Vintage PC disposal

[PlainName]

I need to regain some space, so a bunch of ancient PC kit is headed towards the tip unless someone can suggest a more worthy cause, or would even take it away.

There are a number of PC motherboards going back to an Abit KR7A and more recent Asus and Gigabyte. All ATX, all with appropriate CPU and RAM, all working when removed. There is also a tower (from when 'tower' meant exactly that).

There are also some laptops, going back to 386/486 jobs. Used to work, batteries probably very borked now.

If anyone is actually interested in this stuff, apart from notifying your GP I can probably make a proper list and possibly even photos, but I don't want to put too much effort into this - the tip isn't that far away and doesn't need things boxing up

[grumpydoc]

Your location is?

[PlainName]

Ah, sorry, forgot

Close to Reading, UK

[grumpydoc]

I'm tempted but think I ought to resist

[amiq]

Do any of the motherboards have ISA slots?  ATM I'm looking for an old DOS era PC that can accomodate a full length ISA card.

[PlainName]

Pretty sure there's at least one like that. I'll check tomorrow.

[PlainName]

Good news is that there is an Abit BH6, which has two ISA slots. The bad news is that the box is empty and I'm not sure where the motherboard is - I think its in the tower, so I need to check that.

Wow. Just checked Ebay and the board actually sells for almost £50! I must be missing a trick somewhere... Anyway, if it's in the tower then I would prefer these to go as a pair (actually, I would prefer it all to go as a job lot!) so if you can arrange to collect they are yours gratis.

There is also a Gigabyte GA6BXDS which has ISA slots, but no CPU or memory.

Edit: The Gigabyte takes two Pentium II slot 1 cards, and I just found a pair. Don't know if they work and I'm not going to set up just to test them.

[pfrcom]

As you've seen from eBay, retro PC gear is in demand and fetching high prices

Check out www.vogons.org

Probably worth your while to list your stuff on eBay as "For parts or not working"

If you happen to have a Socket 8 (Pentium Pro) motherboard, I know someone who's looking for one

[PlainName]

Blimey. There's a Power Mac G3 in the corner which is really nice to look at, but a recent one failed to sell for £11 on Ebay. The problem with this kind of sale is you need to be at the right place when the one person in the world that needs it is looking.

[james_s]

There is a LOT of vintage PC gear sitting on ebay with fantasy BIN prices just hoping for a sucker to come along. Now there is a lot of that stuff that does fetch decent money but you have to look at the prices it actually sells for. Most PC parts that are >10 years old are worth something though, maybe not a lot but enough to be worth saving it from the landfill.

[PlainName]

The one I referenced was a sold listing, so final price. Item 222444049461 (you'll need to turn on the sold listings flag to see it).

Also useful is the completed listings flag, knowing what items didn't sell for

[dexters_lab]

dunkemhigh, If your looking to offload as a job lot, i would be interested and i can pickup, a list of items would be useful

[PlainName]

In that case let me sort out a list and get back to you. Could be a good solution

[woodchips]

Or take all the boards etc out and take them to AWA in Harlow for gold recovery. Any PC stuff before about 2000 has recoverable amounts of gold on it.

[PlainName]

Presumably there's a minimum quantity to be worthwhile, if only to cover the petrol costs.

[deephaven]

I'm only 15 miles from you, thank goodness you've already got a customer 

[PlainName]

If you want me to put something aside for you... 

[james_s]

Gold recovery should be considered a last resort. I shudder to think how much valuable collectible hardware from the early PC days was scrapped simply for a bit of gold.

[deephaven]

If you want me to put something aside for you... 

No, I don't want to risk taking the very item Dexter's Lab might want