I actually posted a WTB advertisement which said that I was willing to pay 10-15€ for ANY 386/486 machine, regardles of condition. I got 0 (zero) replies in 3 months. So far I have managed to get one Pentium and one 286 this year. Last year I got 486 and a Pentium MMX. I doubt next year is going to be any better, probably worse. It's also pretty much hopeless to get complete machines by mail as the local shipping is 10€ / machine no matter what shape or size. Still I can't believe how hard it is to find a 486 with CD-drive or at least a slot for it. All I've found are computers with floppy drive only without a possibility for expansion.

You can install CD/DVD on any old computer - except if the case is too small - but I doubt that as 5.25" floppy drives are the same size.

sf78 wrote:

I actually posted a WTB advertisement which said that I was willing to pay 10-15€ for ANY 386/486 machine, regardles of condition. I got 0 (zero) replies in 3 months. So far I have managed to get one Pentium and one 286 this year. Last year I got 486 and a Pentium MMX. I doubt next year is going to be any better, probably worse. It's also pretty much hopeless to get complete machines by mail as the local shipping is 10€ / machine no matter what shape or size. Still I can't believe how hard it is to find a 486 with CD-drive or at least a slot for it. All I've found are computers with floppy drive only without a possibility for expansion.

Are this some very slim desktops? Almost every small tabletop desktops 486 i have seen have a 3.5" integrated in some way and a place for a 5.25" device.
AT minitower cases seems to become rare, so in time maybe someone have to start a Kickstarter project for a new one for retro computing? What about a 3D printed case?

Certain OEM desktops and some generic desktops only supported one 3.5" FDD.

I do not believe anything is rare. It is all a matter of being willing to pay for it. In case you want everything for <$10 locally: yes: then everything is pretty much rare.

PeterLI wrote:

I do not believe anything is rare. It is all a matter of being willing to pay for it. In case you want everything for <$10 locally: yes: then everything is pretty much rare.

You are probably right and with more newbies such as me are sweeping up leftovers the situation isn getting any better for those looking for cheap parts...

You might still find cheap stuff locally when a collector dumps his stuff out of boredom or having to move.

There are billions of people in the world. Items will continue to appear over time. How often? Function of initial supply, survival rate and how much energy you invest. Plus searching / communication skills. And your financial strength.

Like anything collecting success is a complex function of talent, skill, perseverance, experience and plain luck.

PeterLI wrote:

I do not believe anything is rare. It is all a matter of being willing to pay for it. In case you want everything for <$10 locally: yes: then everything is pretty much rare.

That isn't correct. If something takes significant effort to find, it is rare.

There are quite a few things computer related that are rare, some are just not that valuable.

True. My point is: not impossible.

Scraphoarder wrote:

Are this some very slim desktops? Almost every small tabletop desktops 486 i have seen have a 3.5" integrated in some way and a place for a 5.25" device. AT minitower cases seems to become rare, so in time maybe someone have to start a Kickstarter project for a new one for retro computing? What about a 3D printed case?

That's the thing, they are mostly normal size desktops that in theory could be expanded with a 5 1/4" drive, but the front panel only has a slot for the 3.5" drive. I'd have to saw of a nasty hole in the panel to fit another drive there, and I'd rather not do that. From my perspective clearly most of the tower clones are long gone and only branded office desktops are left as you can still find them from time to time.

I also wouldn't pay more than 15€ for one as there is virtually no market for used retro PC's here. If it's more than 5 years old, it's junk. If people would empty their garages/closets more often I'd probably get all the computers and spares I need for free, hence the price limit.

FI is obviously a country with a relatively small population. Are there recycling outfits that you can ask to keep an eye out? They probably receive generic (mini / midi / full) towers periodically. 🤣

Every once in a while, there are loads of old 486-pentium 3 hardware in my area, and of course with that collectors scramble to the thrift shops and buy them up. I find lots of pentium 4 stuff as people have said, but on occasion i do see the 486/pentium PC, and with that i normally pick them up for dirt cheap. thankfully the guys at my thrift are willing to sell computers and label what the issues are sometimes, and i've even had a disscussion with one of them about old DOS games, DOOM and the likes.

(posting from my thrift shop find Pentium 150)

PeterLI wrote:

FI is obviously a country with a relatively small population. Are there recycling outfits that you can ask to keep an eye out? They probably receive generic (mini / midi / full) towers periodically. 🤣
+

I'm pretty sure our government is to be blamed in this matter. 😁 Infact, people here pride themselves for being on top of the gadget race (ie. "who has the newest toys, wins). So in my experience most 90's computers were trashed in the turn of the century and only few remain. I have gone through all the recycling centers in the past 4-5 years in all the largest cities and there's virtually no computer equipment available that is more than 5-10 years old. I haven't found ISA-based cards in 5 years, unless it was from a collector/hoarder who stashed them away. It's not that they didn't sell many computers here in the 80's or 90's, I believe Finland had more C64's than any other country when compared to the population.

If any recycler gets their hands on a 386/486 they strip it immediately and the parts are then handled accordingly. You can get the picture from here: "We are a customer-focused, pioneering, environmentally friendly provider of recycling services with an international track record. "

Which means, that pretty much 99% of all glass, metal, paper, cardboard waste is recycled and re-used as fast as possible. That leaves very little retro equipment to be found. Hell, if you want to buy a car that is more than a hybrid chances are you pay 300% more for it in emission based taxes! This is the new eco-friendly way and all the idiots in EU signed up for it.

edit: To give you an idea of our "retro market" there was a (boxed?) RAP-10 for sale last year and nobody wanted to pay the 50e asking price so the seller gave up after a month and sold it on Amibay. 😀

Somehow I can understand recycling centers... but I see many persons doing gold recovery from old CPUs and other components by them self. I even talked to one guy a few weeks ago that made me angry and sad... he said he destroyed like piles of 286/386/486 parts... he even remembered he destroyed a complete NexGen computer not too long ago. The sad part being he gets like 2-3€ of gold per part. Some components have like no gold in them but they still get destroyed 🙁

TBH demand for vintage computers is pretty limited so it does not make commercial sense to hold on to them really.

Still getting response on my FB post. Today i picked up another black pimped up case and some other stuff with it.
Inside it was sitting an Asrock P4VM800 thats welcome since have been searching for an AGP board for playing around with my socket 478 Northwoods. Have 75 of them...
Graphics was a Radeon 9250 128MB.

It's dead in the Pacific Northwest. After copper took off about nine years ago and it suddenly became BIG business to recycle used electronics (more like stuff it in a shipping container and ship it to China) and warn about the risks of not destroying your old data. All the usual places from second hand stores to the scrap metal piles at the landfill all dried up just about in unison over six months. Goldbugs took care of the rest. CPU's with pins shaved off...hacksawed edge connectors...necked monitors.....I've seen massacres.....massacres......
I remember when I could drag a 386 or two back from the landfill per week, and that was around 2005. Now I don't even see nasty P4 machines, let alone cases, peripherals or monitors. Heck, racks! Racks of all things. Just a naked four post 42U rack. I've seen nothing in five years. They leave an old office, pass through a liquidator and vanish. Even the steelyards have not seen any come in for a long, long time. Where the hell do they go???
Seattle and Tukwila still have RE-PC and there's a holdout or two left in Vancouver (that comes to mind, that's FreeGeek and The Hackery) that I know of but even FreeGeek won't accept in CRT's for recycling anymore. Whatever else you can find on craigslist, facebook, kajiji or in a second hand store in general is generally overpriced or extremely mediocre to not justify the cost.....if not straight-out missing parts. I've pretty much been living off parts I scavenvged between 2002-2006 up to now with the odd time I have to dig really deep for one machine or the odd large assortment of hardware. Stuff beyond the Pentium III doesn't really seem to interest me. It's so.....commodity. It's boring even though it's a little bit more common still.

This corner of the PNW just doesn't see much stuff come through it. A lot of P4 junk but that's about it.
Everyone and a while an Athlon or something.

Where do all stuff go?
Refurbished equipment have also become popular so many systems are now examined at the recycling centers if they can be used further. The cost of refurbish for reselling are probably lower than recycling metal, plastic etc? I think OEM stuff from HP, DELL, Lenovo etc are most popular in homogenous series. My workplace have been buying refurbished laptops, desktops and monitors since 2001 with success and big savings. I know we were among few that did this earlier, but today it have become many who do this. Today we buy mostly PCs with an i5 CPU, but still getting some dirt cheap Core 2 desktops mainly used for Citrix. With Win7 and proper gpo settings theese are good enough. Paying 1/5 or less of new for a 3-4 year old PC save us big money and let ALL our users have fairly modern worktools. We mostly select the former top high end stuff such as HP Elitebooks etc and if no SSD are in them we put in a Kingston V300.

Have talked a lot with they we buy from and while P3 are rare theese days, P4 desktops are still coming in to them and functional PCs are ofte sold to developing countries. Dual Core or better goes all over the place theese days. Many HP/Compaq desktops we have came from the US, and now our old P4 Compaq EVO SFFs probably end up somwhere in Africa or Asia and still getting used till they pop...