What people throw away..

[Scott]

This afternoon I was in my apartment complex's underground parking area washing my car when some mid-age lady with a computer in a cart looked at me and said nice and shiny car you got there! Which is a good thing because it brought my attention to what she had in the cart. A full computer.. I thought maybe she was bringing it home so I didn't think much of it but she stopped by the dumpster to unload it.. I waited for her to leave and put the case and monitor in my car so no one else would take it.. finished washing my car and brought it up to my apartment..

The monitor looked perfect, but the case was a little beat up so I though it might be damaged. At first it didn't boot (nothing happened) so I took a power supply outa my stash and tried it. YES! the whole thing works. It's a P4 2.8Ghz with 512 Kingston DDR, ATI x300, a Sony DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive and a 17" Sony flat CRT monitor, which looks & works very nice.

I cannot believe it.. There was no name brand on the case so I figured it was custom built.. The motherboard has some corrosion on it so I threw it away with the case.

I've never been a garbage digger before but lately I've been seeing a lot of computers in the garbage.. I think I'm going to start picking them up for parts.

[Jeff]

Great find, i need to get some of that luck to replace my 1ghz system i'm trying to work on here :P.

[IcIshoot]

Thats how I really got started in computers Owned a couple garbage specials that ran perfectly fine.

And if they don't run, they are good for other things, such as the screws. I just stripped a computer in the past month of just about all of its screws, jumpers, etc.


IcI

[DevilDog#1]

Yep. Once got a slightly used LazyBoy and found a $50 bill in a corner it it.

[Steve]

man lucky git

i'm not that lucky. even if you dont need it you can sell it for a few $000

[Hellfighter]

will panther your lucky, my father was a packrat he pickup anything that look good, only 9 out of 10 it was trash no good at all. man! we the family had fun cleaning up his house all the trash he had in it 4days it taken to remove all that junk.

at lease you know what is good and not good to keep, he did not.

[Scott]

i did get kinda lucky there.. but I do see other computers in the garbages once in awhile. Unless it's rained you could deff gets parts from them. I don't think most people understand how the internals work... you know, computer dosen't boot so throw it away including the monitor!......

even stupider she threw it away with personal information on it. I formatted cause I don't care to snoop, but someone else coulda found it and possibly got some hefty personal info from it..

on a side note if you do ever throw away a hard drive have some fun with it.. make sure NO ONE is ever going to get any info from it.. I take mine apart and sand the disc's down then run a magnet over them..

[Steve]

hehe i made some nice drink coasters out of my last hard drive platters

[Hellfighter]

man things have change in the 1960s people old TV-sets and stereo system into the dump sites, now days you can find 3-5yr old computer system were their tech support fail them so badly they trash it and have no then more to do with it, reason too much trouble to keep it going right when they don't know what is going on with it. piss away 400.00-1800.00 system. were if they gone to a computer system tech shop cost maybe 75.00-300.00 get it good working oder, in this a new power supply would save the old lady headaches

one man trash another man gold mine

[Mauser 98K]

ya can get a lot from dumpster diving, i got a good used cutler hammer programable logic controller with expancion chassis out of a dumpster,its valued at over 1,500$US new, even had the programmer with it .
also got a good microwave that all was wrong with it wasa blown fuse.
also got some servos out of a vending machine with silver contacts, melted them the otherday and have a nugget the size of a quarter.

[Lakie]

Ive got a similar story, my uncle works as a programmer for a major aeronautical/defense company, due to the nature of his job, their whole departments computers get upgraded every 8 weeks, the old ones have the drives removed and are literally thrown out, monitors, peripherals and all

[BADDOG]

Originally posted by Mike
Ive got a similar story, my uncle works as a programmer for a major aeronautical/defense company, due to the nature of his job, their whole departments computers get upgraded every 8 weeks, the old ones have the drives removed and are literally thrown out, monitors, peripherals and all

I've seen something similar to that Mike when I worked in the civil service here every 12 months or so whole departmetns would scrap perfectly good computers, keyboards and monitors etc by simply throwing them into giant skips out on the car park!

There was nothing wrong with these pc's they were just "redundant" and the deaprtment bought new one's

It was a scavengers paradise and I know of one or two of my old clients who helped themselves to these "redundant" pc's and used them to help themselves find work and indeed the odd few are still being used today......it's sheer madness in my opinion to throw them out for scrap!

Warm Regards

[Hellfighter]

bet there a tax writer off some place there?

[BADDOG]

I don't know about that Chief but it did and does still seem to be a huge waste of taxpayers money!!!!


Warm Regards

[VooDoo-]

lol i wouldn't doubt it ... old computers are becoming a problem in landfills

[hutchie]

lol i got boxes full of computer spares as the company i work for replaced there computers and they were that same as mines and i got 4 of them

[milk]

just wait untill an old school throws away their comps, theyre not bad, but theyre just part strippers. iv got 5 comps from the garbage 4 of em worked when i picked em up the one that didnt work i kept the tower because it was fairly big and had alot of slots to put things, just incase i felt the need to make one myself.

[VooDoo-]

my school has the worst computers imaginable .. everyone destroys them by overclocking the hell out of them ... destroying the mice/keyboards .. and shoving crap in the cd-roms so they don't open lol

[Chrispy]

Very lucky man Panther, congrats mate! New computer!
I read PC World mags and wanna get the computers in there so badly! Currently now I want a
DVD-ROM Drive! Again, one person's trash is another person's treasure. That message is just to back up my voice.

Chris_OJB_DF645 --

[BADDOG]

A friend of mine has told me a story since I first replied to this thread about the time he found an almost brand new wide screen television thrown into a skip outside a local office block.

He asked the security guard if he could take it to which the guard replied , "help yourself mate" and he still has it as a second televison set to this day and he found it over 3 years ago!

Regards