I have an out-door toilet in which I hang the interesting dead hardware I come across. It's fun to look at while... you know, but the collection has also come in handy many times when I need cache chips, battery holders, etc.

The boring stuff goes to the recycle center.

for dead video cards I usually get a string and a nail and hang them on the wall

Sometimes when my repair skills are insufficient, I pay someone with higher skills to do the job. I had a damaged DB50XG with some of ROM traces shortened. I wasn't even able to detect the source of problem, however, I found someone that resoldered the traces and it cost me only $20 with shipping there and back.

Also I offer dead or unneeded hardware (which is impossible to sell due to no demand) at local hardware forums for free, sometimes people take them for repairing, parts or some other usage.

If one needs precious hardware recovery due to solder problems broken traces etc and do not know how to fix , i can help.
If you do not have the skills.

What little that I can't repair I use for parts like caps ect, I try to avoid the lemons when buying scrap laptops and anything that is desktop that is bust I take anyway if the price is super low or free even if it has been sitting outside in the rain for months. Scrubbing rusty filthy boards back into functional use is fun and once in a blue moon get a hard drive too. 😀

Broken boards are great for solder practice and cut traces are very easy to fix but practice is key. You can jump with a wire or if you are good you can make a solder bridge over the gap.

I don't throw anything away, ever. All broken hardware ends up on a pile, mixed with the working stuff, so every time I need something I can spend three days searching for it. 😀

I've managed to sell dead motherboards on eBay in the past – properly and fully described, of course. It took a really long time, but someone eventually bought them. (I wonder how many years it will take to dispose of my ten-year-old ADSL modem?)

Jorpho wrote:

I've managed to sell dead motherboards on eBay in the past – properly and fully described, of course. It took a really long time, but someone eventually bought them. (I wonder how many years it will take to dispose of my ten-year-old ADSL modem?)

Never 😈

if it's nothing special then I store it and harvest connectors and similar stuff.... if' it's something GOOD then I try to ressurrect it .

Well, if we are talking about something like an old monitor, that consists of several boards, but the screen happens to be dead, I may use the remaining, functioning boards to satisfy my upgrade-itis. Pull the power-supply board, upgrade the capacitors, and other components that could use refreshing or improving, same for the driver-board, then find a used version of that monitor and rebuild it with the freshly reworked PCB's. I've done this with gaming consoles as well.

I've never thought about it until this thread. I've had a small pile of stuff that I discover is defective and didn't know exactly what to do with it since I know it's good to someone. Looks like I need to figure out if I want something fixed or whether it's time for the piece to move on to the next owner. 😀

I give it away for free. 😊

I do not fix anything. I do not have the tools, skills and most items are not worth shipping / driving to someone to have it fixed. Things like NICs, PCI VGAs and such are really not worth the trouble.