What to do with old tech

eddie

., I am going through my office and have from my 1st Ipod still works.. iphone 4 dodgy battery iphone 5 seem ok ( using occassionlly as an ipod ) ..water damaged Iphone 6 working fine but screen blank and cannot be repaired but gets hot, ipad big -old works perfectly but cant access ssl email on it, About 8 old cameras, more cable and power supplies than Curry’s and countless other old gadgets.. various other tablets , e-readers, printers,

All generally working gear that is old dated or otherwise surpassed… but I just find it so difficult to chuck out….

What do you guys do with your old tech ?

RobertFoster

eddie wrote: »

What do you guys do with your old tech ?

Add it to the junk drawer/box :pac:

See if they're listed on CEX or if there's a market for them on adverts (even for free). Failing that, electronics recycling.

Philipx

Just spent a lovely few lock down days getting Windows 3.1 up & running on an old laptop.

Now to find a few old games!

FanadMan

Philipx wrote: »

Just spent a lovely few lock down days getting Windows 3.1 up & running on an old laptop.

Now to find a few old games!

https://www.abandonwaredos.com/

Some great old stuff there :cool:

looksee

I have a scanner waiting to go to the tip, have in the not all that distant past disposed of two mac towers, several monitors - flat screen and the old type, an office type laser printer and god knows what else. All working, though out of date. All dumped. I tried to see if they could be used but recycling at the municipal dump was the best I could do.

beauf

eddie wrote: »

....
What do you guys do with your old tech ?

I've tried for years to sell it or give it away.
Very rare someone actually interested in it.
So most of it goes for recycling. Even if its working.

BailMeOut

recycling centre!

Philipx

Well if anyone has an old DX or early Pentium gathering dust give me a shout :P

CelticRambler

RobertFoster wrote: »

Failing that, electronics recycling.

beauf wrote: »

So most of it goes for recycling. Even if its working.

BailMeOut wrote: »

recycling centre!

Having seen the horrors of what commercial electronic "recycling" does to the people and places where it ends up, I'll do everything possible to avoid sending mine down that route.

For the most part, I keep just about everything, broken down into more useful/storeable parts if necessary. Older old tech generally contains more re-usable bits - variable resistors, mini plugs, things with pins, and the like. Cables are great - no end of times I've needed a short bit of multi-strand, multi-coloured wire to patch up a loom in the car, the camper or some other project.

I'm fortunate in having an interest in photo and video/theatre, so the newer obsolete things can still be kept as props. For those who can't store their own stuff, and don't have a fab-lab to donated it to, you might find a new home in your local amateur dramatic society or film club.

riclad

Give it to charity , sell it on adverts.ie , just make sure to wipe the hard drives on pcs and laptops.
There's a charity that takes old pcs and monitors.
Even an old iPad thats working is still worth 200 euro plus
Sometimes I see skips and there's like 10 old pcs in them company's prefer to buy new pcs with windows 10 that to try upgrading old pcs
www.camara.org
They collect old pcs laptops monitors etc

eddie

riclad wrote: »

Give it to charity , sell it on adverts.ie , just make sure to wipe the hard drives on pcs and laptops.
There's a charity that takes old pcs and monitors.
Even an old iPad thats working is still worth 200 euro plus
Sometimes I see skips and there's like 10 old pcs in them company's prefer to buy new pcs with windows 10 that to try upgrading old pcs
www.camara.org
They collect old pcs laptops monitors etc

They may now be open , But I was trying to get rid of 5 old laptops and no charity was remotely interested ( some only interested in 1-3 years old stuff max ) and the above site was closed.. They all worked booted and had windows installed. Took me forever to wipe and was a lot more time consuming than taking an angle grinder to the Hd;s Finally found a guy that did favours for old folk, fixed up kit etc etc.. for them Gratis, so gave them to him to "recycle as he seen fit..

Had a bunch of external hds from an old project - all 2-4 TB so shucked them from the shells and made up a few enclosures and have decent external storage and streaming to TV;s other devices.. but have a lot of old IDe stuff that needs destroying.. Cant understand that it is usually cheaper to buy an external and shuck it than buy a new drive//

Also have a bunch 400- 800 backup / product cd-dvd that need destroying looking for quick homemade solution for that.. and about a couple of hundred various cables.

It is SO easy to accumulate this stuff..

FanadMan

eddie wrote: »

They may now be open , But I was trying to get rid of 5 old laptops and no charity was remotely interested ( some only interested in 1-3 years old stuff max ) and the above site was closed.. They all worked booted and had windows installed. Took me forever to wipe and was a lot more time consuming than taking an angle grinder to the Hd;s Finally found a guy that did favours for old folk, fixed up kit etc etc.. for them Gratis, so gave them to him to "recycle as he seen fit..

Had a bunch of external hds from an old project - all 2-4 TB so shucked them from the shells and made up a few enclosures and have decent external storage and streaming to TV;s other devices.. but have a lot of old IDe stuff that needs destroying.. Cant understand that it is usually cheaper to buy an external and shuck it than buy a new drive//

Also have a bunch 400- 800 backup / product cd-dvd that need destroying looking for quick homemade solution for that.. and about a couple of hundred various cables.

It is SO easy to accumulate this stuff..

I get offered so much old stuff. For ages I would take all old tech.....so much was recyclable like hdds, ram, monitors etc. And if I could Frankenstein one system from three, brilliant. Most of them went to people whose computers died and couldn't afford a new one. I used up most of my recycled HDD stock during the first lockdown when everything was done at home.

Now all I'm being offered is old XP machines with IDE drive. I'd kill to be offered 3 year old laptops :-p

riclad

They are still open,
https://camara.org/give-computers-ie
the collect pcs and laptops .
it might take em a bit longer to collect item,s .
i,d be happy to buy an old laptop if it has windows xp,, on it, if it has a 17 inch screen.
even old laptops with a 2-4gig ram pentium 4 cpu can run modern versions of linux.
click on covid update link on camara.org
you can put laptops on jumbletown.ie , i gave away 5 laptops 3 years ago.
Just make sure to erase all personal data from the hardrive.