Old computers

[OldPC]

Hi everyone.

 

 

I'm new here so please cut me some slack if I am doing this incorrectly.

 

When I was in post-secondary (please don't bother asking which school..lol) in Ontario Canada for Computer Science like 20 years ago I had a very old professor who was retiring that said to us in the first year "Whoever does well in my classes or on tests will get a free classic computer, but you would have to fix it first to make it work". So that encouraged me to do well, and got a bunch of these old pc's (some with printers) in my time in that program. What didn't work in them was the lack of a hard drive, or working power supply, ram, lack of ink cartridge, or the belt was broken on the printer. I never really completed/fixed them and just kept them like trophies as I was on a student's budget. The computers were all owned by the prof from his home, so these are legit second-hand from the first owner who was the original builder/purchaser.

 

So when 2020 kicked off I went back to my parents place to take care of my folks during the pandemic since work laid me off in another part of the country, and then stuck to find replacement work like most in Canada. In my time here as the pandemic subsided I was going through my old things and came across my old PC's. There's old SVGA crt's, printers, mice, keyboards, PC's (without hard drives), old Apple PC's (some without ram).

 

I really wouldn't mind everyone giving me a heads up on what the actual educated cost of this stuff is, and perhaps sell it to people like yourselves who would appreciate it rather than sell it on ebay to people who would probably scrap it for minerals.

 

What are the communities thoughts before I go a step further? This isn't about up-votes or anything like that. Lastly, I really wouldn't mind just selling the whole lot. Maybe I'll have a change of heart after I post this and just delete the topic. Who knows. By the way it's rather hard pressing 'Submit Topic'.

 

 

Thank you for your time.

[BondiBlue]

The value completely depends on the specifics of what you actually have. Depending on the machines you're talking about the value could be anywhere from $0 to "insert random value here".

[SpookyCitrus]

Old computer hardware isn't going to be worth much unless it's something historic or rare. Most of the time it's either keep it yourself or recycle it. If you want to list models we may be able to help you price it out but a majority of the time it's going to not be worth much if anything at all.

[Guest]

Look to see if in your area is a place like 'PC's for People', that will accept most old devices and either give them working to low-income individuals or use the parts in repairs. They'll take mice, cables, monitors, etc. If its computer related they'd be interested in what you have.

[manikyath]

the value of old computers varies between 'cant even give it away for free' and 'literally priceless'.

 

a good rule of thumb to start with is 'anything newer than the turn of the century has no collectible value'.

 

old 'name brand' (apple, atari, commodore, etc..) stuff tends to hold at least some value, but the moment you get into stuff that's AT standard x86 it's basicly 'a tenner' sort of price range unless it's a particularly desirable piece of tech.

 

mice and keyboards... if they 'belong' to some notable system (again.. the 'name brand' stuff..) they can be worth something, if they're just generic PS/2 stuff it's probably E-waste.

 

old printers... again.. if they're some noteworthy or particularly unique device there may be some value.. otherwise you may as well strip them down for the stepper motors.

 

CRT's are tricky.. you might have a fairly worthless monitor, that just so happens to be the same tube as some AIO system that has a horrid shortage of working tubes for collectors. but quite often if the device itself isnt of some collectable value (again... 'name brand' stuff that belongs to a specific set people have interest for) it's probably E-waste.

 

if it's a lot of stuff, it might be worth contacting some local collectors, google is your friend. chances are they'll absolutely only want to take 'the good stuff' though. last time i contacted a collector his contact details had a big red banner specifying what sort of stuff to NOT contact him for.

[aisle9]

Define "old". If cleaned up properly, updated and marketed correctly, a Core 2 Duo or Quad system can still bring in $50-75, more if you have peripherals and a monitor to slap together with it. I could turn an Optiplex 755 tower with LCD monitor around for $100 right now, easily. Anything Pentium III or earlier will tend to have some collectible value, even if it doesn't work. The CPU is the attraction there, and the CPU rarely dies. It's everything around it that does.

 

The stuff you'll struggle to give away, let alone sell, is the Pentium 4/Pentium D/Celeron D/Athlon 64/Athlon X2 stuff from the early 2000s. It's too new to have collectors value, but too old for even the most basic of tasks today regardless of whether you try to force them to boot into Windows 10 or saddle them with Slacko Puppy Linux. Your best bet with those is to find someone looking for a classic Windows XP retro gamer, but even those guys are typically looking at Optiplexes or HP Elites with a Core 2. The only time I made a ton of money on a P4 system was when it was a gaming P4 rig inside of a very highly desirable and rare Thermaltake case, with a very rare and desirable Thermaltake cooler on it and a very rare motherboard that supported both AGP and PCIe. This was back around 2018, and I think I got something like $200 for the whole thing.

 

So as others have said, it really just depends on what you have. Could be worth $100+ if there's any demand for it, could be worthless and impossible to even give away if it's boring, semi-old stuff that has no useful value or collectible value.

[thrasher_565]

the suspense of not knowing what parts...

[E-waste]

On 11/30/2022 at 4:24 AM, aisle9 said:

Athlon X2 stuff from the early 2000s. It's too new to have collectors value, but too old for even the most basic of tasks today regardless of whether you try to force them to boot into Windows 10 or saddle them with Slacko Puppy Linux.

 

I have such a machine, and once I get the wireless patched and hotspot working (not easy) it will be a fine dns filter / firewall!

 

It only uses about 45 watts at idle and maybe 65-70 when booting.

[tkitch]

3 hours ago, Timpster said:

 

I have such a machine, and once I get the wireless patched and hotspot working (not easy) it will be a fine dns filter / firewall!

 

It only uses about 45 watts at idle and maybe 65-70 when booting.

and an RPi would do that, and a lot more, for a hell of a lot less power and difficulty.  Hell, an RPi Zero W could do that.

[E-waste]

Well, the way I think about it:

 

How much energy / gas / diesel does it take to dig and mine all the needed gold, copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, neodymium, etc etc, and also, what impact does this have on the local communities in the areas where these mining operations are taking place?

 

Also, then, how much more energy does it take to have all that separate materials, all shipped (multiple times, to multiple places) to end up somewhere in Asia, to then be assembled together by people who HATE their job SO MUCH, that the building owners have had to install NETTING (literal nets) on the openings of the buildings for reasons that I won't get into, and then have that packaged up in plastic, and shipped back to the United Kingdom, US, Canada, Brazil wherever, just so you can locally, save 60 watts?

 

How is that saving electricity?  I don't get it.

 

I guess if all new machines are more power efficient, it works out in the end right?  But then, we don't recycle our computers, so then it turns to "garbage" e-waste and then what?  For the time being, I'd like to keep what I have, and stop the increasing demand for more and more technology to be produced, until things improve.

 

Those things being living conditions for the "poor" caused by shitty governments and greed, cheap obsoletable devices because we can't quickly, easily repair or modify the software, because greed, and well I think that covers it, yeah.  Those two major things need to get in order before I desire more technology based equipment.

 

When it inevitably does, I'll get that raspberry Pi, but until then, I'll stick with my older equipment and try to reduce the profits of now Big Tech.  Sad to say that, but it's here now, and it's ruining our planet.

[E-waste]

Once cleaner energy sources catch on more, we will no longer need to throw away / recycle slower machines, because it won't matter how much extra power they use.  Sure it will then take more mineral extraction from the Earth to do so, but at least after that it won't continue to pollute the air.  Things will get better.

[thrasher_565]

12 hours ago, Timpster said:

I guess if all new machines are more power efficient, it works out in the end right?  But then, we don't recycle our computers, so then it turns to "garbage" e-waste

new machines are more power efficient per performace but i argue that computers dont get recycled. even say an x58 today is till plenty of power to do internet of things. thow if cost alot to run eletricty wise. and even thow things use "less power" the cost of power gos up anyway so you save little or non and what you do save go to upgrading anyway. there a name for this but i dont remember. computers still have a huge amount of entertainment then probably anything els.

 

people dont have to buy the newest computer to game... they just do it just because. way cheaper to just upgrade when need to and play older games and build a used cheap pc instead. thow you miss out on games that changes per patch like nms and online play with friends. ied even say older games are better imo... but i no 20 year olds would disagree  i get it if the first game you play is crysis why would you care about anything older...

[LogicalDrm]

Just from that description I'm guessing you have late-90s to early 00s stuff there. CRTs could be of some value to those who collect and play retro games. Arguable better latency plus connections are just right. But rest is pretty much worthless for another 20 years. The stuff which is of some value are 70s and 80s machines, maybe some early 90s stuff. But as soon as IBM clones became more popular, the PC hardware lost its value after aging.