Letting go of old machines etc

[Peter Blanchard]

I tend not to form an emotional attachment to my machines. Currently going through the slow process of sorting obsolete tech to take for recycling and what to keep. Unless you have a lot of space, you need to be brutal.

I can type on almost anything but there are keyboards that really work very well for me. I have an IBM model M. I learned to type on a BBC Micro which had an even better action ihmo. I had an ancient Dell laptop that was also good. I missed it when the graphics chip died. ADB era Mac keyboards also good.

That ancient Dell laptop also a really good matte anti-glare screen.

I don't have any strong opinions on pointing devices. Partly because learned keyboard shortcuts before pointing devices became mainsteam. Mechanical mice were awful in that you had to keep taking the ball and removing human gunk from it and the wheels. Early trackpads were awful.

I imagine some will feel the same?

 

[CyklonDX]

I pretty much keep stuff around, unless i find no longer a use for it - and give up for free to someone who will have some use for it.

I do keep certain things that i consider legendary:
gigabyte workstation dual pentium2/3 motherboard with scsi built-in
a jar of cpu's (from 286 to ryzen 3900x) [i protect pins with plastic inlets - they work]
box of ram (from ancient type, xdr up-to ddr3 lr dimms)
ibm tower with dual intel xeon (gallatin - netburst/pentium4 gen) with scsi backplane
ibm thinkpad t42

I started framing my GPU/Video card collection (i didn't bother removing the core, but i take their heatsink off, and place it below the pcb card)
Plenty of junk - wall of fame in making...

Trident TVGA9000 - my first self bought card, S3 Savage, ATi Rage 128 Maxx All-in-Wonder, ATi 8500, ATi FireGL 9500, ATi 9800, ATi AGP X1950 512MB, ATi AGP HD3850 1G, ATi HD5970, AMD Asus 7970 Matrix, AMD MSI Lightning 290x, Fury-X, Radeon VII, Matrox Parhelia 128M, NV 4400 Ti, NV MX440, NV Palit Sonic 7600GS AGP, NV 285 x2, NV 480, NV 780Ti, 980Ti, NV K80.

lenovo thinkpad t420 - still use this one
Some audio cards like few Sound Blaster cards (there's a nice gold one), and few other that i have no idea what they were, but one was really hard to get - it had some nice 3d sound features back in windows 98.


But as mentioned i started framing what i consider legendary. (but it takes a lot of work, sometimes dish washer.)

 

[Wasmachineman_NL]

I just got rid of a Precision M4700 because I ran out of space and didn't use it. So no, OP.

Machines like my M6500 Covet though... those are ones I will never sell.

 

[JediAcolyte]

I have a MSI laptop with a i7-7700hq (I think??) It was the first laptop I bought myself. I'll never sell. Any ideas what to do with it??

 

[i386]

I kept a toshiba equium 3100 series tower pc from 1999 for almost 12 years because it was our first pc (it feels weird to think that at some point there used to be just one computer in a household...). It had a celeron cpu with 433MHz, 64MB ram (1MB for video ), a 150watt psu and came with windows 95 and 98 keys.
Over the years all different components failed and were replaced, in the end only the chassis, the mainboard and the cpu + glued on heatsink were original.

I got rid of it because it wasn't used for many years, wasn't "original" anymore and took up "precious" space

 

[Samir]

There's certain things like you've mentioned that are timeless--like the Model M. And sentimental systems like the first PC I ever worked on, or the two PCs I built for my parents they used until they passed away (systems still work). I have so many systems and parts that at some point I will need to purge because I will be forced to downsize my life as I grow old and pass away. And then I'll be doing what CyklonDX mentioned--basically try to find nice new homes for everything.

 

[edge]

I am pretty vicious about tossing out recycling old desktops after extracting the storage. The storage hoarding can become and issue: I had a os disk that went from XP >win7>win8>win10 and migrating to 11 was a PITA. I cloned to an NVME to get off spinning rust and then I learned my partition scheme was such that 11 wanted to do a fresh install. Repeat the clone to the NVME, this time first creating the EFI partition and the reserve partition, clone the EFI into the new EFI, clone the system partition to follow the reserved partition, resize it down 500MB to allow for the recovery partition, boot into 10 and get the recovery partition working, then suddenly it would let me upgrade.

Servers are a different issue. I tend to upgrade piecemeal - mb/cpu/ram while keeping storage and case, storage, psu (when necessary)/mb/ram, storage/nic/vid card, rinse and repeat. I am still using 3 coolermaster stacker cases circa 2003/4/5 for my servers. I am about to do another rinse and repeat of mb/cpu/ram - all previous systems were dual cpu, going down to one. PSU's will probably get upgraded as well. What doesn't get used in the new build, goes to staples or best buy for recycling.

I am typing on a Microsoft ergo 4000, my original naturals have long since passed away. I gave away my original IBM-AT in 94 (what a great keyboard it had).

 

[Samir]

What doesn't get used in the new build, goes to staples or best buy for recycling.

You should post those in the freebies thread here so that stuff will have a new home vs being trashed by 'recyclers':

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/us-sth-perpetual-freebies-thread.30297/

 

[Patriot]

I still have an old quad socket next to my desk as a pedestal ... It's quite useless for its perf/power but I set world records with it and don't want to recycle it just yet. 4x 12c opty 61xx OC to 3.8ghz with 16x 2gb 1600cas6 flashed to 1333 cas5. But yeah... a 16c 3950x will totes beat it let alone current gen desktop chips. Or my 64c milan. Things that I didn't spend a lot of time creating I let go of while they still have use, when they are past use it is harder to let go of things that had a lot of effort put into them.

 

[Samir]

I still have an old quad socket next to my desk as a pedestal ... It's quite useless for its perf/power but I set world records with it and don't want to recycle it just yet. 4x 12c opty 61xx OC to 3.8ghz with 16x 2gb 1600cas6 flashed to 1333 cas5. But yeah... a 16c 3950x will totes beat it let alone current gen desktop chips. Or my 64c milan. Things that I didn't spend a lot of time creating I let go of while they still have use, when they are past use it is harder to let go of things that had a lot of effort put into them.

The hard part is finding someone who will appreciate the work into that machine, but they are out there! It always amazes me how many people go through the effort of just restoring a plain system that has no significance other than nostalgia, so when a system has both nostalgia as well as some historical value, it's a nice candidate for a good home--especially if it still runs. There's a good thread here with a bunch of vintage fanatics and there's of course the vintage computer federation forum:

The [H] Retrocomputing Thread!

- Red Falcon's Guide to Installing NetBSD Mac68k on an unsupported Apple Quadra 950 - ::Primary Hardware Requirements:: - Apple Quadra 950 with Motorola 68040 - Apple keyboard and mouse (only for Mac OS) - At least 16MB of FPM RAM (32MB or higher is recommended) - At least 1MB of VRAM (only...

hardforum.com

Vintage Computer Federation Forums

Community platform by XenForo®

forum.vcfed.org

 

[Wasmachineman_NL]

I still have an old quad socket next to my desk as a pedestal ... It's quite useless for its perf/power but I set world records with it and don't want to recycle it just yet. 4x 12c opty 61xx OC to 3.8ghz with 16x 2gb 1600cas6 flashed to 1333 cas5. But yeah... a 16c 3950x will totes beat it let alone current gen desktop chips. Or my 64c milan. Things that I didn't spend a lot of time creating I let go of while they still have use, when they are past use it is harder to let go of things that had a lot of effort put into them.

WRs? on HWBOT or something?

 

[BlueFox]

WRs? on HWBOT or something?

It was for Folding@Home.

 

[Patriot]

It was for Folding@Home.

Also cinebench for a competition.

 

[ziggygt]

I have the front panel from the IMSAI 8080 I built in 1977. I am in the process of putting some life back into it with an Arduino Duo ALTAIR project. The disks, backplane and relay rack are all gone, but it will be fun to see the lights blinking again. Here is what it looked like in 1977. I usually hang onto things well beyond the shelf life. No more 286,386, Pentium or core duo any more but I still have this jewel.
.

 

[tinfoil3d]

I have IBM Thinkpad X60 I picked up for ~100 bucks with winXP preinstalled in japan back in 2014. That I will retire soon. Stuff from late 200s I still keep well-maintained, serviced and working. Yes, they pull dozens of watts to do the same amount of work that you could do with few W nowadays. It's also quite inspiring to compare the performance to see just how big the leap is and what I thought was really fast now could be done with much smaller amount of power.
Some of my computers I do have attachment to because I've spent a good amount of time servicing them and just using them. Some have had very special memories. Like BTC mning.
I respect my hardware. But yes, it's time to switch to more efficient computing. In the end, it would actually cost less in long term than keeping older hardware running. It may look like immediate saving by opting out of buying newer stuff, but it burns more kwh. Unless you have free energy(solar powered, etc) or it's very very cheap it usually makes sense to upgrade. But I don't mean upgrading every year, no. Every decade should be good enough.

 

[i386]

Like BTC mning.
I respect my hardware.

This is one of the occasions where I miss the poop emoji in the sth emojis

 

[Samir]

I have IBM Thinkpad X60 I picked up for ~100 bucks with winXP preinstalled in japan back in 2014. That I will retire soon. Stuff from late 200s I still keep well-maintained, serviced and working. Yes, they pull dozens of watts to do the same amount of work that you could do with few W nowadays. It's also quite inspiring to compare the performance to see just how big the leap is and what I thought was really fast now could be done with much smaller amount of power.
Some of my computers I do have attachment to because I've spent a good amount of time servicing them and just using them. Some have had very special memories. Like BTC mning.
I respect my hardware. But yes, it's time to switch to more efficient computing. In the end, it would actually cost less in long term than keeping older hardware running. It may look like immediate saving by opting out of buying newer stuff, but it burns more kwh. Unless you have free energy(solar powered, etc) or it's very very cheap it usually makes sense to upgrade. But I don't mean upgrading every year, no. Every decade should be good enough.

The power argument definitely holds when you've got a lot of equipment powered, like a rack. But you can always leave it turned off as a 'backup' to some sort of newer setup. That's what I usually do.