What do you do with retired rigs?
28 Dec 2014 8:34:32 UTC
Topic 197893
(moderation:
I always wonder to know what people over the world do with old rigs not suitable for running Einstein etc.
Are there any ways to use them again? How can one utilize them? Your thoughts, opinions and experiences are highly appreciated :)
I have a huge mass of old platforms like P3s (and Celerons), Athlons and Durons that I rare use in accounting in small shops. But there are also P4s that are not useful due to laggy unoptimized flash player and java used in modern internet pages. And I don't know what to do with them. After ruble devaluation it become easier to buy a 2-4 years old PC than to buy a new one on the modern platform. So I used already all my 2-core Pentium D, Pentium 4, Pentium E etc. But what to do with others, I don't know yet. Please advise.
What do you do with retired rigs?
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I have no idea if they would even take them but in the US we have Welfare Agencies that place foster kids in homes, I used to donate pc's to the local agency that then gave them to the kids. That way the new parents didn't have to buy the kid a pc, AND the kid had something that was THEIRS to keep if they left that home. I would load the pc's up with Linux, a dvd player, burner if I had one, some free office clone software and make sure the internet worked too. This let the kid at least have a pc to do their homework without having to go somewhere else, or even share the new families pc. I only quit doing it because I moved to a new area and haven't talked to the agency in my area.
RE: I always wonder to know
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I keep my old PCs for history's sake. They all work; or did, as I had put them into storage. The oldest PC I have in storage is my old 486 DX4-100; and next oldest is a Pentium 233. Then there are my three AMD K6-2, 350's, and an original Athlon 1 GHz PC. I may combine this museum with a friend's museum.
TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join SETI Refugees
RE: RE: I always wonder
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I strip the usable parts out of mine and then store the parts separately in different parts trays, boxes, shelves etc. I do try to keep the motherboards and cpu's together though. The cases I reuse for new pc's, replacing the power supply, motherboard, hard drive etc so I can go from a box having a dual core cpu in it, to a box having a 6 core cpu in it with Windows7 or even the beta of 10. As they say about 'chicken mcnuggets' and 'frankenstein', 'parts is parts'.
RE: I always wonder to know
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If you don't mind branching out a bit, there are still some other BOINC projects that will work with those old non-SSE2 processors. SZTAKI-at-Home and Milky Way-at-Home are two that I sometimes run. And, any P4 machines that aren't fast enough to run Flash and Java can still be used for Einstein, if you don't mind running up the electric bill to run machines solely for that purpose.
RE: RE: I always wonder
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My wife says no more machines, so I have been replacing my older ones with newer AMD 6 core ones that have pci-e slots in them. That lets me then buy gpu's to crunch with and use the cpu cores for those projects that can't use the gpu's. I am currently running Malaria, Poem, Pogs and WCG on my cpu cores, while I run MilkyWay, Einstein, Collatz and Bitcoin Utopia on my gpu's.
I recover what is useful then
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I recover what is useful then leave what is not wanted by the front gate. It is usually gone by morning.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
I run them until they quit
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I run them until they quit running and can't be repaired.
I save parts but they are usually so old they aren't worth saving (like DDR2 1GB ram) and old HD's I decided to use as rebar on my concrete projects.
The rest goes to the local Goodwill store and they haul it to some place that recycles everything.
I put them on the recycling
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I put them on the recycling pile out the front when there is a hard rubbish collection pickup round due in town. Mind you all the 'curb cruisers' turn up to scavenge the pickings long before the 'official' recycling crews turn up on the day. So who knows where they end up.
Interestingly I was hiring a light truck yesterday and the Budget depot had a dot matrix printer clacking/zipping out triplicate fan fold documents for the hiring contract etc. I got chatting to the guy about it, not having seen one for a while. He said they used it because :
- it works perfectly for purpose.
- you only have to keep an eye on the ribbon to change.
- paper feed is easy, up through a slot in the counter into the printer underside.
- it has never broken down after 12 years.
- you don't have to re-supply various inks.
- no driver updates et al.
- maybe you might blow the paper lint out every few months.
He also showed me a large office stapler made by Janome some 20+ years ago. It was a foot long solid beast ( possibly forged by a dwarf in an underground cavern in Switzerland ), but hey it wasn't going to crack any time soon. Nothing wrong with 'overdesign', cheaper in the long term anyway.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: I run them until they
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I sold @200 pieces of 1gb DDR2 ram at a Computer Show to The Memory Guy and he paid me almost 10 bucks per stick for it, this was a few years ago, but hey money is money and money like that buys new parts!