How to dumpster dive?

[CaptDon]

A portion of the 'must be destroyed or returned' was to protect intellectual property, both of the O.E.M. and the user. Yes, those insane repair quotes from Tek and others are totally designed to sell new gear. B.T.W., we had looked at some Tek oscilloscope gear reaching the $250,000 dollar price tag but they did offer a 'trade up' which included some of our broken Tek gear which cost around $100,000 new. I used to love Tek gear but I hate them with a passion these days. Equipment that is easily killed and impossible to repair at any reasonable cost. I wonder if Tucker still exists? They were a used equipment retailer at nearly new prices. I used to look at their rental/purchase equipment catalog and just laugh. 4 or 5 months of rental and you could have bought it used somewhere else. We all have equipment horror stories to share working for companies like Genital Electric, My Bee Em and others. G.E. actually made money by destroying equipment purchased for one job then scrapped because they bought the gear retail and charged the customer list price as part of the project development costs or N.R.E. 'non-recoverable expenditures', then bought the same stuff again for the next project.

[Analog Kid]

... and don't even let's get started on stuff bought on military contracts ...

[Alex Eisenhut]

Finding out about thrift stores in your area would probably be more productive. And cleaner.

I've found a Heathkit vacuum tube oscilloscope, a 12V 7A power supply, Cisco firewall, stuff like that, visiting Value Villages and Goodwills.

Various pieces of antiquated, but amusing to me, audio gear. Obsolete drives like Zip, Jaz, Syquest.

Check out CRD's channel and his trips to thrift stores.

https://youtu.be/s4HAqGrJFCU?list=PLec1d3OBbZ8K3YriSoI-QfzsqP1aGxBaa

[G0HZU]

A portion of the 'must be destroyed or returned' was to protect intellectual property, both of the O.E.M. and the user. Yes, those insane repair quotes from Tek and others are totally designed to sell new gear. B.T.W., we had looked at some Tek oscilloscope gear reaching the $250,000 dollar price tag but they did offer a 'trade up' which included some of our broken Tek gear which cost around $100,000 new. I used to love Tek gear but I hate them with a passion these days. Equipment that is easily killed and impossible to repair at any reasonable cost. I wonder if Tucker still exists? They were a used equipment retailer at nearly new prices. I used to look at their rental/purchase equipment catalog and just laugh. 4 or 5 months of rental and you could have bought it used somewhere else. We all have equipment horror stories to share working for companies like Genital Electric, My Bee Em and others. G.E. actually made money by destroying equipment purchased for one job then scrapped because they bought the gear retail and charged the customer list price as part of the project development costs or N.R.E. 'non-recoverable expenditures', then bought the same stuff again for the next project.

Maybe this only applies in the USA? The last piece of BER Tek gear I salvaged (for free) was one of these:

https://www.testunlimited.com/Product/Tektronix/RSA6114A/3935

It has all the top HW and SW options fitted including 110MHz real time BW and enhanced DPX and 1Gb memory plus lots of demod options and the preamp. Tek didn't want to help with the repair and they definitely didn't want to have it disposed of or returned to them.

Here's an old youtube video of it looking a the Wifi activity at my house across a 100MHz real  time bandwidth. It turned out to have a MMIC failure on one of the LO paths. As you can see, it is now working again

[Ranayna]

In the 70s/80s (even going back to the 50s) there were scheduled "large item collections" in every town, like once or twice a year.
That was a great time to find all sorts of stuff, there were literally piles of old stuff in front of each house - that was the time before ebay - people cleared out old furniture, TV/Hifi, sometimes from pre-war left in the attic or stored away by the grandparents. As there were no city recycling centers, that was pretty much the only way to get rid of this.

These trash days went far into the 90s, maybe even 2000s in my area. I scored many devices to dismantle when i was a kid on these trash collection days. I was always miffed to see all the TVs: They were just too large to carry away with my bicycle

But these went away i think mainly because they attracted, for lack of a better word, organized scavengers, especially in later years. Everything even slightly valueable was collected by scrap collectors ruffling through everything, and leaving a mess. Originally relatively neatly organized piles looked like a bomb exploded during the night.

[themadhippy]

I was always miffed to see all the TVs: They were just too large to carry away with my bicycle

you borrow your dads wheelbarrow.

[wilfred]

These trash days went far into the 90s, maybe even 2000s in my area. I scored many devices to dismantle when i was a kid on these trash collection days. I was always miffed to see all the TVs: They were just too large to carry away with my bicycle

And now they're too large for an ordinary car.

[Calaverasgrande]

I've been dumpster diving for a very long time. Since at least the 80s.
I grew up prety poor in an ecnomically stagnant part of the US. So early on I developed a distaste for wastefulness. But also this sense of finding hidden treasures that you could only acquire in the pre-internet days.
Over the years I've found some wild stuff. Lots of musical instruments. A Xerox copier printer tossed out by the school district because they changed vendors. An HP Laserjet. No model # just Laserjet. Hundreds of 16mm film reels. Furniture, food, consumer electronics.
Recently scored an early flat panel TV with old school Svideo, component and composite inputs. Great for my new video synthesis hobby since most of those modules work with composite or component.
Also scored a Roomba that just needed a new roller.
The trick is to always be on the look out. Whenever I see an open top dumpster in front of a house being renovated I check it. The first thing that happens when someone buys a house to flip and remodel is that they remove all the stuff the previous inhabitant left. Which can include cool stuff that the laborers don't care about. Also keep an eye out for open top dumpsters outside of businesses for the same reason. I've scored a ton of computer equipment that way.  At one point I had about 6 pre-Intel Macintoshes set up in a little LAN with a SCSI disk tower attached to an old IIFX as a file server. All of it scavenged except the disks. Most folks manage to yank their hard disks when they toss stuff for security. But not always.
Vacuum tubes. Whenver I see an old organ, CRT TV or similar device dumped somewhere I'll crack it open to pilfer for tubes. It really helps to have a Leatherman multi-tool.

You have to be careful. A lot of the best dumpsters are on private property. In some localities they have nuisance laws meant to discourage scrap metal recyclers from going through garbage and leaving a mess. I hate those guys too because they will chop an attached cable off a perfectly good device.
You also may run into folks who claim a dumpster as theirs. Not because it's their property, but because they want to claim all the contents.
There was a bakery that had a dumpster often filled with messed up pastries. I witnessed a fight over the contents break out between a family of 5 and some homeless guys. The result was that they put a locked gate around the dumpster, so nobody gets trash pastries now!

[special_K]

Around places I live I found over a few years:

Pioneer hi-fi separates system
solid state black and white tv, working but with plug cut off
1980s solid state colour tv, "working" but in terrible condition, not interested in restoring it
1990s sony trinitron, rescued it from being smashed by kids, needed lots of case repairs but working well
early Pentium HP Vectra computer
1968 Raleigh Sports, junk condition but provided tons of useful spare parts
various 1990s bikes
1970s Duel record player, just needed new belt
Commodore 1084 monitor
PS4, fully working just clogged hard with dust
Vestel made 50 inch HDTV, infamous backlight psu failure, left it there
various radios
my desk
four wooden chairs
scrap timber

I'm sure there is more I forgot. Like Calaverasgrande I just always have my eyes open, but I never go out with the intent to find stuff. I just don't ignore it if I happen across it.

One key difference is if I saw a CRT TV old enough to have Valves I wouldn't crack it open to get them, I'd take the entire TV. A vintage TV is incredibly difficult to find in the UK now, under any circumstances.