Looking for ideas on where to get cheap used parts.

[Stormfront Tech]

Hi folks,

 

So I run a nonprofit which refurbishes old computers and gives them to kids in poverty who are failing academically because of their lack of access to a computer at home.

 

I need some ideas on where I can get some cheapish stuff for these computers.

 

Our local electrics recycler is great but has pretty much nothing that you need when you need it. 

 

The scrapyard turns everything they find over to the recycler and ebay of course is overpriced.

 

Ideas?

[WkdPaul]

Check local schools.

 

You'll get old, but complete PC (minus the hard drives). That's where I used to check for cheap of free PCs.

[Velcade]

10 minutes ago, Stormfront Tech said:

kids in poverty who are failing academically because of their lack of access to a computer at home

How do you prove their poor classroom performance is directly caused by their lack of a home PC?

 

 

Check craigslist.  Some times you can get lucky and datacenters are selling or giving away old equipment.

[Stormfront Tech]

We have a number of ways however because of our districts online HW policy it's a easy time in.

[Zmax]

Hi

 

Make a web site for local donation.  Drop stuff location or if you are willing to go get the parts. 

 

You can post in local newspaper with direction to web site. 

 

Call local radio stations to advertised the web site. PR department

 

This would make a great human story for local TV. Also PR

 

 

Make sure to tell every one what you are doing with the parts. 

 

 

[SenKa]

I actually run a similar business.

 

The best thing ive done is network through my community through apps such as nextdoor and facebook. You would be utterly shocked the kinds of things people literally throw away even if they dont know it's going to a good cause. 1 or 2 year old HP laptops that need incredibly minor repairs, full desktops, iPhones, the works. I live in a somewhat impoverished area as well.

[Roswell]

Cruise local industrial parks (those nondescript areas off the road with a ton of random office buildings) every so often. The ones around me routinely have a ton of stuff sitting outside for recycling.

 

Another idea is to contact your local electronics recycling events and see if they'll work with you. Most counties have them ever 6 months or so.

[Stormfront Tech]

Thanks a ton guys!

 

You would be shocked by how many of those ideas worked well especially the craigslist one,

 

It's incredible how many people wanted to donate once I talked to them.

[WereCatf]

21 hours ago, Stormfront Tech said:

So I run a nonprofit which refurbishes old computers and gives them to kids in poverty who are failing academically because of their lack of access to a computer at home

Oo, I like that!

[harryk]

Ditto on the grass roots outreach; so many people have old computers sitting around gathering dust. I'd also recommend looking for surplus auctions run by school districts, universities, businesses, and government where you can pickup pallets of old towers. Good luck, this sounds like a fun and worthwhile effort!

[Bombastinator]

Open a freegeek franchise.  Become a computer recycler.

 

talk to the local donation charities like the Salvation Army and goodwill

[GenericFanboy]

Schools sometimes do an upgrade in pc's and sometimes just throw away their pc's. Hit up some schools and maybe you'll find something

[Kisai]

On 1/27/2020 at 12:03 PM, Stormfront Tech said:

Hi folks,

 

So I run a nonprofit which refurbishes old computers and gives them to kids in poverty who are failing academically because of their lack of access to a computer at home.

 

I need some ideas on where I can get some cheapish stuff for these computers.

 

Our local electrics recycler is great but has pretty much nothing that you need when you need it. 

 

The scrapyard turns everything they find over to the recycler and ebay of course is overpriced.

 

Ideas?

Ask local businesses (eg engineering and lawyers offices) if they could possibly donate any electronics minus the hard drives. Like I kid you not, the office I do work for sent like 40 laptops to the electronics recycling last year and most of that stuff was serviceable (5-8 year old equipment.) The office I work for has some agreement with a recycler, but it's probably not an unreasonable thing to ask since the recycler likely just takes the equipment and either resells it (ebay) or sends it somewhere to be broken down. Though given how the equipment wasn't carefully placed in the bins, I'm thinking towards the latter.

 

If you're after servers, I know there's a lot of old hardware gathering dust in IT room closets because it's too expensive to pay someone to remove them, so they just stay in the rack until the business moves or shuts down and then it ends up at an auction somewhere. Unless they have a full-time IT person on hand, many businesses don't even know they have old stuff in a closet. Heck the office I do work at has an entire second server room that I didn't even look for months until I chased down a UPS problem. It has lots of old stuff just sitting in racks not plugged into anything.

 

Other not-unreasonable places include just going to repair shops and asking if they have stuff that they just want to get rid of at no cost. Every place I've ever done even a small amount of work at, has desktops or laptops that have been long forgotten about. When I did some work at FutureShop, their IT room had this one lonely eMachine Athlon 700k on a shelf, that had been there forever (It's a machine that would have been retired more than 4 years ago at that point.)

 

What you really want, are secondhand desktops if possible. Even if you can get servicable laptops, the batteries and hard drives are usually worn to the point where they may no longer work, and due to changes between PATA and SATA, and SATA and NVMe, you won't find SATA drives in most good laptops after 2015, and most laptop drives go bad, and batteries go bad after 2.5 years. A desktop however you can still use desktop SATA drives in probably for a while longer. 

 

If you can get ahold of engineering desktops or laptops, those are comparable to low-end gaming laptops. As mentioned the office I do work at was getting rid of machines that I would have said is still servicable, just put a SATA SSD in and you could get another 3 years out of them, except for the engineering laptops which would fall over if AutoCAD 2018 or later was installed. You only get about 2 years out of CAD laptop if you have have to upgrade AutoCAD.