Jade Falcon wrote:

luckybob wrote:

@TheAbandonwareGuy & cliffclaven

using the 24" one right now. Love the 1920x1200 resolution. I wish I could get a 2nd...

I get those by the truck load for free from state farm at work.
Personally I dont think theyre all that good, fine for office systems. But for free ill take them ether way. Are last shipments was about 250 or say monitors with cables.

I thought goodwill employees were not allowed to take anything like old computer stuff?

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Ozzuneoj wrote:

So, what kind of experience do most of you guys have with e-waste recycling centers? Dirkmirk's post makes it sound like you basically have to steal things out of some places, because they don't want you taking them. I'm not really interested in doing that. I was under the impression that some places actually let you buy stuff, since the scrap value is fairly low compared to getting maybe $5 for one old computer.

I've been thinking of trying to find places like this locally. I doubt I'll find much, since this is a very rural area (1.5 to 3 hours from any decently sized cities) and I would imagine that things don't just sit around in heaps for years, waiting for scavengers to discover them.

Anyone have any tips? I'd like to get into doing this, because the best kind of recycling is reusing something...

At my local municipal recycling park I'm also not allowed to take home anything, because they sell the garbage to professional recyclers, for which they have a contract based on weight I believe. The container that contains e-waste sometimes contains interesting white / beige pc's. When the personnel of the park is not near me nor watching what's going on, and I'm there anyway to throw away my e-waste, I do not hesitate to take home such a pc. Of course I always do format or recycle the (defective) hard disk when present. A trick is to park your car in front of the e-waste container so nobody can see that you load your car with free goodies 🤣 (hehe, I actually trade my e-waste for someone else's e-waste!). It's also a very good idea to wear a decent set of gloves and boots with steel noses (which I always do in such a case). The container usually contains sharp objects and it's not always possible to grab something.

Last week I have emailed a local professional e-waste recycler with the question whether they want to sell me some really old pc hardware. I've tried to explain them why that's good for me and them. Still haven't had any reply though.. At least I try to do it the legal and safe way!

It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission.

let that soak in.

Found this literly in a dumpster today

candle_86 wrote:

Found this literly in a dumpster today

Saving the money shot (front) for later? Or just going to tease us. Awesome find though. Ive been trying to find a socket 7 pentium for a while now.

Also, I want those pants.

Oh im gonna photograph it later today, but booted it today, previous owner was a pervert and im tempted to turn his old HDD over to the police, its got some disturbing pictures

aop wrote:

luckybob wrote:

I would Imagine it be all but worthless.

Someone paid £300 for a ISA board with a single transputer just last month:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-AT-SINGLE-T4-4-ME … =p2047675.l2557

I would also put that card on ebay and wait if the right buyer will pick it up.. If you really cant sell it to anyone in the couple off 6 months or more, i would personally dissemble the card (keep the memory banks and other IC chips (desolder them if needed)
The `processors` you could sell them to gold refining buyers..

candle_86 wrote:

Oh im gonna photograph it later today, but booted it today, previous owner was a pervert and im tempted to turn his old HDD over to the police, its got some disturbing pictures

dod wipe the drive. twice. Then forget it existed.

candle_86 wrote:

Oh im gonna photograph it later today, but booted it today, previous owner was a pervert and im tempted to turn his old HDD over to the police, its got some disturbing pictures

Stealing someones trash is crime. That drive wont be admissable as proof most likely and will get you fined if nothing else; just DBAN it.

appiah4 wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

Oh im gonna photograph it later today, but booted it today, previous owner was a pervert and im tempted to turn his old HDD over to the police, its got some disturbing pictures

Stealing someone's trash is crime. That drive won't be admissible as proof most likely and will get you fined if nothing else; just DBAN it.

Not entirely. if the trash is accessible to the public, it is free game. removing trash from a LOCKED or fenced in container is theft. Just blank the drive, wash all the parts with alcohol, and move on.

For most places in the usa what bob says is true.

Id not post anything about finding stuff thats not legal on a drive. Not turning in evidence to a crime is unlawful in some places. Distorting it could lead you in some deep water in most places. Laws aside even then its not right to let a crime go unpunished.

But doing a dod wipe (don't forget bad sectors) and selling the drive is more then normal, and you dont need to check the drives content to do that.

With rare exceptions I always format drives nowadays without seeing whats on them. My eyes can only be burnt so many times. Its truly amazing how much smut people can put on thier computers.

Robin4 wrote:

aop wrote:

luckybob wrote:

I would Imagine it be all but worthless.

Someone paid £300 for a ISA board with a single transputer just last month:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-AT-SINGLE-T4-4-ME … =p2047675.l2557

I would also put that card on ebay and wait if the right buyer will pick it up.. If you really cant sell it to anyone in the couple off 6 months or more, i would personally dissemble the card (keep the memory banks and other IC chips (desolder them if needed)
The `processors` you could sell them to gold refining buyers..

Funny how almost no computer parts have enough gold to brake even, yet people think they can make money off recovering it. The real money makers are those selling the parts for gold scrapping.
Gold in computers is mostly plating and not pure. What is pure is very hard to recover. Heck even most cpu pins arnt real gold but just plating. Most sk370 cpus have magnetic pins even.

To make anything on gold recovery you really need to have you crap inline and work on a industrial scale.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Funny how almost no computer parts have enough gold to brake even, yet people think they can make money off recovering it. The real money makers are those selling the parts for gold scrapping.
Gold in computers is mostly plating and not pure. What is pure is very hard to recover. Heck even most cpu pins arnt real gold but just plating. Most sk370 cpus have magnetic pins even.

To make anything on gold recovery you really need to have you crap inline and work on a industrial scale.

There was someone selling hundreds of old motherboards, CPUs, misc cards (I saw at least a voodoo2 if I remember correctly). I offered to buy some stuff separately (she would have sold 10% of her stock, for 40% of her asking price). But no, all or nothing.

I keep seeing the ad return every once in awhile. Makes me sad. Given how quickly ads for vintage PC stuff disappear, you would think she could sell that stuff no problem if she only marketed it correctly.

Jade Falcon wrote:

For most places in the usa what bob says is true. […]
Show full quote

For most places in the usa what bob says is true.

Id not post anything about finding stuff thats not legal on a drive. Not turning in evidence to a crime is unlawful in some places. Distorting it could lead you in some deep water in most places. Laws aside even then its not right to let a crime go unpunished.

But doing a dod wipe (don't forget bad sectors) and selling the drive is more then normal, and you dont need to check the drives content to do that.

With rare exceptions I always format drives nowadays without seeing whats on them. My eyes can only be burnt so many times. Its truly amazing how much smut people can put on thier computers.

I had it shredded, drive was previously online july 2001 so the staturte of limitations is past, but having a daughter the stuff on that disk needed to be perma deztroyed

candle_86 wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:

For most places in the usa what bob says is true. […]
Show full quote

For most places in the usa what bob says is true.

Id not post anything about finding stuff thats not legal on a drive. Not turning in evidence to a crime is unlawful in some places. Distorting it could lead you in some deep water in most places. Laws aside even then its not right to let a crime go unpunished.

But doing a dod wipe (don't forget bad sectors) and selling the drive is more then normal, and you dont need to check the drives content to do that.

With rare exceptions I always format drives nowadays without seeing whats on them. My eyes can only be burnt so many times. Its truly amazing how much smut people can put on thier computers.

I had it shredded, drive was previously online july 2001 so the staturte of limitations is past, but having a daughter the stuff on that disk needed to be perma deztroyed

As in, physically shredded? You could have just DBAN'd it...if I find questionable content on a hard drive I just wipe it a few times, install an OS or bin it and forget about it 😢

candle_86 wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:

For most places in the usa what bob says is true. […]
Show full quote

For most places in the usa what bob says is true.

Id not post anything about finding stuff thats not legal on a drive. Not turning in evidence to a crime is unlawful in some places. Distorting it could lead you in some deep water in most places. Laws aside even then its not right to let a crime go unpunished.

But doing a dod wipe (don't forget bad sectors) and selling the drive is more then normal, and you dont need to check the drives content to do that.

With rare exceptions I always format drives nowadays without seeing whats on them. My eyes can only be burnt so many times. Its truly amazing how much smut people can put on thier computers.

I had it shredded, drive was previously online july 2001 so the staturte of limitations is past, but having a daughter the stuff on that disk needed to be perma deztroyed

statute of limitations can be upto 30 years in some places depending on the crime.
Although in Texas I believe its upto 10 years provided the person was not a fugitive or left the state. This is if you don't take it to the fed level.

There have been many discussions about this here and other places.

For like 99% of cases, just trashing the drive or blanking it sight unseen is just fine. IDE drives are practically worthless. CF adapters make it stupid cheap to get a system going from the pre-pentium era. I only care about drive contents if I am looking for proprietary drivers. And mostly that is in the MFM era of drives, so the "kiddie porn" is likely to be just ascii art at that point. Newer systems I use sata drives with adapters. and I literally have a PILE of these drives around. I might also inspect the drive if I suspect it might have a bitcoin wallet on it.

If I found kiddie porn on a drive. I'm 99% certain I would nuke the drive twice, get a bottle of Jack and nuke my short term memory, nuke the drive again, then sell it. why? I don't want to get involved. it just isn't worth the aggravation, loss of money from losing hardware and the simple fact the cops might just think it was MY data and I was trying to frame someone. I'm unlucky enough, this is a distinct possibility. Fat neckbeard shut-ins tend to get stereotyped as being the perverts. It's easy for cis cops to blur the lines between homosexual and actual deviant behaviour.

I could rant for pages about this, but I'd rather do anything else.

Zero fill it and then hammer smashed drive.

Speaking of getting systems that have hard drives that aren't formatted or taken out, when I purchase a computer from a thrift store, I check to see if the OS can boot, and if not, then I can run a live version of Linux, try to access the internal HDD to see what's stored on the drive without the system hooked up to the Internet for security reasons and if there was/is a nasty virus on the hard drive. If there is anything disturbing on the drive, I would zero out the drive three times and get it either destroyed, or install an OS on it with low level formatting to prevent the files from getting restored.

I have an IBM ThinkPad R40 that was used for a business (the battery was hardly used and has 60 cycles out of the maximum, which I believe is 5,000 maximum) and there was no personal or disturbing data on the hard drive whatsoever (thankfully). Other computers I've purchased with or without personal/bad data:

Dell Dimension 4550 <-- was used at a dentist office 24/7 hence 4 bloated caps by the CPU, but still runs
Dell Dimension E510 <-- was a personal computer that ran Windows 7 Ultimate and had some data on it, but I zeroed it out 3 times and installed linux on it
Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus <-- HDD was upgraded from the 210MB to 428.1MB Seagate HDD and someone's kid(s) used the system back then, hence computer games on the hard drive, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was installed on it (zeroed it out twice, but no personal data whatsoever as well) and upgraded the HDD to a 2GB CF card and is now a multimedia system (from IBM PC Speaker to Roland MT-32/GM) for games and stuff
HP Pavilion N3350 (no personal data since the HDD was wiped and booted into MS-DOS <-- system files after formatting with a bootdisk)
HP Pavilion 7955 <-- going to test the system sometime and use it as a sleeper computer and run Windows 98SE on it by purchasing a GeForce3 or equivalent card

I always tell people before you get rid of your computer, always take the hard drive(s) out for security reasons. Also, if someone is about to give you a system for free, tell them to take the hard drive(s) out if there are any. The MFM hard drives were impossible to take the data off (would take months, for example, the Menendez Bros. case of 1989 when they wiped the hard drive to remove/corrupt the will their father saved, which was on an IBM PC XT system) since they were meant for low-level formatting, as well as ESDI and SCSI Hard Drives.