douglar wrote on 2021-01-29, 12:55:

I see ads on Alibaba where you can get 100Kg of 486 & 386 CPUs for USD$500. I wonder how many working CPU's you'd get out of that? I also wonder how much the shipping would be. And I know how loud my wife would yell if a truck dropped off 100Kg of Ceramic CPUs at the house, but that's a different story.

USD$500 for 100kg of ceramic CPUs sounds too good to be true! As for how many would be working, I guess no more then 10%... If you are lucky! The problem is with the broken or badly bent pins...
I'm handpicking these CPUs from large bags or bins. This lot I've picked from a pile of about 250-300 CPUs, and there where like 30 CPUs that looked somewhat ok, but with no guarantee that they will actually work. The rest was just scrap. A few months ago I found a good looking AMD K6-2+ 550ACZ with not one pin bent and no other visual damage and still the CPU was dead.

As with the wife part, I have a strategy that kind of works... for now. I'm not taking home more then a handful of stuff at a time. I prefer to leave them in the car or take the stuff to the basement... 😉

Not quite a dumpster, but found this Aiwa PC-MT601 in a local store a few months back for 1100yen (roughly $10)

Had no hard drive and CRT would not turn on, someone had cut the traces on the built in TV tuner to make it onboard graphics only (no tv/av functionality)
Replaced capacitors and got the CRT working, then repaired the cut traces on the tuner card and repaired the fault it had (likely why they cut the traces), then miraculously found the matching remote for it on yahoo auctions, so it's now basically complete.

After the cleanup and repair.
Great little machine, Pentium 150, 800+mb of ram, onboard S3 Trio64V+, Crystal 4232 with OPL3, the only thing left to do for it is find the right eeprom configuration for the 4232, which is proving difficult because the drivers only ever came with the system sold as new, Aiwa in their infinite wisdom never hosted them online.

that's an awesome little box 😁

That Aiwa system is a fantastic find. Nice work of getting it repaired and fully functional again

Wow, that thing is cool! I've never seen anything like it. What does it have for VGA and sound?

You can say that (in a way) the Aiwa system is Sony VAIO's ancestor!

Close call maybe, the Pentium 150 was introduced in 1996, same year when the VAIO name was introduced.

I still have a 12" PCG-R505G with a Tualatin 1.2 - found and raised from the death during my internship in Vancouver.

Man, I would love to get a system like that. TV and PC combined? That's incredible.

I just found a Pentium II 300/512/66 in a moldy box in the basement. Didn't even know it was there but I certainly needed it! It stinks but it works. 😁
Went through the rest of the disgusting boxes and found these:
I was never into Commodore and don't even know what the Taritax does but at least the mold didn't chew through them. 😁
I also found a bunch of 500 W Tungsram photo bulbs and huge 250 W infrared lamps, nothing computer-related.
My basement certainly looks like a dumpster. 😜

Almost three years ago I found my way to this forum after saving a Compaq Prolinea 4/50 and a Compaq DeskPro EN SFF bound for the bin at work. On Monday I got back to the office to find this lot being readied for scrap:

• x3 Lenovo Thinkpad T430 (one already given away)
• HP Elitedesk 705 G3 SFF (only three years old!)
• Lenovo ThinkCentre M82
• Lenovo ThinkVision 19" LCD monitor
• Lenovo KB1021 USB keyboard
• Intermec CN3 PDA (so many memories using these for work. None of them good.)
• Nokia RM-974 phone
• Samsung L301 digital camera (with photos still on it. What's data protection?)

Also a ton of C13 plugs, ethernet cables, and exactly 32 new and still sealed VHS tapes.

A friend just found this IBM rack from 2004 in a business they're cleaning out.

Any practical use or value? Keep in mind, I'm nowhere near a city where I can easily sell stuff like this locally.

You can mount railed shelves inside and put many desktops on them. I would definitely take it.

Picked up a Dell 750watt PSU with a bad fan for free when I sold a guy a Antec 750watt PSU. Missing the psu case screws, and its a super weird fan but Im hoping a good relube will silence it.

Wolfus wrote on 2021-01-30, 19:10:

You can mount railed shelves inside and put many desktops on them. I would definitely take it.

Are shelves like that standard, and cheap? Where would I find them?

standard, yes, it's a 19" rack after all... cheap... not really

you can find them anywhere, just search for rack shelf.
they start at around $10 but larger ones that can carry more weight can easily cost upwards of $50 for a single shelf.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-30, 20:05:

Wolfus wrote on 2021-01-30, 19:10:

You can mount railed shelves inside and put many desktops on them. I would definitely take it.

Are shelves like that standard, and cheap? Where would I find them?

You probably need standard 19" rack mount shelves. You'll find them by that name. And maybe a handful of cage nuts too.
Some companies ask for ridiculous prices, but there are cheap ones.
I'd definitely take it for may networking stuff. I could use a 16-21U rack cabinet.

5 fixed full size 19" shelves and 2 power outlet kits (6 outlets each) with surge protection (everything new from IT store) cost +/- 150 EUR. I'd rather search for used shelves and buy one protected and one unprotected outlet kit for half price. It is not cheap but you can run 6 PC's in relatively small space and it looks professionally 😉

I just saw it in person and decided to let it go... it's massive! I don't have anywhere in my home or garage where it makes sense to use 3 feet of depth for only 2 feet of width. I also have no interest in large/complex networking equipment, so it makes little sense for me to take it. If someone wants it and isn't far from North western pa, near the NY border, it's here. Probably will be cut up and scrapped soon if there are no takers.

I may have a chance to get what is likely a couple thousand dollars worth of HON cabinets and shelving units for free though. I don't think I can adapt those to holding towers, but I can certainly find a use for them! A business is closing and my friends took on the task of emptying the offices for them, with hardly anything being kept or sold. Pretty sweet deal!

So on Saturday the wife sends me out to return a Dress she bought on Amazon. So I go to the UPS store and drop it off and see around the corner a place called "PC Service Center" - well, being as I sometimes find cool stuff in little hole-in-the-wall computer shops, I went inside and looked around, saw a few useful things for my modern setup, the guy at the counter was busy with someone's laptop repair so I decided to just head out for the time being, but as I walked by the door, I saw two nice looking Beige Monitors just hanging out among a pile of flat panels that seemed to run around the quarter of the store. So I inquired about them - asking if they were for sale or recycle - and she said "you can have them, I did not know we were not suppot to take CRTs in" - so of course, just scored a nice KDS VisualSensations 15" SVGA, and .;....I think a 17" Dell which judging by the screen shape just might be an older Trinitron. Both are nice, bright, and crisp, and nicer than the Micron I've been using the past 3 years (which has some drink stains on top - not mine of course). So yeah, score.

Yep, the Dell is a 17" according to Google. Nice monitors.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-30, 20:05:

Wolfus wrote on 2021-01-30, 19:10:

You can mount railed shelves inside and put many desktops on them. I would definitely take it.

Are shelves like that standard, and cheap? Where would I find them?

Yes, and yes (depending on where you look). Shops that sell rack hardware, but also music shops, because 19" is also the standard size for rackable music equipment (Roland SC-55 etc. are not called "halfrack" without reason...).

So besides putting computers inside them, you can also load them with music hardware.