Has anyone beside me ever pull over the car to snag a PC tower that was sitting out with someone's garbage?,..

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I haven't done that. But I do seem to collect a ton of computer parts somehow. I have a collection of old laptops that people seem to give me all the time. A corner of my office I refer to as the computer graveyard. It drives my wife nuts. Somehow I have a tower in the backseat of my car right now. I have hard drives, processors, GPUs, power supplies...lots of good stuff. Anyone want an 8800GT?
 
Sometimes there can be a descent value in something like that and in most situations it is the operating system license still on the machine that can be reused, I've had many machines given to me because they just upgraded to a brand new machine considering the old as worthless when sometimes just the case itself is reuseable for a scrap build.

The gold I've always looked for is a legal license left on the machine which is easily removed and transferred to another case with a hairdryer, and I've never run across one yet that wasn't able to be reactivated through Microsoft. :)

I haven't actually gone into someones trash on the curb yet, but only because I've never seen one out by the road! :)
 
I have done it when we have rubbish cleanup ... one man's trash is another man's treasure.

I usually fix stuff up for the kid's mates.

The best score I every got was 20 intact PC's from a community college for free. I arranged with a mate who was a deputy principal at a local public school to pick the lot up in a trailer, took them home and reformatted the lot and blew out the dust, then delivered them to the school the next week.

They put them into the grade 1,2, and 3 classrooms for resources for the primary school kids.

Just basic stuff ... but it was nice to see them getting used instead of going to the tip.

 

Bombie1138

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most excellent,..


 

yilubset

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Just snagged one a few days a go... Too bad it was built in 2002
gf5cJm
 

bsd

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"Has anyone beside me ever pull over the car to snag a PC tower that was sitting out with someone's garbage?,.."

No, but one night on the way home, someone had put an old lab desk with a heavy duty steel frame outside for collection.

I picked it up rammed into my small hatchback car.

The top is water damaged, but the frame is in perfect condition. I'll put a new laminated top on it and use it as an electronic work bench.

I also got an IBM PC from the local college as it was being thrown out:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/84/8f/e1/848fe19a7aaecf4c09859b3f64a8c043.jpg

it came with the IBM Model M keyboard as shown, but no monitor.

Had thought of modifying it to take the latest in motherboards, so far I can't bring myself to hack into it.
 

DawnRenee88

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I have gotten things doing that many times. There was even a high traffic site called freecycle I used it in my area a few years back and found 3 great working desktops. They where vista if I recall correctly. I found out that the women repaired them and sells them on craigslist in the area at the time and no one wanted to buy a vista so she gave the 3 pc to my. With keyboard and mouse and monitor not thin monitors the bigger ones its hard to even give away now days. I found out that same day she was the same women that used to buy eggs from my grandparents. Weird I know "Eggs" well they where goose eggs anyway.

Other greatways is to go curb shopping after garage sales some people just through the stuff out. So the monday after a big garage sale end shop around.

Never no what you can find for free that just needs a little cleaning or tlc.
 
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