On-topic:

If it were me, I'd be considering two options (numbered from base 0, of course):
0. Talk to the school administrators and try to convince them that giving the cards to you is just as good as recycling since there's 0% chance, once they get in the realm of collectors, that they'll ever reach a landfill (barring failure, of course, but don't mention that 😈 ).
1. See if you can find out who's doing the actual recycling, and make some sort of deal where you show up at the recycle center and "steal" the parts. All he knows is, he dropped off the parts at the recycle center and this guy in a hoodie and sunglasses walked up as he was driving away, and loaded the parts in his truck 🤣

Off-topic:

ElementalChaos wrote:

the school's robotics club. I'm supposed to be the head programmer for the club, but since build time doesn't start until January

Ah, the fabled FRC kickoff 😀 Just out of curiosity (and completely off-topic), what's the current electronics/programming chain for FRC? It's been a while, and I never actually did FRC, just FTC, where we were hand-fabricating real robots out of high-grade aluminum, carbon fiber, and bulletproof plastics but were forced to use the LEGO controller which was explicitly made for children, not high school students!!! 😠 Can't tell you how many times I found myself wishing we were using Arduinos or something. And the sensors/motors/etc were just fricking expensive since FIRST gave Tetrix a 100% monopoly over what motors we used! Well, at least until the last season I was with the team. Sorry for the rant; it's easy to get me started on how stupid the FIRST organization can be.

We did get to use 1/4 scale metal gear servos after a while though, which really kicked butt relative to the size of the robots 😈

What's your team? (more off-topic, sorry)

"Rescue" them on the last day? 😊

Just tell the department's big head that you'd like these old cards to experiment if they have no use for them. Just straight tell them that and chances are you'll be walking away with them

As keropi said... tell them you'd like to play with the old hardware... that it's your hobby 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

"Rescue" them on the last day? 😊

That's what I did when I worked as IT-support in our local high school. I put a Digital Venturis Pentium in my backpack (slim pizza box case) when I heard they would all be trashed and staff couldn't take anything! I also took some CD's and floppy disks. I regret nothing, except not stealing the Spectravideo LAN-interface unit. It is one of the rarest peripherals available to SVI/MSX computers. I'm pretty sure they've trashed it by now as it was only kept as a "museum piece" by this (soon to be retired) teacher.

On a non-serious note, may I suggest rubbing your genitals on said equipment to claim them as your own? Thus no other person would be so inclined to even recycle them! hehe. Seriously tho, just ask the tech director. 9/10 times old stuff like that doesnt even appear on inventory lists and they will let you take what you want in your backpack. Entire desktops can be trickier policy wise, but still doable if you are on good terms with them, and if they are old enough.

If it was a private company I would say just ask or depending on the company reword it to "I can dispose of this for you"
Usually they are only to happy to be rid of the stuff, no cost no hassle.
But I know government/educational/not for profit charity can be strict on this kind of thing. or a company that sells its stuff to the recycler.
In this case I'll swap "like for like" The books and the recycler doesn't really know what they have just 3 laptops, 10 cards, 3 monitors, etc.
So find 10 cards you don't feel guilty to send to their death (say internal modems, crappy video cards, etc, and swap them. School still can cross items off the list, recycler still gets his stuff, and you save some hardware"

chinny22 wrote:

If it was a private company I would say just ask or depending on the company reword it to "I can dispose of this for you"

^^this^^

Even more boldly (and if you think about it, honestly), say "Would you like me to recycle these for you?"

I once asked the service leader of a local school to get in touch when they were to recycle old IT equipment, and he was really helpful and even took a few things aside when i didnt have time to stop by on recycle day. Monitors, IBM PS2s, early IBM laser printers (plus cartridges), thin clients, etc. I took the stuff that didnt work to the same recycling centre anyway. Just ask them what is supposed to happen with the hardware, and if its getting tossed ask if you can take some stuff for personal use.

And now, the news you (probably weren't particularly) waiting for: I got the cards!

It ended up being way easier than I thought. The club manager stopped me midway through explaining why I wanted the cards, telling me to stuff as much as I could fit in my backpack and that they would appreciate the freed space.

So, this is what I got, from left to right, top to bottom:

Accton EN1666 (ISA) Ethernet card. This will go in my 486.
Compaq Premier Sound (ISA) with an ES1869.
Voodoo3 3000 (AGP) with S-Video out. In less than two months I've gone from having nothing 3DFX at all to one Banshee, one V3 2000 and now two V3 3000s... crazy.
Geforce 2 Ultra (AGP)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (PCI)
Cirrus Logic GD5430 (PCI).
Geforce 256 (AGP)
Hercules Thriller 3D (PCI) with a Rendition Verite V2200. Now my Pentium rig can have a proper 3D accelerator.
ATI Rage XL (PCI)
AWE64 CT4520 (ISA) Also put this in my Pentium rig.

They have even more, too, that's free for the taking later. I've almost gotten most of the better cards in their hoard, but they still have a GF2 Ti, Trident Blade and 3DImage cards, several Matrox cards, Nvidia Vanta, and some more that I've forgotten.
Overall I'm super happy I got to save some tech artifacts and will no longer have to pay in body parts on eBay for all of these.

Awesome haul, man!

You should put the V3 3000 in the robot and program a fractal neural network on it, allowing the robot to gain sentience and win every match purely autonomously.

yay for you 😀
Good to still some people with common sense and not simply say no for no's sake, we aren't talking about high value recyclable material here!

ODwilly wrote:

On a non-serious note, may I suggest rubbing your genitals on said equipment to claim them as your own?

This must be done in view of all club members and staff, preferably while pants-less and inebriated - for maximum effectiveness. An ancient tribal dance would enhance the experience. Just remember to hold a staff or shrunken head on one hand, and use the other to rub the parts on your man parts. Be careful, the back side of most cards have pointy bits - it could turn into a grating experience.

On a more serious note you could try to bribe them with more modern hardware (if you have any). I often replace old unused 386/486 PCs with newer internet-ready machines in institutions - nothing fancy - a core 2 duo with on board graphics and 2GB of ram would do. The institution is happy they're getting a usable piece of hardware, and I'm happy with my retro stuff. Win-win.