Banned from recycling center!
Jumpster Jiver
town's recycling center. They have an open trailer to place all computer
waste into. While there I spotted some LCD monitors and some laptops -
complete with batteries and power supplies.
LCD monitors are usually repairable if the screen is not damaged so I took
about eight of them and a bunch of laptops, as well as pulled some RAM out
of some computer towers. I did this about once a week - dropped off a CRT
monitor, spent about five minutes putting other items in my trunk, and left.
Finally one day a woman came out of the office rudely screaming and said
"don't come back here!"
HOW RUDE!!!
Now I'm going to go to a few nearby towns and see if they have similar
recycling areas and try my hand at acquiring more usable items. By the
way - this was in a town in central New Jersey, USA
The worst part is the day she "threw me out" there were two very modern
oscilliscopes in the computer trailer.
I could understand if they were paid by the pound or were reselling the
scrap but as far as I know the town had to pay to dispose of this stuff so I
was actually SAVING the town a few pennies by taking a few pounds of items
out of the trailer.
Well at least I got a few usable items:
Magnavox 19 inch LCD Monitor/TV with built-in DVD player - I repaired an
issue with the power supply board and it now works very well.
Three old/obsolete laptops - The batteries no longer hold a charge, but for
a computer hacker like me (the tinkering type of hacker, not the
password/credit card number stealing type - there is a BIG difference in the
many definitions of the word "Hacker"), but the laptops work well and once I
load them with Linux they will have several uses around my home/office.
I combined parts of several LCD monitors to create three working 17 inch
Dell monitors. If you can repair electronics the most common failures are
in the power supplies and the backlight inverters. LCD monitors use a thin
fluorescent tube to light the screen from behind and the high-voltage power
supply for the light often fails. Sometimes the backlight inverter can be
repaired or if you can find the exact same model you can sometimes replace
the inverter as a whole unit.
A Sony DVD Player - It was giving an error indicating that there was no
disc, or that the disc was not readable. It needed a good cleaning of the
optical pickup (laser), and recalibration. It now works like new.
And... a very nice tall computer tower with a defective obsolete motherboard
and an under-powered power supply. It has fold-out feet, a door on the
front to cover the DVD drives, space for many hard drives and fans, front
USB and firewire ports, etc. This not a cheap $30-$40 case. This type of
case retails for over $100 (without a power supply!!!)
Happy holidays everyone. Don't forget - as people get gifts for the
holidays the older equipment is often thrown away, so happy dhiving!!!
squirltop
Jumpster Jiver wrote:
> I was recently dropping off some of my old CRT computer monitors at our
> town's recycling center. They have an open trailer to place all computer
> waste into. While there I spotted some LCD monitors and some laptops -
> complete with batteries and power supplies.
> LCD monitors are usually repairable if the screen is not damaged so I took
> about eight of them and a bunch of laptops, as well as pulled some RAM out
> of some computer towers. I did this about once a week - dropped off a CRT
> monitor, spent about five minutes putting other items in my trunk, and left.
> Finally one day a woman came out of the office rudely screaming and said
> "don't come back here!"
It's kind of touch-and-go
we may see an ability to make things work, she may see, whatever she
sees.
Jack
Like me and most inveterate dhivers, you probably don't mind living on
the periphery of authority. Still, shouldn't the town--and other
taxpayers--get on board against this outrage? How bout if you, or
some nonpracticing FOD (friend of diving) ask the town in a very
public way why money is being wasted in this recycling program? The
worst that could happen is you'll find out the town's actually being
paid for the scrap. (Of course, there is the issue of privacy of data
left over in computer drives--not a concern in the case of those
monitors, obviously.) ...jack
Beloved Leader
> town's recycling center. They have an open trailer to place all computer
> waste into. While there I spotted some LCD monitors and some laptops -
> complete with batteries and power supplies.
> Finally one day a woman came out of the office rudely screaming and said
> "don't come back here!"
> HOW RUDE!!!
> Happy holidays everyone. Don't forget - as people get gifts for the
> holidays the older equipment is often thrown away, so happy dhiving!!!
Long time, no post. Love the group, other than the spammers.
Same situation here - Alexandria VA. The swag goes in one or two huge
walk-in dumpsters. Things are thrown into them that shouldn't be
regarded as hazardous waste. I helped myself to a few things, and the
woman in charge yelled at me to stop. I stopped going, especially as
the facility is open only one day per week.
I used to help myself to cells by the dozen from the battery recyling
barrels. The tops are often only loosely secured, and I can remove
them barehanded. Rechargeables, alkalines - how many would you like?
Usually at least half were good. One of a string of four would go bad,
and all the cells would be tossed. You know the drill.
Keep finding the stuff. Best wishes to one and all.
Joe Carroll
I am from Australia and have a keen interest in computer stuff
I also grab computer equipment at the local recycling center (glamorous word
for Garbage tip), however I have a scavenging permit as a friend and I run a
shop which is on the tip site itself.
It is too bad that you got told to go away, here, whatever we don't take for
the shop goes into landfill, last week, we dragged 16 pentium 4 computers
back to the shop, these were taken back home with me to go on ebay once they
have been wiped and had a fresh copy of windows loaded using the original
licenses tat were affixed to the case.
Cheers,
Joe.
"Jumpster Jiver" <no reply> wrote in message
news:4b10f08e$0$31279$607e...@cv.net...
larrylaundry
Yea I cannot get my associate to get out there. In the past this time
of year could get computer after older computer and more than enough
monitors. Must of the time people would leave them outside of the
dumpsters which is nice of them to do. I know people that throw shit
away without any thought of
if somebody else could use the items.