Saturday, February 13, 2016

Giving it Away

I saw this a few months ago and it inspired me to do some “e-waste” disposal over the weekend.

Living in Houston’s greater-Metro area would lead one to think that there are a lot of great e-waste disposal locations to pick from.  Well there are but most all of them are on the other side of the greater-Metro area from where I live.

Luckily, Goodwill will let me drop off my older computer equipment at any of their area stores (one is just 10 minutes away from home) and ship it (if needed) to their main computer sales store. Sweet.

I’ve got a Compaq Presario V2575US Notebook PC that runs OK but probably could use a new battery and definitely needs a new A/C brick.

There is also a Gateway MA3 laptop that I’ve had a A/C plug resolder service done on the mainboard.  The solder cracked again, but it might be good for parts…or someone willing to do a mainboard swap.

I’ve got several old PCI and AGP video cards.

I’ve got a few old PATA HDD’s that are less than 500 GB in size. I still have an old PATA external drive enclosure but it already has a 500 GB drive in so there isn’t much sense on holding onto any of the others I’ve “collected” over the years. They will be wiped and donated too.

I found Lavie and my old Palm Pilot III’s. Now I’ve got to figure out if I can charge them somehow and wipe them. Oh the memories of early PIM/PDA technology.

I’m still not quite ready to part with my Shuttle SK41G. It’s like a child for some reason. Since I now have a USB-DVD player, I should be able to dump the very slow (but working) Win 7 OS and finally try out LXLE Desktop on it. Sadly, my new Raspberry Pi 2 seems faster than the Shuttle and is whisper quiet.

I’ve got two Samsung 930B flatscreen monitors. They work great but really can’t seem to handle the “modern” resolutions that most systems display at now-days. I’ve considered donating them as well but since they support both DVI and VGI inputs, they might still be handy troubleshooting display issues with laptops or other systems…so those will hang around for a bit longer. Just in case.

I think that is the hardest part to get past as a techie. Experience has taught me that there is just a chance that I might encounter a situation where a piece of older hardware might come in handy. So it is tempting to hold on to things that aren’t really needed.

Not electronic but also exiting news was this.

I’ve checked on this situation too and while the local pharmacies are helpful about services I can pay for to responsibly pay for to dispose of unused medications, it is neither cheap or convenient. However I am not comfortable flushing them down the toilet or tossing them in the trash. FDA advice here.

Cheers.

--Claus Valca

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