What Was The Most Expensive Thing Your IT Threw Out "Because It Was Old"?

[Underfire17]

I thought I'd ask this, since my old job was getting rid of a ton of servers, desktops, hard drives, and switches that were perfectly fine. Luckily I was able to a lot of it since my boss literally couldn't care less where they went so my coworker and I were able to nab some of the stuff we wanted. I just want to know what kind of stuff people have thrown out that works completely fine once either fixed up a little, or just powered on.

 

if any one is interested here is a list of stuff a was able to get:

• A few network switches
• Around 15 or so desktops (I sold a ton of them for gas and bills)
• 3 Servers
• 8 or so iPods (which I traded in for an Xbox)
• 7 or so laptops (I mainly sold them, I kept a few old ones for my collection, and I use a couple for daily drivers)
• 30 Raspberry pis (Half of them need to be fixed tho)
• 2 UPS stations

[porina]

Before I left work earlier this year I did pick up some tech stuff from the recycling pile (with the approval of the head of IT) that would otherwise be scrap now:

Haswell era desktops - this was annoying since the older lab PCs I had were Sandy Bridge era

Older desktops - wanted to try retro-computing systems

Piles of Thinkpads - I didn't bother checking through which ones worked or not since they were in poor physical condition and other problems, but I extracted a ton of 4GB DDR3 SODIMMS to upgrade some older home laptops, and 128GB SSDs from them. It was good to see they enabled encryption on these. I know they didn't on their Dells.

1080p monitors - nothing special, just surplus to requirements after everyone got upgraded to ultrawides

[Underfire17]

Just now, porina said:

Before I left work earlier this year I did pick up some tech stuff from the recycling pile (with the approval of the head of IT) that would otherwise be scrap now:

Haswell era desktops - this was annoying since the older lab PCs I had were Sandy Bridge era

Older desktops - wanted to try retro-computing systems

Piles of Thinkpads - I didn't bother checking through which ones worked or not since they were in poor physical condition and other problems, but I extracted a ton of 4GB DDR3 SODIMMS to upgrade some older home laptops, and 128GB SSDs from them. It was good to see they enabled encryption on these. I know they didn't on their Dells.

1080p monitors - nothing special, just surplus to requirements after everyone got upgraded to ultrawides

Nice! From my experience with Thinkpads, it's been pretty hit or miss with them. My 2012 one was a powerful little laptop even though it only had an i5 (or maybe an i3, I forgot), but my IT laptop with an i7 took forever to start windows or simply turn on. You probably dodged a bullet with those things.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Underfire17 said:

Nice! From my experience with Thinkpads, it's been pretty hit or miss with them. My 2012 one was a powerful little laptop even though it only had an i5 (or maybe an i3, I forgot), but my IT laptop with an i7 took forever to start windows or simply turn on. You probably dodged a bullet with those things.

Of those Thinkpad SSDs I extracted, some of them are really slow. I think they're very old generation being SATA 3G. Combined with a modern OS like Windows, it's going to be slower than you'd otherwise think it could be. Especially if it has a typical corporate software load on it too. I didn't check the age of them, other than knowing they were DDR3, and some had HDs, some had SSDs, that should give an idea.

[Man]

Not too long ago my office scrapped its old X58 machines (Dell T3500, HP Z400) which had been in use as 24/7 servers since 8+ years. The I.T department salvaged the HDDs, optical drivers and RAM modules and scrapped the rest.

 

Luckily, I managed to get hold of a T3500 in pretty decent shape with a quad-core for peanuts ($50). Later, I threw in 3 x 2GB ECC RAMs (6 gigs triple-channel) and an HD7790 (otherwise known as an R7 260X) which I'd bought previously for $20. Pretty decent gaming setup, for the price! 

 

I honestly wasn't expecting much from that old 2.8GHz quad-core but the GPU is actually bottlenecking the CPU! I think it can keep-up with the likes of 1050Ti + I can always drop a cheap hexa-core in there somewhere down the line. 

[Moonzy]

Edit: Oops wrong thread

 

But since I'm here, old ram sticks

They're like $100 for 256mb or smth, at time of purchase

[Underfire17]

7 hours ago, Man said:

Not too long ago my office scrapped its old X58 machines (Dell T3500, HP Z400) which had been in use as 24/7 servers since 8+ years. The I.T department salvaged the HDDs, optical drivers and RAM modules and scrapped the rest.

 

Luckily, I managed to get hold of a T3500 in pretty decent shape with a quad-core for peanuts ($50). Later, I threw in 3 x 2GB ECC RAMs (6 gigs triple-channel) and an HD7790 (otherwise known as an R7 260X) which I'd bought previously for $20. Pretty decent gaming setup, for the price! 

 

I honestly wasn't expecting much from that old 2.8GHz quad-core but the GPU is actually bottlenecking the CPU! I think it can keep-up with the likes of 1050Ti + I can always drop a cheap hexa-core in there somewhere down the line. 

I actually think I got a T3500, I use it as a file server mostly. I got that bad boy to work with 6 TB of Enterprise HDDs, and 8 gigs of RAM.

[TargetDron3]

I've pulled 100+ SAS drives from a Netapp array and wheeled the whole server chassis with disk shelfs and cisco switches to an ewaste recycling pick up event.  That was easily over $100,000 in equipment when it was new.  

It was no longer supported by Netapp, so it was worthless to us at that point.  

[whm1974]

I'm thinking of 1950's and 1960's Era Mainframes and Minicomputers...

[Man]

5 hours ago, comander said:

I recall seeing a very nice type writer in the e-waste bin. It had buckling key switches. 

Emphasis on type writer. High cost, virtually no utility though. 

We'd entire warehouses full of discarded typewriters in all shapes and sizes when our state departments went digital back in late 90s. 

 

Bureaucracy!

 

Most of them were auctioned off for peanuts, quite literally. No idea what happened to the rest of them!

[atxcyclist]

I am my company's IT (there are two people total there). The most expensive thing we (I) ever threw out was a Core2Duo Dell Vostro we were using as a file and backup server, and it was in service until about 6 months ago. We don't let anything go until it's absolutely worthless, and that Dell is probably worth about $20. Also, when I say we got rid of it, it's still sitting in a closet because I'm a tech hoarder, haha.

[Underfire17]

On 12/4/2020 at 7:43 PM, zhnu said:

People.

Hol up wat. I don't think it's very legal.

[whm1974]

13 minutes ago, Underfire17 said:

Hol up wat. I don't think it's very legal.

And People are not things.... Organism aren't Things either, however being alive in and of itself doesn't create Personhood.