My best dumpster finds were probably all the 486 boards I found about 12-ish years ago. They weren't really special back then, but now I'm glad I kept them 😁

Not really a dumpster find, but I did rediscover a few oldskool processors I had packed away in some boxes I haven't looked at for a long time. A couple Pentium 1s and a 486-DX2, as well as a Slot-1 P2 350mhz.

Not really a PC find but i found Harvest Moon 64 Cartridge for the N64 in a dumpster this year.

This is in the top5 rarest game on the N64 and usually goes for 60$ cartridge only on ebay.

When it comes to PC, i found some complete AT systems that are pretty nice. Including a 486 DX266 and a Cyrix 686 200.

One of my all time favorite Dumpster find was actually a Macintosh G3 Beige that was completely taken apart, it was put in a trash bag among other garbage. I located it because the screen was outside the bag and i could see part of the case through the bag. I had to sift through the bag to gather all the pieces, Its was just missing the hard drive all in all. But everything was in separate parts and covered with brown goop/crust and dust. ( previous owner was a heavy smoker is my guess )

I cleaned each single individual parts and put the thing back together, glued broken plastic parts, impovised new disk caddies. And now, the thing actually works just fine, and from the outside it looks almost new!

It felt like i was doing archeology of something!

I never find anything in dumpsters... So jelly of you guys that do! 😀

PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN! 😁

I've put plenty of worthwhile stuff IN dumpsters ($&#@!), but I never go digging through them. A buddy of mine once gave me an IBM 300GL that he found in a dumpster. After messing with it I decided it was a piece of junk, and probably redeposited it. I can't recall its fate.

Actually i dont really dumpster dive, and when i said i found that cartridge in a dumpster, its not actually true.

The simple reason is THERE ARE NO DUMPSTERS IN MY TOWN.
Its all low density buildings around here so the trash is not hidden in a dumpster but its put in boxes and bags directly on the street. Much easier and much less disgusting to find goodies by looking in boxes than by jumping in a big smelly dumpster. And most of the dozens of computer i found in the trash were just there on the sidewalk, in plain sight.

MaxWar wrote:

And most of the dozens of computer i found in the trash were just there on the sidewalk, in plain sight.

Same as me 🤣
And i forgot to say that in the same day at the same place i also found 3 generic ATX psus and i have already fixed them for use in my retro PII/PIII pcs. Even one of these PSUs was already working out of the box!(well, out of the sidewalk 😁 ), it was a Sentey 450W psu with no bulging caps and i used it in my main Celeron D 2.8GHz PC
EDIT:The PSU was manufactured in mar 2009 (so it wasn't that old and it was worth fixing)

But my best retro pc find was really a 486 with this specs:
PCChips M919
8MB FPM RAM (Now 32MB EDO)
no l2 cache
IBM 5x86-100 (now OCed to 120)
Palladium 1GB Hard Disk(wasn't working, now Seagate 2GB IDE)
Samsung 8x CD-ROM(wasn't working,now repaired Samsung 24x CD-ROM)
Cirrus Logic CL-GD 5434 1MB (now Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 2MB)
Yamaha soundcard (wasn't working, now OPTi 82C391 sound card)
No LAN(now realtek 8029 ISA)
Windows 95B
5'25 floppy disk(even though i have no 5'25 disks i just left it in there because i don't have the bay cover)
3"1/2 floppy (now 2 floppy drives)

That PC was found in Jan 2011

Back in 2000/2001 I was dumpster diving behind a local computer shop and found about 4 complete, functional Socket 7 Pentium systems. Even then nobody wanted them.

Took them home, set them up with 10base2 ethernet and played Doom and Warcraft 2 with some friends 😀

Haven't really found anything since. The local tip shop often has socket 7 class machines but they charge about 10 for each one.

Last system I found in a dumpster was an IBM PC 5150 😀

The best finds that I have gotten over the years which are not much. A v3 2k pci (year 2000 model) out of a scrapped IBM but the best was a complete SS7 rig. DFI K6XV3+/66, K6-2 500mhz, 128mb ram (I think), 15gb wd drive, generic case with generic psu, generic 52x optical drive, creative pci (ess), crappy rage agp 🤣, and some other things. In the end it got upgraded with some nice rarities like a k6-e3 (sweet 550mhz on only 1.8v) and a v5 5500agp.

Well, I don't really do dumpster diving, but... at our building complex there's an annual 'clean-up', as in they order a trailer size(!) dumpster and people clean out their lofts etc for a couple of days.

Found there a fully working 486 25-sx not too long ago, but that's about it for my dumpster adventures. Only minor issue is the dead battery on a 'string'(cabled).

(I assume having once had free access to a storage room chock full of recycle/dumpster ready but still working PCs and 21'' CRT monitors, P-60 to P3-1000, doesn't count as 'dumpster' ? ..though I actually helped move some of the monitors into the awaiting dumpster... and yes, I DID save a few, so...)

The dumpsters out the back of my local recycling center have been a great source of old - and not so old - hardware for me. Here're some highlights:

Nice AT case, came as a complete 486DX33 machine:

386DX40

Socket 5 Pentium 100

Pentium 4

Socket 7

And actually I haven't been for a while, I'd better get down there this weekend!

WOW 😳 I'm so full of jealousness!

That Lian Li P4... NICE

Looks like there are still heaps of bargains around. Just got to have access to the right places.

Yeah tell me about it - I paid full price for that Lian-Li, a decade ago... 😒
Still sits here under my desk though.

Now, talking about dumptsters, here's something a german vogoner should consider taking pity on, and just buy (I can't/shipping would be a killer/probably wont ship outside Germany anyways):

http://www.ebay.de/itm/170884629974

No bids yet. Check the list of contents in the text.

Thats quite some loot there!
I LOVE buying large trash lots for cheap, or getting them free, they are like treasure chests.

I once bought a box of 10 lbs of graphic cards for 10$ to a local recycler guy.
I found 5 3dfx cards in there 3 x voodoo3 1 x voodoo 2 and one banshee.
Same guy also sold me about 30 PCI NIC for 5$.

Theres also this metal/trash scavenger guy who parks his truck in the neighbor parking. He sort of like me gave me a large bag of stuff containing about 50 various simm ram sticks and one full length 8 bit ISA memory expansion board, W00T!!

Another time i bought a lot of "Misc unidentified computer parts" on ebay, about 35$ shipped, had 2 voodoo 2 in it. One Asus video capture card and several scsi controllers

Another time i bought a box of 17 random sound cards for 30$ shipped, this is how i acquired my Soundblaster 2.0 (ct1350b) . And also some other nice cards.

I love those surprise boxes, never been disaspointed with them :p

Just a couple weeks ago I found this Tower waiting for me on the sidewalk. A Complete Compaq DeskPro. Its a P2 MMX 400 mhz system.

I did not take the time to inspect it carefully until today

The exterior is not damaged but just a little dirty.

I opened the thing up and was pleased to see how clean it was inside, It also has pretty much all original parts. A not fully identified Matrox card and a Compaq ESS audiodrive ISA soundcard. The HDD was there and everything was basically all connected. It was only missing the RAM.
I immediately liked this system for the build quality, the original completeness, the BIG @SS PC speaker and mostly the Fanless processor card. basically the only fan in this thing is the PSU fan. And I sure like quiet PCs.

So after i installed the ram i decided to power this thing up right on. Well, it actually booted right up to windows all by itself on the first try. I was even greeted by the Windows startup sound effect. The sound card is actually connected to the big case speaker. Basically this system is "intact" and in excellent condition, if i cleaned it a little it would look almost mint. Its also very quiet.
Why would people just dump these things outside??? Basically im happy as it is the Most complete and cleanest "brand" system i have.

@MaxWar
Your Compaq deskpro pc is very similar to my compaq server!
And they have one thing in common: They were found in the sidewalk 🤣

I like OEM machines. They are always built very solid and stand the test of time. Most 486 machines for example usually have PS/2 ports. I especially like the smaller form factors like that tiny 486 and Pentium that Unisys made.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I like OEM machines. They are always built very solid and stand the test of time. Most 486 machines for example usually have PS/2 ports. I especially like the smaller form factors like that tiny 486 and Pentium that Unisys made.

I agree when it comes to oem 486 era machines.