One man's trash... (AKA schools trash good stuff)

[CronoTriggerfan]

This is how you know summer will be awesome. I got out of most of my exams this year save math and English, so my technology teacher asked me if I wanted to help haul out "old" PC stuff during hours I was doing nothing. I guess next year we're getting all HP computers, so our school will only service HP products of any kind. So my friends and I got to plunder and pillage the old lab before the trash compactor did! I got...

-2 Athlon 64 desktops w/1.5 gigs of RAM each
-3 17" CRTs (Sony ones, they're flatscreen, not rounded)
-3 keyboards and laser mice
-One set of brand new Sound Force 505 speakers
-A 15 gig harddrive
-A 4 (lol) gig harddrive
-Box of old floppy disks for old OS's
-A brand new MIDI keyboard with sound studio and instructional VCR
-A new padlock
-A brand new flashlight XD
-1 old desktop with a Pentium II
-2 CD-ROM drives

I'm sure there's more in this huge bag I got, but that's all I know off the top of my head. Unfortunately, they had already scrapped the old iBooks, but whatever. So, has anyone else ever gotten stuff from the trash like this? Or from school upgrades? Discuss!

[Extreme_Jesus]

i had a similar experiance a few years back when i was in school

Although i didnt get nearly as much

I got a 500mhz Athlon computer minus a hardrive and a couple of keyboards.
My friend lugged home a massive old projector (i already had one so he took it)

and we nicked an office chair or two.

There was way more, but they left in a skip in the school grounds so naturally at break the degenerates just went "ooooo electronics...SMASH" By the end of the day most of it was crap or broken.

[lifeisbetterwithketchup]

You guys suck. The closest I have to that sort of stuff is being able to buy 3.2ghz P4's with 512MB of RAM for $200, craptastic laptops for $300, or iMac G5's for $380.

[CronoTriggerfan]

You guys suck. The closest I have to that sort of stuff is being able to buy 3.2ghz P4's with 512MB of RAM for $200, craptastic laptops for $300, or iMac G5's for $380.

Ouch. If it's any consolation, our school is probably giving away P4 laptops next year! XD

The only thing I'm bummed about is that our performing arts center just got redone, and they tore out all the theater seats. They're these atrocious orange cloth seats, and they're so awesome! Only problem was they wouldn't fit in the back of my friend's truck, so I had to leave them behind, unfortunately. Maybe I'll go up there later this week...

[vskid]

My school is new (07-08 school year was the first year), so no old stuff yet. Our school district occasionally has warehouse sales. They take pretty much all their old stuff and put it in a warehouse, and then let you go through and buy stuff. I haven't gone to one in a couple years, but back then they sold PII desktops for $10, which is a good price but too much for a cheapskate like me. Fortunately, one of my friends knew one of the "cashiers", so we got 6 desktops, a couple CRTs, and some misc stuff like mice and keyboards for a total of $10.

[grossaffe]

I was in a special computer program when I was in high school. in that class, if we passed our A+ certification exam, we would be given a P4 computer (which was before the dual-cores came out). Needless to say, I passed and i'm typing this from that very computer.

also, in that class, we were given freedom to scavenge any part out of any of the computers in the scrap-pile (basically, every machine that wasn't claimed as someone's project machine). from that, I found myself an ATI all-in-wonder card.

[Aguiluz]

Aww, man! Why does crap get broken before it goes into my hands?

Must not give up, I will find crap to play with!

[marbs]

My school had a load of shuttle PCs that they were getting rid of, and after asking one of the teachers she said she would let me have one. However shortly after that she quit the school and I never got my shuttle PC. Last I heard they were all sent to africa or something

On the other hand the technicians at school give me and my friends all the old computer junk, and we have half a room and half a cupboard to keep it all in! Though we don't really get much good stuff, our best claim was probably two UPSs.

[xtrmgam3r360]

I get nothing from my school.

[Aguiluz]

Well, I tried to get crap from school, but nope...

[bicostp]

My old PC, which evolved from a fanless P2 333 to a P3 500, was 90% scrounged parts. An empty case here (needed a PSU), "broken" motherboard there (needed a CMOS battery), 10 gig HD (with 500 MB of good space ), eventually it became a fairly decent machine by 1999 laptop standards. I can't complain; the costliest component was the new CMOS battery, and I found this place with it...

They got a big shipment of Compaq Deskpros, so I traded them a "broken" one for a laughably craptastic DEC desktop machine I "fixed". (128 MB of RAM, 333 mhz P2, 6 gig HD, 10/100-TX Ethernet, ISA slots. All it needed was good RAM and a PCI audio card.) The DeskPro only needed some RAM, a hard drive, and a disc drive because it was scavenged to get the others working. (It's a 966 mhz P3 with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, 20 gig HD, and 512 MB of RAM now.) More or less a fair trade for 4 years of free tech support, no?

[Triton]

ive gotten a crapload of mostly useless things from my old highschool and bought a few things at auction from my college, from the HS:

several (4 i think) mac SEs in various states of disrepair, sold one to sparkfist as a matter of fact
a quadra 605 and one other PPC mac that was broken
lots of cables old software etc

from the college:

2x sony VPH-1272Q CRT projectors for 20$ original retail $35,000
one box of ~110 DVI cables for 7$ been selling them on ebay sometimes for a couple bucks plus shipping each lol

[Sparkfist]

Yeah I wish my college would just sell off all their old dell desktops, they're replacing them all with newer ones or HP workstations. Really what do they need all these old P4s for?

Also you guys install in High school, be glad you're in the time you are and you're schools have money. When my school finally upgraded the computers, we were going from 16-bit Macs, to new P4 Gateways. Sadly I didn't know where they were moving the hardware, because I love the old 16-bit Macs.

[CronoTriggerfan]

Also you guys install in High school, be glad you're in the time you are and you're schools have money. When my school finally upgraded the computers, we were going from 16-bit Macs, to new P4 Gateways. Sadly I didn't know where they were moving the hardware, because I love the old 16-bit Macs.

Unfortunately, we're feeling the crunch right now, too. Probably not as bad as you were, as we can still afford maintenance and an upgrade, but the way Grandholm gerrymandered these budget appropriations, our district gets half as much per student as all the surrounding schools.

[APHawkes]

When I left my high school in '99 they were still using a lab full of IBM PS/1 machines. We were learning "business applications" with DOS versions of Microsoft Works. Sneakernet with 1.44 floppies was totally "IN". No mice, no hard disks, keyboards that had actual switches... it was totally retro.