best cheap/free scores 1.1

[moola]

I never find anything interteesting, but mum found a brand new logitech wireless usb mouse for me in a free pile ... package had never even been opened :-)

[crtfool]

My best find was a 42" Sony HD Rear Projection ATSC Digital LCD TV that only needed a new lamp and the power cord replaced because it was cut off. It works perfectly and does not have the dreaded Light Engine failure that almost all of Sony's RP LCD sets have.

[Digital Technophile]

Wow, this thread is better than the New Members - please post your introductions here thread! I've just spent god knows how long reading this thread from the beginning and I feel like I'm no longer alone on this crazy little planet!
Yes, sad but true, I am a hopeless trashpicker/packrat extraordinare. On the trashpicking end I'm somewhat reformed since having left the golden dumpsters of dear old Philadelphia town (amazing shit on the sidewalks, too), but I never miss an opportunity to dive; just not a lot to dive into around here. Now the crap comes straight to me with little to no effort it seems. Latest acquisition is a <2 year old Dell Inspiron 1575 a friend asked me to fix the wobbly power cooter on (DC input). It turns out the sub-board had a screw loose, not to mention all the rest of the screws on the board being either loose or missing (I think only the one's holding the MoBo to the case were the only ones still tight). Needless to say that was the least of its problems. Its owner replaced the AC PS with a cheap non-Dell POS I believe boogered the receptacle further. To even power it on, you had to hold it in a certain way on the bottom. Carefully disassembled the comp, found that the sub-board housing the receptacle has a loose screw (I figured from his description the solder had become undone), cleaned out dust/cat hair/and crap from the cooler fins/board, carefully reassembled, and voila! nothing. Shiite it's his granddaughter's what am I going to tell him?! Called him up and told him what happened to which he replied, "I had a feeling it was toast, but I figured if you could't fix it, I was going to get rid of it anyway. How much do I owe you?" Knowing full well I could charge him to break something already broken, I made a deal to keep it in lieu of payment. From the deal I got: 2 sticks of RAM totalling 2GB, Intel Celeron M 550 (SLA2E) cpu, a WD scorpio 120GB HDD, mini-pcie wireless card, Li-ion battery, A- condition keyboard, and dvd-writer. Useful parts: LCD screen, WiFi antennae, 3G antennae, some surface mount mini-pcie connectors, express card/54 sub-board, and a bunch of: surface mount leds, a 5R8 40 amp 40-150 volt 50 nsec rectifier, among other scrounge-ables/connectors.

Beyond that, some of the things I'm most proud of finding: 36" of Western Electric Nassau "Pedigreed" Stearine-core AT-7424 solder (apparently very rare and expensive stuff), I'm especially proud of the nice collection of vacuum tubes packed neatly into a RCA service toolbox and put out on the curb (hey you never know when a nuclear holocaust might strike ). Also working one summer many moons ago as a residential mover proved to be another avenue of junque collecting: A beautiful antique Free (before Singer, there was Free) sewing machine replete with ALL of the original attachments and manual, an old wind up mantle clock that had a couple of 2 dollar bills tucked away inside, and a ~1999 Dell Optiplex GX1 my official first computer that served me way up until 2005 when I acquired my current computer an Hp a1253w (bought that one). My Ex had a penchant for three legged chairs and table left out on the curb, dressers missing drawers (you know, the reason they were on the curb in the first place). My one and only golden rule for trash picking is that the object in question has to be functional if not repairable. Other than that, scratches, dents, and other flaws don't deter me from taking an otherwise good piece of whatever home. I could probably sit here and think of other un-useful crap that seemed like a good idea at the time, only to end up on my curb instead.

Anyhow, I've enjoyed reading this amusing thread very much; cheers to the OP
And if I may bestow an award for social engineer of the 1st decade....drum rolll...

PCBONEZ, I hereby award you an honorary Doctorate of BS degree, having demonstrated great understanding of the foibles of earthlings, able to manipulate their apparent lack of intelligence, second only IMHO to the late great Grouch Marx!

[starmaxpc]

Another back alley find. Seanix Computer tower Celeron 2.2ghz 40gb hd 512 memory cdrw+ cleaned it up a bit, was raining out, kept booting to safe mode so i wiped the drive clean and formatted with windows xp home and now running smooth. shake my head and laugh when find s**t like this.

[MBLeo]

I found a Compac CQ62 laptop with a big fist print in the screen...The next day I found a magnavox 20" hdtv...Changed the fuse in the tv and hooked it up to the laptop...Works for me...

[Evil Lurker]

Got a Golden Eagle police issued K band radar gun, antenna, and remote control couple weeks ago. Unit is functional now that I repaired the antenna cord. Opened it up and my god at the tantalum capacitors and top of the line nichicon caps... now I see how these things can live for years on hot dashboards.

Lets see... coupla leaf blowers... needed new fuel lines and carb rebuild. Alpine ozone generator, needed cleaning and screwing one of the control knobs. Today I got a couple ballasts for 8ft commercial lights, some junction boxes, an exhaust fan, big ass 16V wall wart, and a schlumberger gas pumpy controllery thingabox. Says it has a 25 amp 12v SMPS in it. Will probably take the board out and use the PSU and box to put one of my projects in.

[kc8adu]

using a 1948 emerson fan that a friend picked out of a pile.cleaned and oiled it.
this guy finds some nice stuff.he drives an automated garbage truck for the city.too many pc's and tv/monitors to count.

[mcdaydavies]

My best dumpster find was when my school threw out 4 computers, 3 where pentium 4's, all with 512mb ram. 1 was amd 64 with 1 gb ram. all 4 worked flawlessly. Hard drives were took out of course. 1 trashpicked dell dimension 3000 which also worked flawlessly with private data on it. Also found 1 dell 17 inch monitor which works fine.

[momaka]

Nice finds mcdaydavies!
The public schools around here store their dead computer and then ship them off for recycling at once, so nothing in the dumpsters.
----
I just went out today with my bike to check the dumpsters of the local shops in our town - and the result: nothing found .
Oh well...
----
By the way, yesterday I was at my friends house - he lives in the same condo complex where I usually check the dumpsters and where I got that roach-putter a few months ago.

Well, at one point I went to use his bathroom. Turn on the lights and saw a few roaches scattering on the floor and on the sink. Also noticed that the bathroom had the same foul smell as the computer I got.

When I got out, I told him about the roaches, but he said he couldn't do anything about them because they were coming from the neighbours. The bathroom does have a door that gives access to the bathroom of the other apartment, so I do believe him.

Then again, these condos are just too old and not so well maintained, so that explains a lot too. There are also some low-income families that live there, so I think you get the full picture.

I guess I got lucky because the other 3 computers I got from that place were fine. Sure they were dirty and dusty, but no roaches!

[momaka]

Kind of epic thread revival (sorry, I just felt this thread was more appropriate for the stuff I got recently since they weren't dumpster finds).
Anyways...

A few weeks ago, the whole block around here had a yard sale. Here's what I found for $1:
a Compaq M-S34 mouse (picture of my mouse below). Most of you are probably thinking, "yeah, that's just a crappy old ball mouse", and it might as well be, but I really like it. I actually already have one like that. It's a very solid mouse, and moves quite accurately too. Easily beats cheap optical mice. I used (and still use) mine for a lot of gaming sessions and Photoshop work.
These are actually made by Logitech, but they were often used by big PC manufacturers back in the day such as HP/Compaq and Dell (the Dell model is SAW34 I think). I'm glad I now have a second one.
The only shortcomings of this mouse is that it lacks a scroll wheel, but that's not something I can't live without.

The other thing I got this week was a Dell D1626HT 21" CRT monitor from CL. It's an old beast (made in 1998), but it works great. Big thanks to Bob from VA for that one.

[PCBONEZ]

Xeon 5138 CPU for $6 [including shipping].
2.13 GHz, Dual Core, 4M Cache, 1066 MHz FSB, 35 watts.
.

[delaware74b]

I scored 3 network capable laser printers in the dump cart of an office building. All work but have easy fixes. (2) Brother HL2070-N's (15K and 23K lifetime pages) and (1) HP LaserJet P1505 (unknown lifetime page count). Both Brothers have drum indicator flashing (need replacement) but have good image quality. The HP has low toner indicator but says it has 300 pages to empty.

[Colt45ws]

Bought a Dell PowerEdge SC1430 server off a friend for $16.
Then I spent more than I should have upgrading it, but Oh well.
Had a single Xeon 5050; Netburst 3.0Ghz, Dual Core, 2x2MB L2, 667FSB, 95W TDP
Bought another Heatsink for $40
Bought a pair of Xeon 5148; Core 2.33 GHz, Dual Core, 4M L2, 1333 MHz FSB, 40W TDP: $20
Had 4x1GB 2Rx8 PC4200F DDR2-533 FBDIMM
Bought a set pf 4x1GB 4x1GB 2Rx8 PC5300F DDR2-667 FBDIMM: $55
Had to get a pair of Dell Hotswap HDD thingys since it had none. $12
Also added a MSI nVidia 8500GT 512MB and a Creative SB Live! 24-bit both of which I already had.
Has a pair of the most unreliable drives in the world; Seagate 7200.11 500GB because that is all I had laying around. Running them in RAID 0 via BTRFS multidevice. (Hey, its a toy, and it boots wicked fast.)
Have Gentoo Linux on it. Have not completely finished setting up X, atm. :P

[momaka]

Got another free computer from the dumpster. Same apartament complex again. This time it's not very dirty and it doesn't have roaches. The computer is also a bit newer.

Getting it was a bit of a story (more about it here).
...
So far, this is what I gathered about it:
It has a Pentium 4, 1.7 GHz, 256kb L2, 1.75v processor with stock Intel HSF. Motherboard is some purple ESC with 2x DDR, 2x SDRAM, and AGP (has OST caps on VRM). Case is a beige/off-white generic stuff with CyberLink PSU (or maybe it was TurboLink, but that's the same thing). The PSU is absolutely guttless - probably why the computer was thrown out. The secondary caps are just one size bigger than the standard 5x11 mm caps. No PI inductors whatsoever.
Overall not much, but the addon cards were okay: it had a SoundBlaster Live PCI audio card, LinkSys 802.11G wireless PCI, some RAID card (external SATA??), and a Radeon 7000 AGP grahpics with 32 MB. For optical drives, it has a Plextor DVD-RW and another DVD ROM.
And that's pretty much it. Haven't tested anything because it's still wet. Amazingly, the battery is still good, even though it was wet. I hope the BIOS didn't get screwed because of that, though.

Does anyone know if the P4 1.7 GHz is better than a 1.4 GHz AMD Duron Applbred? According to cpuworld, it's definitely more power hungry (80W vs 57W). Makes sense - 0.18 micron at 1.75v vs 0.13 micron at 1.5v.
If it is, though, then this will be an upgrade for me .

[kc8adu]

last night i went to a friends to fix the ac in their cars.
on the way home i spotted a hp box with something sticking out and a flatscreen sitting on the curb.
well the box held a quadcore alienware desktop and the flatscreen is an acer 24".
replaced the caps early this morning and its fine now.
the desktop had a dork squad folder taped to it that stated the mobo was bad and nla.
i did my standard tests and found the +5stby at 3v and fluctuating.its an antec basiq 500.
antec anything is suspect at best till proven anyway.
recapped it(full of crapxons) and the thing now boots complete with the previous owners porn and malware.
oh well it has the vista virus anyway.time to reload...

[JuliaS]

I recall doing a stupid thing once - throwing out an SGI Octane workstation that I had no use for, then going on e-bay out of curiosity to see if anyone still traded those things. They went for $4000-8000 at the time. God damnit!

Made up for the loss over the years though, having found numerous LCD's with simple capacitor issues. Found a Sony Broadcast display just the other day. Found an old all-in-one compaq workstation with a green phosphorous CRT. The display circuit was separate from everything else with its own power supply operating on 5V. It's like one of those displays from the movie Brazil!

Found way too many gadgets to count. Came across a bag full of cell phones and digital cameras! Some people replace their gadgets whenever a new one comes out. So whoever threw it out- thanks!

[momaka]

Originally Posted by kc8adu

well the box held a quadcore alienware desktop and the flatscreen is an acer 24".

Rich neighbourhood or WTF?!?!

[kc8adu]

oakwood,oh area.
i have found nice stuff in the ghetto too.
the big mistake is for anyone to take things to bestbuy dorksquad.they cant troubleshoot their way out of a wet paper bag!
i see this all the time.

[lti]

It sounds like it had been "repaired" once before since a high-end gaming computer wouldn't come from the factory with an Antec Basiq power supply.

The "Dork Squad" probably didn't even open the case. If they did, they probably thought the LED on the board was a diagnostic light. I still hear people saying that the LED only lights up at full brightness if every component on the board is good.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by kc8adu

last night i went to a friends to fix the ac in their cars.
on the way home i spotted a hp box with something sticking out and a flatscreen sitting on the curb.
well the box held a quadcore alienware desktop and the flatscreen is an acer 24".
replaced the caps early this morning and its fine now.
the desktop had a dork squad folder taped to it that stated the mobo was bad and nla.
i did my standard tests and found the +5stby at 3v and fluctuating.its an antec basiq 500.
antec anything is suspect at best till proven anyway.
recapped it(full of crapxons) and the thing now boots complete with the previous owners porn and malware.
oh well it has the vista virus anyway.time to reload...

lucky!

my only stuff on that caliber i got free was not from dumpsters but people who had no use for stuff and told me to take it and find a use for it.

One tiem a guy gave me a whole vanload of stuff (there is a thread about it somewhere). incuded:

1 box of audio/ video cables and adapters (some fancy with gold connectors)
1 box of old computer cables (40pin IDE, floppy, serial) and old cards (modems and 10 mb network cards). also had an old cable modem, a wired router (metal clad netgear, now a switch), and a 10m switch with coaxial
1 dell dimension 2400 with dell edition SB LIVE! 5.1 channel audio card. virused up with an 80gb WD drive. now used by family friend who needed a computer.
1 dell dimension 300, bad MB and hdd. had a toshiba dvd -rw drive and a prescott p4. parted out, cpu and copper cooler went to my mom's dimesion 4600, dvd drive went to an emac.
3 old computers. one had an abit bp6 (moron here broke it before he could recap it), one had an abit bh6, one had an MSI s462 board (didn't survive one of my early recaps). all had junk PSU's
3 CRT monitors. a 20" samsung (slight burn in), an envision 17" (actually a nice unit), and an ancient 800x600 provision.
1 new in box flimsy side-saddle case. too thin to save. junked out. psu was a joke too.
and for the GOOD stuff:

1 asus k8n32-sli with a 3800+ athlon64x2. cpu had a bent pin. also had 4x corsair 512mb ddr 3200. sadly, yours truly messed it up and after fixing that it randomly died.

1 athlon64 x2 5600+ socket AM2 cpu. lost it, if i ever find it again it will be sold.

4 brand new in packaging ddr 3200 1gb modules. currently used in a rig that only sees 3.5gb of it... waiting for a better use.

not bad for one trip?