Stores for old parts

[leilei]

In your experience, what's a good place to shop or snag (for free ) for old legacy hardware?

[DOSGuy]

When I was in high school, the computers in the library were so bad that they could barely get onto the internet. They were mostly 486s running Windows 3.1 and Pentium 75s running Windows 95. When the old librarian retired and one of the English teachers took over, he was very receptive when a friend and I told him how lousy the computers were and offered to help. He got us the parts we needed from the computer department and we upgraded the entire lab, doing work almost every day for the remainder of our time in high school. By the time I graduated, all of the computers were Pentium 233s running Windows 98.

I have continued to drop by the library to help out in my spare time in the better part of a decade since I graduated. In exchange for all of the years I've put in, I get my pick of everything that the school doesn't want any more. Over the years I've taken motherboards, CPUs, RAM, graphics cards, hard drives and optical drives, everything from surplus 386s to SDRAM and AGP graphics cards. It's great to have a "source" for obsolete technology. Ask one of the teachers at your old elementary/high school if they have anything they want to get rid of, or just establish a relationship with any organization that tends to have surplus hardware. My favorite computer store in the area has a "garage sale" every year of stuff that they need to get out of their storage room and, in addition to getting obsolete stuff really cheap, they had a box of free stuff that I took some old graphics cards out of.

Beyond that, I've picked up boxed software, interesting modems and keyboards and mice for a few dollars, and complete Pentium computers for $5 to $10 at Goodwill and the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Sometimes I pick up some old hardware and software at Value Village, but their prices are way too high.

I used to pick up cheap CPUs at a place called Computer Recyclers. I bought about a dozen 5.25" floppy drives for a dollar or two apiece there when I realized that they weren't making them any more. From what I understand, they're no longer open to the public.