11 replies to this topic

[capr]

Hey guys, I am collecting old CPUs to use as decorations for something. I need a lot of them like a few hundred...

any place I can buy these for real cheap? they don't need to be working at all as I said just decorations.

Is there a major computer salvage/recycle company that I can call and buy the scraps from them?

[roadwarrior]

If it doesn't matter what kind they are, try eBay. You can often find lots of old 486 and pentium processors for next to nothing.

edit: just checked, and people are now asking outrageous prices for those old CPUs!!! nevermind that suggestion

[TRC]

Yeah I used to get them and other old computer parts on eBay all the time but the asking prices are often crazy these days. Seems people are selling them now to melt down for gold recovery (have times gotten that bad?). It's still worth watching though, now and then a good deal will pop up but getting a few hundred might not be easy.

Another problem is people and companies listing old computer junk on eBay not knowing what it's worth or trying to scam people, asking ridiculous prices for it. Like an old 2X CD-ROM drive for $300 or a beat up 486 system for a thousand.

[Carbon Fiber]

Try to find someone who works in a computer repair store, im sure he throws away a few of them daily

[Jen Smith]

roadwarrior, on 08 April 2011 - 16:11, said:

edit: just checked, and people are now asking outrageous prices for those old CPUs!!! nevermind that suggestion

Hokey smokes you're not kidding. Got some oldies laying around, so for giggles looked up random prices on ye olde 80287 math co-processors... yikes. Other classics were just as bad. As much dinosaur era crap I have in storage I could probably retire if it all sold.

[Detection]

I would call up / into your local repair shops and see if they have any - we used to throw them in the cellar when the machine was too old or broken

[REM2000]

i think as well as the gold a lot of places use older processors in industrial machines which makes getting hold of them hard, i think intel were still making 486's right up until quite recently for this industry.

[DocM]

My old MITS Altair 8800 still works

[Detection]

Sometimes there are mass upgrades from office's and the old systems get put into closed skips (Dumpsters) but are normally highly guarded for data protection etc

There was about 4 skips with easily 50 PCs in each, in my old town I lived in, but it was from the Council Offices and it was camera'd to death with security guards too, it was devistating

[+cooky560]

Why did they guard cpus that were trash?

[TRC]

cooky560, on 10 April 2011 - 11:43, said:

Why did they guard cpus that were trash?

I'm guessing they didn't remove the hard drives or anything and just chucked them as is into the bins, and they didn't want any data to be stolen. So stupid and wasteful. I remember one week when my school replaced all of their computers, though they at least tried to sell the old ones. We took them all out to the parking lot planning to have a public auction, but no one showed up and it was getting ready to start raining. Me and a few other students asked them if we could take them but they said no, they couldn't give them away. So there they were, all those IBM PS/1 and PS/2 systems just sitting there in the pouring rain. As a final insult they had us help load them into the garbage bins after they were destroyed.

[roadwarrior]

TRC, on 10 April 2011 - 13:49, said:

Me and a few other students asked them if we could take them but they said no, they couldn't give them away. So there they were, all those IBM PS/1 and PS/2 systems just sitting there in the pouring rain. As a final insult they had us help load them into the garbage bins after they were destroyed.

The stupidity of beaurocracy always wins out over logic. Why didn't someone offer them $1 (or whatever) for the lot of them, since it was supposed to be an auction? Then that person could have gave them away as they saw fit.