Recycle old pc

thebourke

I have a really old pc.(At least 10 years)

Any place I can recycle it?

I am dublin based.

DopeTech

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058289700/recycle-old-pc

You can bring to your local recycling centre: e.g. Recycling Centres - SDCC

Or alternatively bring it to your local Powercity, they all have a cage you can drop WEE waste in.

Is it still operational? Specs? Someone on here may take it off your hands.

riclad

put it on adverts ie computers/free but ,be careful if theres personal info on it, eg passwords, credit card info, photos. most browser have the option to store email passwords or credit card pin no,s ,etc

A 10 year old PC in 2023 could still be a decent bit of kit. My primary laptop is about that old. Put the specs up and we can value it, but I'd be surprised if you can't get a few quid for it.

Be very careful to erase all your personal data. You will need to remove your or anyone else’s user account(s) to start with, do a factory reset. Or to be absolutely guaranteed free of being hacked remove hard drive, or format it. If purely recycling you want to make it unusable to another user, if selling you want to be very sure to at least clean your own data. What operating system is on that laptop?

(Windows 3.1 🤣?)

windowcills

Do this and it will be ask quick as a new computer and only cost e14

Run the windows 10 media creation tool on it or another device, and make a windows 10 installer usb

Buy an ssd drive for e14 of amazon.co.uk

Take side off, unplug hard drive and connect ssd, selotape it to something so it wont touch a fan

Boot computer off the usb and install windows 10 to the ssd, its pretty obvious what to do, if computer uad windows 7 home make sure to install windows 10 home,etc

If asked use the windows 7 product key to activate it

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401320#Comment_120401320

Out of curiosity I looked it up. Windows 3.1 is 31yrs old.

Kurooi

If this was a gaming pc or anything you suspect was expensive, high spec, some parts there (GPU, ram) might fetch a few quid in a CEX

then rest into powercity basket, that's what I'd do!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401349#Comment_120401349

Yes, I was taking a journey down memory lane. First came Microsoft Disk Operating System, then Windows was born and resided on that as a graphical interface imitating the MAC OS (based on Linux, which in turn is based on Unix) until it became an OS in itself. I’m a bit of an old fossil meself 😁

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401397#Comment_120401397

Riddle me this mr fossil. If DOS was first as you say what did the computers use before that?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401441#Comment_120401441

Its origin lies in the origin of IBM personal computers, with Microsoft & IBM Co-developing almost identical operating systems. Before the development of the standard PC & Mac (the latter ahead of its time with graphical interface) on a small scale you had the varying non-standard home computers for nerds & gamers like the Commodore 64, BBC micro computer, etc. So nothing on the IBM PC standard before DOS, it is the mother of non-Unix etc operating systems.

Flinty997

It's simple. If there were computers before DOS. Then DOS can't be "first" as you proclaimed.

Incidentally Windows 1.0 came out in 1983. Mac OS (the one with Unix ancestry) in 2001. Windows can't have copied it.

Also the inventor of the Graphical User Interface was Xerox.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401538#Comment_120401538

I’m talking Personal Computers here, known as the “PC”. Of course, as I said above, there were computers before that!!! DOS was the first OS of the IBM standard PC, the basis of the computing we all do nowadays. We are not using the progeny of Acorns and Commodores which were standalone formats which were popular with wealthier families with boys. I used to look at the cost of them, astronomical, and they were divergent formats never going to be the basis for a standard going forward, not until Steve Jobs & co created the incredibly user-friendly Mac which was especially beautiful to use for desktop publishing. Almost parallel to that came the IBM standard “PC” which is the basis for the most popular computing we see nowadays.

Old PCs had serial and parallel ports for keyboard, mouse, printer and limited space for add-ons for likes of a hand scanner. DOS was the resident OS for most PCs on the market, back in the day, and typically with that you might edit batch files to boot up to programs as you wish, most often including the launch to Windows, but I had a few options as I had non-Windows programs there too which I enjoyed using. You would typically manage memory allocation on DOS too.

Subsequently DOS was replaced by Windows as an operating system in itself, but originally it was not, and a program that imitated Steve Jobs’ successful Mac. Back in the day when I was getting my first computer there was the dilemma of whether to purchase an extremely expensive Mac or else a less user-friendly and relatively more affordable PC. I went for the latter, apart from price, I knew I’d learn a lot more by using it and learning to me was equally important to productivity.

Long before PCs industry had likes of punch card operated machines, famously the ESB offered what were then considered plumb jobs as Punchcard Operators, with strong opportunities for promotion in the company’s emerging IT system. They recruited from Intermediate Cert where they were keen to get young minds to train.

Trinity had one of the early IBM mainframes, and offered the first ever computer science courses in the country, stemming from the Engineering department. They used a pre-DOS operating system.

DOS certainly wasn’t the first OS, but it was the first OS of modern personal computer alongside Mac OS. Linux, developed by a Finnish guy, Linus Torvalds, from Unix (a paid commercial package such as, eg Solaris, which my organisation used) could be installed on PCs as a free (open source) operating system, now reasonably popular as well as being the basis for iOS, Android, Flight Management Systems, your car’s computer, and practically everything you use. Back in the day it was used by nerdy types who wanted to see a bit more of the underbelly of an operating system and learn to tweak it, and indeed it’s easy-to-use and versatile once you get used to it, and far far more stable than Windows.

OP, show us your kit!

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402126#Comment_120402126

My problem with all of this. Is that is full of errors and inaccuracies. The world of computers (or personal or home computers) didn't start and end with DOS or Windows.

I remember the days when when you could walk into a computer shop in Dublin and you'd never see a PC. From my childhood till I started college none of the computers I'd seen or used in people's homes were Wintels. At that time the Wintel PCs were seen as business machines geeky and uncool.

You've taken about 50yrs of computer history jumbled it up out of context and sequence then rewritten it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402389#Comment_120402389

I will use a phrase popular in the Liveline thread a la Joe Duffy:

I know dat, I know dat, I know dat!

🤣

I’m talking about the rise of popular computing. Before that it was the provenance of engineering, companies,nerds & little boys in cash fluid families. It was the era when most of us started using computers for many things at work, when the ordinary adult started getting home computers.

Goodness knows, I know this, my cousin was first prof of comp science in this country & I closely followed him.

I started working in 1979, and in subsequent years entertained the idea of buying a computer for my home. Although material in the library system where I worked were being put on the MARC system for a future circulation system, there was no computerised circulation system in place.

I looked at the cost of eg the Commodore 64, it was many multiple times of my salary, you certainly couldn’t get your second hand banger of a car plus the likes of that.

My problem with all of this. Is that is full of errors and inaccuracies. The world of computers (or personal or home computers) didn't start and end with DOS or Windows

Tell me where I said it was?

Or maybe don’t as thread has been derailed already. One thing I don’t know is the current value of used oldish computer parts, and that is more relevant to OP. I thought I had just gone down a bit of memory lane reminiscence of more vintage gone computing, and what I have said here is relevant to that but doesn’t answer OP’s question.

If OP is living in Dublin and wishes to dispose completely (I say again wipe all traces, come back here if advice is needed on that) you can bring it to Ringsend:

https://www.dublincity.ie/sites/default/files/2021-09/ringsend-info-leaflet-sept-2021-.pdf

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402429#Comment_120402429

Anyone I knew with a atari or amiga or older systems were all working class. They had GUIs and productivity apps. They were the price of a current console.

PCs and Macs were expensive at that time.

Anyway you've a very selective memory of it all.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401397#Comment_120401397

MacOS is not based on Linux.

It is based on NEXTStep, which is based on the commercial UNIX of old. Linux is a clone of UNIX.

The MacOS of the 1980s (that Windows was copying, but MacOS had copied Xerox first) was not UNIX based at all, it was its own thing - a wobbly mess of a single tasking graphical OS that they somehow kept going (including perfunctory, unreliable multitasking support) until about 2001. It was replaced with the NEXTstep based Mac OS X.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402586#Comment_120402586

I know what my wage packet could buy, for sure, and I wanted to buy something close to what I’d be using from then onwards, and IBM PC or Mac were the way to go. My first practical use of a computer was to write a book for a publication in 1992.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402617#Comment_120402617

iOS origins are in Unix of which Linux is open source. The wobbly mess of a Mac 2 GUI was beautiful to use for somebody who had 10 minutes to learn in order to go ahead and write a book for publication and whose only previous experience had been using DOS-based databases and some word processing. Incomparable for user friendliness. Windows 3.1 was “ok” as an alternative.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402750#Comment_120402750

No, no, not at all.

Linux didn't even exist when NEXTstep came out.

MacOS has nothing to do with Linux. At all. Never did.

And the open source version of original UNIX is the BSD family of operating systems - Linux is a (significantly) later clone.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402617#Comment_120402617

..and Bill Gates was originally influenced by seeing Visi On.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visi_On

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402745#Comment_120402745

It's all online if anyone wants to read it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer

cobham

I donated an old PC and some laptops/keyboards etc to a charity called Camara Education located in Dublin.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402764#Comment_120402764

Yes I know Linux is a later clone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS

macOS (/ˌmækoʊˈɛs/;[7] previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system[8]developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001.

The dinosauric Mac 2 on which I cut my teeth didn’t last long, and it was the price of a small car.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_II

For anyone to suggest any computers were easily affordable in the 1980s wasn’t running a household back then, wages were low, taxes extremely high.

In the 1990s standardisation started to come into play so making investment in a home PC more of a prospect. I still have a batch of sturdy old ZIP discs, the contents of which I can view on my current PC, laptop etc.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402816#Comment_120402816

You didn't appear to know that when making your baffling statement that macos was based on it

Home users mainly used 8 bit micros in the 80s. These regularly cost under £200.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402853#Comment_120402853

Born in 1961, attending a girl’s school, I wasn’t early to computers in a highly misogynistic world of then Irish male-dominated STEM. Different times, you might have had a different experience. My take-home as a Grade 3 public service admin was well below easy affordability. No way could I splurge out on things then. Only a few years before MEN were paid HIGHER than WOMEN for doing the EXACT SAME JOB. Some of the misogyny still on Boards is cringeworthy.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402951#Comment_120402951

There's a reason a generation started on Amigas and Atari's. It's because they were affordable. It's the articles I linked too.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402816#Comment_120402816

You managed to link to one of the most expensive computers of that era. Apples were expensive and this was their top of the line machine in it's day.

It's a bit like saying no could afford cars and linking to the most expensive Ferrari as an example.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120402991#Comment_120402991

I first used a Mac 2 for the purpose of writing a biography which was published by Blackwater Press in 1993, so I was initially drawn to that. But what I did purchase was a Dell with Windows 3.1, where I initially tangented whimsically from OP’s only 10-years-old PC. Out of curiosity I must see what exact model it must have been. It was less expensive than a Mac 2, overall a better “teacher”, and kickstarted files I still have in my possession.

A memory of beige-ness. All black set-ups started to become a thing, initially reserved for top spec models, one of which I was sorely tempted to get and which actually came with a screen top camera of all things. These early machines with Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Home Suite or whatever it was called back then, had very nice teach-yourself modules which rewarded you with a nice little video display once completed.

Flinty997

One college I was in had an Apple IIfx. Had those two drive slots. Only one had a drive in it though. We had to keep opening it to rescue people's discs that fell into the empty slot.

L1011

You could get a ZX81 for 50 quid, a Spectrum for 150 or a C64 for 330 in 1983. In Carlow. Those systems, plus BBCs, Amstras, and latterly Amigas were available everywhere and much, much more affordable for the average person on an average salary than a IBM clone - let alone the top end computer from the dearest home computer vendor ever like a Mac II.

Plenty of people had home computer back then, not just the rich or nerdy. It wasn't until the mid 1990s that the mass market moved to Windows systems.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120403187#Comment_120403187

Where I was given access to the Mac 2 was in a community arts support charity, when the 2 staff members left work at 5.30pm they kindly gave the keys to myself and my friend to work on the book using our own 3.5 “floppies”. Only the 5s were truly floppy, you could bend & crush them with your hand in an instant. In the office was another Mac, with two floppy drives and no hard drive.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120403015#Comment_120403015

If it was 3.1 its was mostly likely a 486. The equivalent Mac was a LC.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120403269#Comment_120403269

It had an Intel 386 iirc, next PC I got had a 486, one after that a Pentium. Started in the slow lane, but I think a had more RAM than the 4mb big standard in the day, and certainly more than the 40mb hard disc, also big entry level standard in the day.

greasepalm

I have passed on 4 desktops i no longer needed and was not scrapping as like much more repurpose them.

https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/wanted-pc-for-free/17856210

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120403507#Comment_120403507

Windows 3.0 in 1990 and Windows 3.1 in 1992.

486 came out in 1989/1990 the DX2 in 1992.  

Apple LC sold between October 1990 to March 1992.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120403700#Comment_120403700

Going down memory lane, I’m trying to recall exactly when I got my first PC. Book (biography of friend undergoing lung transplant) was published 1993, just as he was recovering from it, having started it a bit less than a year before. Launched on Pat Kenny show and a best-seller for a week. It was a momentous occasion in my life, I had known shag all about word processing etc before that. I finished off the biography on a typewriter as I no longer had access to the Mac.

Around that time I was considering options of purchasing my own machine as I enjoyed so very much using the Mac. It was Mac or PC, PC or Mac. Being artistic I had heard the Mac might overall suit me better, but I was equally keen to see sone underbelly of operations. PC it was.

I was into archiving and genealogy, a hand scanner was a must for capturing photos. Flatbed scanners were prohibitive! People have no idea now how expensive this realm could be. There were no usb ports, and I started getting my screwdriver out to fit the scanner port, when my mother, who knew feck all, grabbed it from my fiddly hands and fitted it in a jiffy 🤣 To install the driver software on DOS was fiddly, but the Eureka moment came with the scanner scanning an ancient family photo or two and some archival material for digital posterity, now all online.

riclad

Macs have always been much more expensive than pcs of a similar tech spec but there used to be alot of high quality programs on mac used by designers artists , i presume theres no loads of high quality design programs on pc now that are as good as programs on the mac.

i think it was mid 90s when pcs became much more affordable to ordinary users and you could buy good games on pc cdrom format.Now we at the point where even xbox games consoles expect users to

have internet acess to download updates or buy games .