, crush it, or otherwise redender it permanently inoperative -- the tech support workers of the world will thank you.

    As a tech support worker of the world (or at least my corner of it anyway), I think that you're full of shit. Only a total moron is going to destroy a piece of equipment that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars simply because it has exceeded the manufacturers product cycle. Product cycles nowdays can be as short as 6 months. And why on earth would you destroy a piece of equipment that is still useful for someone, even if it is not useful to you? Even a 2 year old computer can be sold for a little bit of cash.
  • I have an old beat up Mazda truck. When it finally stops running, should Mazda be REQUIRED to take it back?

    You bought a Mazda truck? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    OK, seriously though, that's an interesting point. I think that it's important that manufacturers be thinking of ways to make their cars/trucks/computers/whatever more easily recycled. But I don't think that they should be responsible for recycling it. I'm thinking of all the times when I've been able to go to the local junkyard/salvage yard and buy a used part from a junked car and put it on my car. It can be a real cost-saver. And auto recycling is fairly common nowdays anyway, so for non-usable parts they can be broken down.
  • To all slashdotters: I'm looking for parts for email terminals and such. Good enough parts for an MP3 server would be even better! Email me, I'll even pay a nominal fee to you to send me the "junk."

    And as others have mentioned, I think this type of scrounging for parts is a really good idea. If nothing else, hook up a simple email terminal for the little old lady next door and let her share your super fast Cable internet connection via some Cat5. I'm sure she would appreciate being able to keep in touch with her children and grand-children on a semi-daily basis. Besides, she'll be eternally grateful for your generosity. I'm just looking for parts for a simple MP3 server so I don't have to run up two flights of stairs to get to my main file server!

  • I completely agree. In fact, I think this policy should apply to ALL products, not just computers, here in America. Perhaps the best single method to make our lifestyle less wasteful is to include the full environmental cost of cleaning up after it in the price of every item. And SHOW that price on the item, so they know just how much it is. It would encourage both producers and consumers to be more mindful in order to save money, and on top of that could actually reduce taxes by creating less cleanup jobs for the government.

    Environmental cost may be difficult to determine (and you can bet the companies will try to get away with all they can), and preventing exploitation of the system by the garbage companies (which are in at least one large city run by the mafia) might be tricky, but it beats spotty here-and-there legislation.

    These direct recycling programs for electronic appliances are a great start, and are easy to implement since you don't even have to determine cost. Expanding the system to include all electronic appliances would be simple, and could really jump-start the 3rd-party recycling industry.

    cryptochrome
  • Sure you can make a server or firewall out of pre-pentium computer. But how many people need those? (Ans: Only a few geeks would bother) And can you really do anything else with them? (Ans: No)

    In my experience, a 486 (or 68040) or below isn't worth the energy it takes to run them (especially considering today's energy situation), or the space to keep them around.

    cryptochrome
  • Here in Portland, there are a couple of organizations which address this issue:

    freegeek.org [freegeek.org] takes in old computers and recycles them into usable Linux machines, providing education for folks who want to learn to be a a PC technician and in return for volunteer hours, the volunteer gets a useful PC in return with Mandrake and other stuff on it.

    They will also responsibly recycle components they do not use for a nominal charge.

    The StRUT [k12.or.us] program similarly provides education and recycling services for Portland, and, I understand, for other communities as well.

    So the resources are out there - perhaps in your community. And the volunteer opportunities are there as well, if that's your interest.

    Dave
  • As someone who collects older computers/game consoles, I'd absolutely love to see the Canadian government bring in laws to make it costly for the consumer to dispose of old electronics.

    $13 disposal fee for that old CBM Pet? I'll give ya $5 for it, and pick it up from your door!

    A bit selfish perhaps :)

  • Why there hasn't been some kind of movement to place 486es and Pentiums, with a free OS like Linux, in our under-funded public schools, I'll never know... All children need are internet and word-processing capability, anyway. Instead, we have Bill Gates donating a piddly few computers (in comparison to his income) to select schools around the nation, so as to promote his Microsoft software.
  • Nothing makes me angrier than walking past a dumpster, seeing an old PC in there, hauling it out (yes, if I see hardware in the garbage, I do go in after it), and finding that it still works. All functional hardware has a use. We even use old 8088s as terminals around here. If you can't use it, give it to someone who can. Don't throw it out. The more old computers we keep in service, the fewer new ones that have to be built to serve the same purpose. Reuse, reduce, and recycle, people.

  • There are companies that deal with this.. (Score:4)

    by Liquid-Gecka ( 319494 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @11:56PM (#187560)
    There are lots of companies out there that recycle old computers.. They tear them down and recover all the rare metals and such (No sense trying to recycle silicon since it's not exactly hard to make and its hard to rebuild. However, the gold bonding wires (the wires that connect the metal pins on the package to the silicon wafer inside. The company that I work for recycles all chips that are damaged or not working properly (and sells as many of them as they can to people that don't need fast or reliable parts) This same process is used on PCB's, and other common components. The relative cost of removing a part and trying to reuse it (a Rpack for example) is too high for real world situations. Instead they simply recover the precious metals and call it a day. In time, just like cans/paper recycling, the process will get refined and improved and they may be able to catalog parts for reuse (a 5V regulator hasn't had many major changes in the last few years.. to reuse a regulator from a 486 in a power supply for a TV or something will not cause problems. (Recent ATX supplies require faster/better regulation, which means that an older regulator won't fit the required properties and such.)
  • Never buy brands. Buy a computer in a standard (ATX?) case. If you do so you will be able to replace the parts that become obsolete and computer will still work. After some replacement you will have enough parts for a second computer that presumably will be a server, router or, say, base computer for interface cards design where your slightest error fries the m/b.

    This trick will not help with brandnames. You will throw away everything at once - case, m/b, video, processor - all, and spend a fortune to buy a new computer at once.

    Delete all SPAM from my address [mailto] to answer.
  • I see all of these responses talking about not recycling and instead re-using aged equipment for file servers, etc. But the article clearly states that that only delays the inevitable. Eventually, the hardware breaks. If you've got an old IBM XT with 10MB hard drive and a cracked motherboard, there's not much you can re-use it for. Eventually, it's just not worth keeping old equipment running. So, it all has to be thrown out or recycled at SOME point.

    So, any bright ideas as to how these things can be efficiently recycled or used?

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • I quite agree. I had a 10Mb hard drive from an AS400 that I used for a number of years as a doorstop. It performed the task perfectly and was virtually indestructible. :)
  • It's really sort of sad. I remember being so impressed when I saw my first 486 run windows 3.1. I wondered how anyone could possibly afford to have one in their house. Those were the days one could accurately judge the speed of a machine by how fast it could run the 'starfield simulation' screensaver. Now, most 486's can only aspire to holding doors open, or keeping the car from rolling during an oil change. Someday not to far in the future, we'll be able to brag about living the pre-gigahertz days. The "new" generations will wonder how we managed.
  • err... we've been doing what Dunkelzahn suggests for about a year and a half here. My husband runs a small general IT services company, and we've set up both friends' household networks and business clients with homebrew router/firewalls (and are running one at home, of course). We have never spent more than $30 on one of these machines - that's case/mb/power supply, parts, the whole bit; and they're running embedded Linux.

    We've had nothing but good reports back, and these super-cheap machines are part of what allow us to cut deals to get our non-profit customers online at minimal cost.

  • I never throw out an old machine. Even an old 386 with 4 megs of RAM and no hard drive can boot a floppy-disk Linux proxy server or router. If it's a 486, it can run the QNX demo, and you have a nice little internet kiosk. If the computer doesn't have a network card or modem, you ca always boot a single-disk linux and use it to run Seti@home or D.net.

    Incidentally, my high school's voice-mail system runs on a 486SX 25 mhz machine, and runs perfectly.

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