Where to find free samples?

[timmeh87]

check for anything electric on 'big garbage' day. theres always a computer or two.

[sglider2]

..our "big garbage day" was like...2 months ago, and we only have them once a year..wait, i totally forgot about the goodwill near us. they have special computer refurbishing programs with EXTREMELY low prices for the hobbyist..i think i may go there

[bicostp]

If you don't mind working a little for the parts, broken electronics are great sources of cheap components.

My neighbor threw out an old dead 13" TV last month. Those things are great for parts! Here's a list of what I managed to harvest out of it:

• A handful of tact switches
  Various capacitors
  An IR receiver diode (What you need to make a serial remote control device for a computer)
  Random LEDs
  A 3.5 mhz oscillator
  An LA4224 audio amplifier (if I can find the datasheet, that is)
  Two RCA jacks
  A headphone jack

A local computer repair shop should be more than happy to let you have some dead motherboards. (They have lead so they need to pay to get rid of them.) Motherboards come with loads of pin headers, capacitors, maybe some surface mount LEDs, a button cell holder, and of course lots of ports and connectors. CD-ROM drives normally have at least one tact switch, one LED, and sometimes older ones have headphone jacks.

If you go down to Dollar Tree (or whoever your local peddler of crap is), look through what they laughingly call their electronics section. They should have some cheap little FM radios. I found one for a dollar which has:

• 1 2x AAA battery holder
  3 tact switches
  1 light bulb
  1 volume control potentiometer with off switch
  1 headphone jack
  An assortment of capacitors

It may not be a bargain (considering how cheap most of these parts are) but if you just need a couple and don't want to wait a week for a shipment to come in then harvesting form these works out well.

[sglider2]

Today I went to a local thrift store and I found some old monitors, a lot of power cords, various types of cable, but no CPUs , but the monitors work. I also managed to find a broken fax machine in our attic that I had completely forgot about. I think I found it's purpose (considering it never really worked out for us before ).

[Kenny_McCormic]

there was a stiky full of links to sites with free stuff but it disapered.

[sglider2]

Yeah, this is what it linked to. Some of the links are dead, but for the most part, they're still good.