Spare computers (was Re: [Techtalk] New to the list)

[Meredith L. Patterson]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Sue Stones wrote:
> But those things
> will have to wait until I have time, and a spare computer for
> experimentation.  (Which hopefully won't be too long away now.)

Do you live near a university? If so, you might want to see if you can
get a copy of their staff directory and find out whether they have a
surplus department, and if so, whether it's open to the public (and
when). The university I attend opens theirs one day a week for computers
and another day for everything else, and anyone is welcome to come in
and buy whatever they like. Other schools may have similar policies.

I've found this to be a great way to pick up test boxen for not a lot of
money -- a PII-400 with 128MB of RAM and a 6GB hard drive was a whole
$15, for instance. That's not a lot of power if you want to play with
GNOME or KDE, but a command-line-only install worked great. (Fun for
kernel-hacking, coding, or just generally learning one's way around a
system without GUI tools.)

Monitors can also be had fairly cheap. They'll be old, small and
probably flaky, but if it's just a command-line box, why bother -- just
drop it into your network and ssh in. :) Plus, don't be afraid to
haggle. I needed a bunch of magnets for a recent project, and went to
surplus looking for hard drives to take apart. They didn't have any just
sitting out, but they said "we've got all these old 486s, some with
multiple <1GB drives; you can have them for a buck apiece, but you have
to take the whole machine." Sure, twist my arm!

Also, large companies will sometimes open their surplus departments to
the public, but you may have to do a little calling around. Just like
haggling, don't be afraid to get hung up on or told 'no' -- it's not
like they're checking Caller ID.

Surplus equipment is just that -- it's at the end of its lifecycle as
far as the organisation that bought it is concerned, and all they want
now is to get rid of it and maybe recoup a few bucks. With that
attitude, their trash can become your treasure for next to nothing. :)

(Hmm. I wonder if there's an article in this.)

Cheers,
Meredith
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFBh/HKsrMg4RkUokIRAmpPAJ4uVv22Jh6OgaR/8R0s2/TlJcYpvwCffm5O
2ajgIDyCYglXjA7SWOvR9lk=
=BQzq
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----