Mass Hardware Salvage Methods?

gte024h writes: "I have been approached by a friend working at a mid-sized corporation about a plan to salvage hardware from their "dead" computers to make working computers which would then be donated to a local school. In the past I have salvaged old hardware from them, but only a few machines at a time. With this plan I will initially get about 40 identical machines with perhaps many more later (he says they have a warehouse full). I have no idea what condition these machines will be in but I am pretty sure that out of 40 non-functional machines I should be able to get 10-15 working. Does anyone have experience doing anything like this? Would it be faster to strip the machines and test the components individually, or to troubleshoot each machine whole? Any ideas for efficient testing and such are greatly appreciated."

I know that volunteers from LXNY recently did something similar with a whole boatload of donated computers; anyone with experience care to comment on how to best handle the mixed blessing of donated, but old, hardware?

What I'd do

[JediTrainer]

Get a few units working 100%. Using those units, test the components of all the other units in assembly-line fashion (first test all the hard drives in the working units at once, then the power sources etc). Doing it this way will save you from having to debug each individually and will let you add parts to the "good" and "Bad" piles much more efficiently, by using the same procedure for all of them at the same time. You will get into a rhythm which will speed things up this way.

40 machines don't die at once

[Hairy_Potter]

so, most of them were probably working but too old.

I'd just set them up and boot them. Any that didn't work would become parts donors.

You might get 30+ working machines out of those 40.

What do you want from them?

[Patman]

The question is, do you want parts, or whole systems?
If you're looking for whole systems, boot each one
until you find one that works. Swap parts from ones that
don't boot into the ones that do until you find
which parts are damaged on the unbootables.

If you're going for parts, take all 40 apart. Build
one out of good parts, maybe, for testing purposes.
Test them en masse - hard drive after hard drive
after hard drive, for instance.

Either way, this could be a nice windfall. Don't forget
to save all the little things that come in handy, like
like expansion card covers, screws, power supplies, etc.

I don't want to sound grinch-like...

[annielaurie]

But be certain you've concluded some kind of arrangement with the donor organization about what's to be done with the real "junkers," the parts that just won't function any more after you've finished your testing/salvaging/rebuilding efforts. There is much in old hardware that is toxic (lead, arsenic, and other unsavory stuff), and you may find that your friendly local landfill or trash guys won't let you throw the stuff away. Without looking a gift horse in the mouth, be certain you've got some way to get rid of the remains. Having done that, best of luck to you! I think you'll find what you're about to undertake is very rewarding. Cheers, Annie

Try 'em out ...

[Pogue Mahone]

From personal experience, the parts that usually fail through age are (in order):

1. Monitors (especially the cheaper ones) - easy to check out, although sometimes they only start failing after an hour or more of use.

2. PSU and CPU fans - usually very noisy, but silent once totally dead. Watch out for this.

3. Mouse - yeah, well...

4. Disk drives - which might be recoverable if it's only bad blocks, but probably not worth the effort.

Motherboards and other solid-state bits very rarely fail through age (unless the CPU fried due to 2). Most failures on these bits happen early in their lifetime. It's called the bathtub curve, and PCs are unlikely to be on the upward slope (unless they're _really_ old, in which case it probably isn't worth the effort of even looking at them.)

So your best bet would be to test all the boxes first, using a known good monitor/keyboard/mouse. Those that don't work can be stripped and diagnosed individually.

--

Re:Been there!

[hammock]

Slackware uses tagfiles to do customized unattended installs, not dissimilar to the Microsoft unattended installs. Without the License key and agreeing to the EULA of course.

Been there!

[pongo000]

I volunteered at a local high school to help strip down approximately 60 486's donated by the IRS. From the 60, we rebuilt approximately 40 (including a nice file server and web server). We didn't test each component individually, as we didn't have access to that kind of equipment. Instead, we tested each machine as a unit. Those that passed were put in one pile; those that didn't (for whatever reason) were immediately stripped down, and those parts were put in the appropriate pile

Then we determined how many working computers could be built from the remaining parts. It helped that we were also donated a large box of NICs (some worked, some didn't, but beggars can't complain). From the remaining parts, we built as many working computers as we could.

We initially tried to install RedHat, but we could figure out no way to save the install configuration so we could configure all the machines alike. SuSE works beautifully in this regard: Configure one machine, save the configuration. Plug all the machines in the network, boot from a SuSE install disk, select NFS, and fire up the installs. I believe we had three NFS servers running, and we could get installs going on 20 machines at a time at a fairly good clip.

I think what you're doing is fantastic. I only wish I could convince more schools where I live to do the same. I approached the so-called "technical administrator" of our school district about using some of the boxes I saw piled up in my son's elementary school to ask about getting a low-cost Linux-based network up and running for the kids. At the mention of "Linux," said "administrator" blanched and told me in no uncertain terms that nothing but Microsoft would ever be allowed on school district computers. I just love narrow-minded people.

Teach others to do the work

[ables]

Don't salvage working systems and then give them to a school, rather teach school kids (especially disadvantaged inner city ones) to do this work themselves.

Then handling the situation on mass becomes simply an exercise in collecting the systems and returning the useless parts to the company for disposal (yes, don't let them stick you or the school with disposal costs!)

Be sure the school WANTS them first.

[CaptainTylor]

At the risk of being labeled heretical, I suggest you make sure the school district can make use of these computers before arranging this whole shebang.

If the computers are too slow (these days anything below a Pentium 166 qualifies, IMHO), you're in danger of installing a whole lot of hardware which will be perceived as useless because it won't run the latest gee-whiz multimedia programs. Please notice I said "perceived."

And let's face it, these computers are going to have to run Windows and Office, unless you find one of those all-too-rare forward-thinking individuals at the recipient school who cares more about letting students use the machines to learn than making sure they know how to be good Word drones.

I suggest reading Cliff Stoll's excellent book, High Tech Heretic, the first half of which is all about computers in education, before making any formal arrangements with your donor company. I would also echo the point another poster made about arranging for the donor to pay disposal of the real duds. Computer equipment contains materials that are considered hazardous waste, and should be disposed of appropriately.

Note to moderators: This is not a troll or flamebait, just a gentle attempt at grey-matter stimulation.

CMOS Batteries!

[BigBlockMopar]

Lemme nominate a part which I would place between 2 and 3; give it number 2.5 on your list.

CMOS batteries. Especially on those nasty generic motherboards that are too cheap to have any provision for replacement. (ie. no battery socket, no 4 pin connector with the jumper cap over the middle two, etc.)

Either ditch the board or break out the soldering iron.

Salvaging.

[Mullen]

This can be tricky, for something that should be simple.

Somethings to be aware of:
1) Make sure your getting usable goods. Some companies will "cook the books" when it comes to hardware and dump something of nothing of value onto a school and then write off the donated hardware as a tax break. More common than you think.

2) Make sure you get enough people to help you. It sucks taking all that crap apart yourself.

I did something like this for a college lab. Here is what we did.
Nothing was going to be counted as a loss. Meaning, if the motherboard was dead, then we get the cache, CPU and memory off it. Keep all spare parts, you will need them.
So my suggestion is:

1) Have a disassembly line. One person takes out hardrives, another does motherboards and so on. After about 4 or 5 machines, a person is really quick at removing the part. You should be done real quick after that.

2) Put all the parts you yank out into seperate box or area. Make sure to dust them off and look for the obvious problems with the part. This might sound like a waste of time, but you need to clean the parts if they are dusty.

3) After your all done with the disassemble, figure out how many machines your should get, and start assembling them. Your not going to have a perfect match. Some stuff is not going to work, your going to be short of certain items.

4) Make all machines a simular as possible. I know for a fact this will save you lots of time in the future.

Good Luck.

Other Helpful Items...

[wardomon]

Save your self some workbench space, get a 4 port KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse) switch. You'll be able to work on several machines at once, you'll won't have to grunt monitors up and down off the bench and you'll only have to wire the thing once into nice tidy bundles. While you're setting it up, be sure to get a hub and a few nics so you don't have to sweat getting drivers and apps onto the drives. A reliable burner would also be a help.

Re:Been there!

[BIGJIMSLATE]

"I volunteered at a local high school to help strip down approximately 60 486's donated by the IRS."

Goods being DONATED by the IRS? That's...uh...well...odd, to tell you the truth.

Re:I don't want to sound grinch-like...

[owlmeat]

Where did you get this information? There is no arsenic in computers and as far as I've heard, there's no objection to the lead in the form that it's in. Do you actually know of landfills that won't take electronic equipment?

Most probably work fine.

[crow]

I would be that most of the systems work just fine. I wouldn't be surprised if they have weird software problems or something like that, but you should be installing the OS from scratch. Computers get filed away as "broken" for a number of reasons, such as the user wanted a new computer, or Windows was messed up and nobody had the time to figure out if it was software or hardware. Of course, the level of hardware problems will vary radically between donors, so who knows?

Whatever you do, you should get a bunch of students from the school to help you.

Test hotswappble stuff first

[NevarMore]

First off, great ideas from the other people, ESPECIALLY the one about teaching the kids to test systems.

What i'd do first is get yourself a working system from the same era as the ones you're salvaging (preferably from one of those systems). Clean the dust off it and install your OS of choice. Then test the components you can hotswap, such as fans, monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, speakers, microphones, those nifty little LED speed displays, and so on.

Next find yourself a good base system consisting of a main board, processor, vid card, keyboard, RAM, and power supply, monitor, and case. Note no HD or floppy. Now power it up. If it powers up ok then the power supply is good. If you can see it do this then your vid card is good. Watch the BIOS tell you that it's elves have checked the RAM. Your RAM is good. Turn it off(or just pull out the power supply connector). Put the good RAM, vid cards, and power supplys in thier respective piles. Repeat this until all those components have been checked.

Now take your known good parts except drives and attach them to main boards. Boot those up. If they dont boot, the board or processor is gone. Swap processors with a know good one. If it works the first processor is hosed. File it appropriately (load some into a potato gun and aim toward silicon valley, heh).

Alright now stick as many drives as you can into each good system. Prepare a few hard drive format disks (like ones sent with new drives such as MaxBlast, SeaTools, etc). There should be 1 or 2 floppies and 1 to 4 hard disks in each box. Boot as many boxes as you can with the HD format disks. They'll scan and format the drives while you go sleep or whatever.

Ok I know this is a really long drawn out process, but my salvaging skills (instincts?) come from my grandfather. He grew up in the depression so they HAD to salvage all they could, but they had plenty of time to tinker with it.

Re:Screw the schools...

[ahaning]

The OSS club where I go to school tried that. We got a handful of machines donated from here and there and some other equipment. However, the project fizzled out and died. Not due to a lack of interest, but rather a lack of ability. None of us knew what we were doing and we are also in school, so there's not much time outside of class for non-class-related stuff. And this would take a lot of time outside of class to learn about (unless we were being given class credit, which we weren't).

So, no, don't build a cluster. It's much more fun to sit around and mix and match hardware until you get a working computer and then get the satisfaction of giving it away to someone who needs it rather than keeping them all for yourself.

(However, I know you were likely joking, but I thought I'd take you seriously, anyhow :).)


kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.

Re:What I'd do

[shippo]

I did this with around a dozen of propretary, discontinued Intel based machines a few years back. Place of work acquired a number for training and spares work

I already had a number of working machines of the same model, and soon determined which ones were able to boot up. The parts of the remainder were tried in the known working machines, and the other useful parts kept for later.

I salvaged 3 or 4 working machines, and enough memory and PSU units for another two. The rest of the hardware was junked.

Unfortunatly the boss hadn't realised that there was no longer a demand for this hardware, and it was not used for anything other than a hack machine for basic in-house use. The vendor had switched to standard PC hardware, and the OS was discontinued on these machines.