QOTD: What Do You Do With Your Old PCs?

My friends and family seem to do very well from my enthusiasm for the bleeding edge of technology..... i also keep alot of spares, which is always useful!

I usually give or sell to someone else, and since I upgrade my things (especially computer related products) so quickly, they will normally be very happy to take over. I've never wanted to keep too many unnecessary old stuff with me, and don't want to discard them by myself either.

I usually dismantle old or redundant hardware for spares. Lost count the number of times I've used screws, IDE cable, blanking plates or motherboard spacers etc. I just don't believe in keeping up with the Jones's or throwing stuff away just because it's not needed - I'd rather save the bits for someone else. Just tell them what to expect from it.

M relative was recently using a Pentium 133 MMX system (in his shed!) to do basic office tasks, and I managed to build them a much better system (Duron 1800), based on bits from my old system. They were chuffed to bits and didn't need to spend £100's on overkill hardware.

Only problem I have is where to store all this stuff

If it's still fast enough for general usage, I pass it down to a family member on the condition that if I need it back for any reason, I can have it, and use it for testing, and that I will be the only person who can service it. Works well.

If it's too slow for usage, I strive to never let it get into the hands of another human again by first salvaging useful parts, then trashing the rest with a hammer.

I currently have 15 old systems in my render farm, but this does mean i have to buy ram for most of them, then i sell time on it to the local animation companies or special effects companies.

when i normally upgrade the system or just the components within, i normally check to see if anyone int eh family or friends need upgrading, if no then i sell the components or system on.

You could say that, for a nice price, i'm the family supplier

Between development servers, media servers (how this socket 478 P4 can transcode to 1080p I have no idea) and disc duplicators, so far I've found a use for everything.

I'm passing on a few old components to a friend later too, but really old bits like 16-bit sound cards, 100Mb network cards, PCI graphics cards and floppies and up in a big box which ultimately will have to be disposed of I think unless some wargamers I know want them to use in props and such.

From Malaysia,

I've been using my old computer since i bought it 7 years ago. A Pentium 4 1.7ghz.
So far it had been serving me well for my uni life and I don't think that I will be retiring it in the next 2 years.

Should it need to be retired, I guess it will be used as a test computer or a download machine.

out of all the computers I've had I've made:

NAS
Download/torrent machine
Video Servalence Machine
Numerous terminals around the house for general use
Media Players using XBMC
Hardware Test/Debug Machine
Datalogger for oscilloscope/testmeters/thermal imager

and donated many to family and friends and stipped for spare parts.

Parents basically.

Old laptop and desktop now in their possesion. Just passed on my 24" LCD to them as well.

Rarely will I own anything that I consider of any value to sell.

I sometimes horde the drives for 'covert storage'. Mainly I take old donated hardware from people who I build a new box for and add (X)ubuntu or XP and give it away to someone I like or sell it to someone I don't.

My favourite one is a little Xubuntu machine I built for my 19 month old on my mum's old tower. Yeah, I know it's a bit early for him but some of the software that's free for kids starts at 2 years and upwards and it stops him messing with Daddy's hardware. Plus, if he destroys the keyboard or mouse or a monitor (that is the size of a microwave), it doesn't matter cos I have another 5 in the loft Anyway, I highly recommend this to anyone. Kids don't care whether it's bang up to date, as long as they are doing what their parents do. Try building one for a kid you know. They will be grateful.

One of my mates just gave me an old notebook that I fixed for him 3 years ago when he broke the power socket. He just broke it again so he bought a Lenovo S10e and gave me the knackered one. Reckon I'll give that to my little boy and turn his into a webserver. Or give it to a mate. Choices choices.

I think it's nice to keep a system for older games, and emulators. For instance games like Interstate '76 or Project IGI..Mame, etc. Almost all the modern machines I build are simply way too fast for these older titles and as a result they don't play well. I know these older titles may look pretty dated but some of the sure are addictive. I spent many an hour playing a GL-optimised version of Quake on RivaZX card, as well as i76. Even the old AMD K6-2 or K6-III chips could run these with ease.

It was also fun re-living the magic of the ZX Spectrum, and not being constrained to tinkering with hardware just to get the darn emulator to run properly. As mentioned you could build the kids an older rig, it doesn't matter if it gets bash and because the games are simpler there would be no end of titles to choose from, at very little cost. The only thing that bothers me is that families and friends have tendency to expect something for nothing..in this case, lifetime technical support. Answer machines are wonderful devices at times.

It would also be a shame to throw stuff away when there's kids in the UK and abroad that could make use of it, but just can't afford the parts. Would prefer to do that than chuck it in the bin, only for it to end up in some landfill site or some 'recycling centre' abroad with terrible working conditions.

Old computers? I collect them...

I still got some Commodore Amiga bits as well as software and magazines. Gonna keep them as long as I can. I kept an A500, A1200 and A2000..the latter always seemed to crop up in the background on many a film or TV series. The 2000 is also built like a tank

I still like the look of those Amiga machines, and how far ahead of the time their technology was. It's really sad to see something that good sat a cupboard gathering dust, and it makes me angry at the people partly responsible for it's demise.

The only old computer I've finished with is my old laptop which I gave to my sister since she just needs something for websurfing and word processing. She'll be replacing it in a couple of months and I was thinking of just throwing it away (responsibly of course) but after reading the above I think I may try and find a use for it. It could be good to have a machine around that still runs XP. If I reinstall XP and upgrade the ram it would still be a nice machine.

Currently building an i7, so my q6600 is going to my dad. and the 939 3400+ I gave him 2 years back is going to my Mum, and I dont know what shes planning for the P4 2.7Ghz, but usually Ill take it back and re-build and overclock at low cost... and then... probably put it in the bin. "LOL"
God the amount of hardware thats gone missing in this House

Now im just deciding wether to Keep the antec 1200... or find something beter... and hand this down with the p5n32 and q6600

Had a total of 3 Pc's in the past few years, the older 2 are now in my cupboard, awaiting to be sold or possibly used for spares. Havent gotten rid of them yet.

My nightmare is video cards, I'm addicted to buying new ones that are
on sale so now I have 6 1 gts320mb, 1 8800gt 2 3850's(brand new crossfire was too loud)an ATI all in wonder 3650 hd(for tv) and lastly a gtx275. currently I have only 1 pc with 2 pcie slots, so I've got 5
cards stacked in original boxes in the closet...explain that one to the wife!

I usually donate my "old" hardware to family and friends, sometimes I assemble systems from scratch but more commonly I just upgrade their systems.
Two weeks ago I decided to throw away the really outdated stuff, a trashbag containing:
10+ floppydisk-drives
around 15 >80Gb HDD's
5 Motherboards
50+ cables; floppy, IDE, SCSI, MOLEX etc.
25 or more sticks of various memory, from sd to DDR2
10-15 raidcontrollercards, soundcards and PCI-networking cards.

I live i Denmark, where most thrown-away pc-hardware is shipped to 3.world contries - so hopefully someone is enjoying my hardware-addiction somewhere

I salvage parts I think I could use, but leave a functioning system to give away to friends or family. I just rebuilt my desktop gave my Athlon 64 2MB to my wife and her 7 year old dell P4, went to charity. I gave my laptop, dual core, 2MB (broke screen) to my granddaughter, with a new 17" wide-screen external monitor and she is very pleased with it.