Where do you get your stuff...

Ok ladies and germs,

Where do you get your excess in parts? I'm not talking about the new SLI vid card, or your 500GB drives. I want to know where those extra drive cages, panels, cases, power supplies and the like come from.

I'll start off.

In the network at home, I've put some nifty old toys to work, one piece in particular, my MBR-7 (7 CD Changer) came from a high school re-fit. I ended up working at my old high school, during this re-fit and a lot of stuff was slated to go to the trash. I ended up with nt only the changer, but their first CD burner (A phillips, the size of a desktop case), 7 AT cases, 5 ATX cases, and loads of other goodies.

After that job ended, I hooked up with a small firm that did training. The president loved t buy new equipment and was very wasteful. I always asked, "What d you want me to do with the old stuff." His response was always, "Junk it." These 'junk' machines were PIII - Celeron 400's and we upgraded to PIII - 933's. Silly, no?

Currently, I work for a place that finds it cheaper to junk older machines than to fix them. If it's out of warranty, and the hard drive goes, we junk it.

Additionally, as of late, I've been posting to places like Craigslist and Freecycle

When I'm done with the machines, breaking them down, I take what I need or want and recycle the rest (plastic bezels in one bin, metal in another.)

Anyone else have any neat stories, or ideas where people in their lcal area can obtain free, ld computer junk?

craigslist, eBay and I try to shop locally for small or inexpensive parts like fans, wires, cables e.t.c. But for more expensive parts that I want to be able to return if I have a problem I stick with online retailers

mom & pop computer stores. (Cage Rack for 20.oo)

Companies going out of Bussiness. (Dot Com IT Bonus)

Old re-placed machines.

Most companies end of life hardware that is over 3 years old. Sometimes even less.

Where I work .. once they run out of replacement parts .. dumpster it goes. well that is once Netops gets up the energy to actually trash it. At least they pull the stuff from the racks quickly. Big stuff like our old SANs go back to EMC as trade for new hardware. I would love to take home the 20+ TB worth of storage we recently pulled out of the server room ... not that I would want to pay the power bill to run it all.

I normally have enough of my own outdated hardware/cases/whatever at home to take work's junk.

The college I'm attending has a surplus auction once a month to get rid of all their old stuff. Now keep in mind, since it is an educational institution, a lot of it is 5+ years old, but there's the occasional good deal.

I don't pay for excess. Nor should anyone else here.

That'd be fine in theory, but when you need a monitor for $20...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darth Baby

That'd be fine in theory, but when you need a monitor for $20...

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Just remimber ... you get what you pay for...

I usually get things from people whose machines I upgrade. The deal is they pay for the hardware, they pay me a small labor fee, and I keep their old junk.

Also lately I've been getting stuff from work. Plenty of old monitors and cases on their way to the trash bin. I think I have like 6 monitors here that I got from work...sadly the one that I wanted to keep working died :( 1 of the 2 21" panasonics I got from there...was a nice monitor, for free.