All those 486's.

It's like Auschwitz for computers.

=(

There's a reason I have so many 386/486/Pentium motherboards as backup hardware.

I see it as a double edged sword. Some hardware are really bound for recycling.
I read last month, that we (the human race) allready have spend more resources this year, than the earth can produce in one year.

The sad part of this, is that most of the good hardware is being recycled too, alongside the bad stuff.
This is probably were we on vogons come in. We need to save the best of the best hardware.
The worst can allways be recycled.

What do people say? Go for premium parts in the future, and let recyclers deal with unstable, lowgrade and broken parts?

EDIT:
As we are nearly none in denmark, collecting these thing's. And because there is nearly nothing for sale here.
I know of 2 and perhaps 3 persons more in Denmark, that are using old hardware. Yet none that want to save as much as possible.
Most retro-computing hobbyists are mostly into just having one machine to tinker with, not building a good collection as such.
I am one of the only ones to save the good stuff from recycling here. Hope more would do it, as I don't have enough money.

All in all... We can not save everything. Something are bound to go away forever.

Recycling/scrapping is the de facto Modus operandi here in Southern California, has been for a number of years. As a result, very little in the way of old PC hardware remains - with scrappers and speculators getting the vast majority of what's left 😒 . I do what I can to salvage, but this mentality and a severe lack of storage space limits my efforts. Still, I'll continue to rescue these oldies but goodies from certain death when possible (and give the virtual finger to anyone that dislikes/opposes this 😜 ).

While sad, I prefer it to get recycled then in the landfill where a lot still ends up I'm sure, and most of the stuff being recycled would have gone, people would have still thrown it out.
Its no different to old cars, antiques, etc. Everything goes through the cycle of being in fashion, out of fashion and thrown out, retro and in fashion again. Just the lifespan is much shorter with computers.

Recycling around here is like a frickin gold mine. People don't know what they have (or don't care) and just pitch it. I've found laptops as new as 2011 in the dump, some with nothing at all wrong with them. Others just need a little bit of work. But if I could take all the good old PC's, I would. But I don't have enough room to store it, and if I ever have to move it would kill me to have to throw away/sell my old PC's. Hell, there's no real demand for new PC's in this hick town, let alone vintage ones!

There is so much out there still. Remember: there are very few who have this hobby. And this video is already hopelessly out of date. Pentium 4s and later are now the bulk of recycling.

For every item someone posts in the 'I bought these retro hardware today' thread, hundreds, if not thousands, of items have been destroyed or lost. So although I have limited funds and limited space, I am trying to build a collection of historical items, resembling something like one machine from each significant CPU family. I think this is the most I can realistically do. So I am about to acquire my first 286, I saved a 386 last week, and I have almost everything else in terms of Intel CPUs up to an i5. I also have AMD systems but nothing more recent than an Athlon XP.

However, where do I stop? I realise I also have an Apple G4, a G5 and an Intel-based Mac Mini - do I need a G3 and some earlier beige models as I have nothing that will run OS9? (Regretting selling my LC25 now). Tomorrow I hope to collect some Sun workstations dating from the 90s because I have never used Solaris apart from when I was at college. I would love a NeXT workstation. I want my Amiga 500 back. The list goes on. At the same time I am about to bin two Slot 1 motherboards because I have three. Does that make me a hypocrite?

As long as the important items are being kept by someone, somewhere, I can sleep at night.

Recycling isn't wrong, and even with we retro-hoarders there is not that great of a demand for those old systems. This is just how life goes.

alexanrs wrote:

Recycling isn't wrong, and even with we retro-hoarders there is not that great of a demand for those old systems. This is just how life goes.

This.

From the perspective of us, melting down a PPro for the gold seems like such a waste.

But who, other than us, has any practical, productive use for a PPro? Nobody. With the gold recovered you can nearly by an entire embedded system that would be more powerful.

Awesome! The power of process engineering 😀

Heartache aside, this will make a great resource for some of my computing classes - thanks!