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Ask HN: What do you do with your older hardware?

28 points| sys_64738 | 4 years ago

I have a 2010 Mac mini which I used to use for streaming but it has been retired over Christmas. It's a bit slower video wise so while I could use it for Linux I have other HW. It will probably end up in a cupboard but what other options are there for it? What do HN folks do with their retired hardware?

54 comments

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[+] kwhitefoot|4 years ago|reply
I sell them or give them away on website, https://www.finn.no/, a bit like Ebay.

Pretty much any functioning laptop will find a buyer if it is capable of running a modern web browser and in many cases there are enthusiasts willing to take hardware that can't even do that.

Over the past couple of years I have sold hundreds of bits of old computers ranging in age from five years old to 25 years old. Everything from ThinkPads to 20 year old power supplies taken from scrapped Compaq desktops and all the components in between including tape drives, DEC terminals, etc.

I also sold a non-functioning Quad 303 power amp for 1000 NOK (112 USD). Could perhaps have got more for it but as it hadn't cost me anything and it had been waiting for repair for over ten years it was a good price.

Someone will want your Mac mini, they just need to be able to find it. Put it on Ebay, Gumtree, Craigslist, Finn.no, or whatever your locality has.

[+] cameron_b|4 years ago|reply
When I was in college I remember some fellow students being overjoyed to find quality older hardware on Offerup, in order to keep up with the schoolwork we were learning, and practice on their own.

I personally find that Mac hardware holds its utility far beyond its value, and that's even recognizing that most Mac products hold value in the second-hand market.

I saw a Mac Pro 5.1 ( same generation as your mini ) on craigslist recently, refurbished, but selling for four figures.

[+] convolvatron|4 years ago|reply
its getting pretty hard to run OSX that far back. does anyone have any recommendations for an open operating system to put on them? freebsd used to work ok, but the page that tracks it hasn't been updated in a decade.
[+] southerntofu|4 years ago|reply
> I personally find that Mac hardware holds its utility far beyond its value

I've often seen broken Macbooks and iMacs (mostly issues with screen or hinges) in the hackerspaces i've visited. Maybe it's a selection bias where the functioning hardware is resold not donated, but it doesn't exactly inspire me confidence.

It's not specific to Apple though, modern day Thinkpads are just as "bad" (but the older IBM ones will probably outlive us all).

[+] dangus|4 years ago|reply
I eBay them, even if I get basically nothing for the sale. If someone else wants it, they're using it for something.

The last thing I want is to be an accumulator of stuff, so ending up in a cupboard is not an option.

[+] jmbwell|4 years ago|reply
In Texas (dunno about elsewhere), Goodwill has "Computer Works" stores that take older equipment in working or mostly-working condition. They assemble systems from donated components and sell them for pretty good prices. Behind the scenes, I gather it's a training opportunity. What can't be fixed or cobbled together and sold, gets donated onward, recycled, or disposed. I take all my old systems there, and I check in the shop from time to time. I've picked up all kinds of stuff... full-size racks, HP servers, oddball adapter cards, vintage stuff.
[+] taubek|4 years ago|reply
Once I no longer need my computer I try to donate it to someone. There are some charities that will fix/upgrade them and give them to someone else.

I like the reuse concept (as a general rule I buy refurbished equipment when ever I can) so if you don't need it any longer, maybe someone else would find it useful?

[+] derwiki|4 years ago|reply
Do you securely wipe the hard drive before donating?
[+] behohippy|4 years ago|reply
My older stuff got turned into TV PCs. I pair them up with a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard and just run Chrome or Firefox on them. Each tab is a different streaming service, plex or youtube. I could use Chromecast or FireTV, but they feel like less freedom than just running a browser.
[+] toomuchtodo|4 years ago|reply
Recycle it. The cost decline and power curve doesn’t make sense to keep antiques.
[+] wing-_-nuts|4 years ago|reply
Piggybacking on this, but what's everyone doing with their 3g phones? My family has like 5 of them that will supposedly no longer have service in '22. Can we donate these somewhere? The newer ones can still install android apps, send and receive email, etc. I thought about donating them to a shelter but I'm not sure if they'd have a use for them.
[+] tablespoon|4 years ago|reply
> Piggybacking on this, but what's everyone doing with their 3g phones? My family has like 5 of them that will supposedly no longer have service in '22. Can we donate these somewhere? The newer ones can still install android apps, send and receive email, etc. I thought about donating them to a shelter but I'm not sure if they'd have a use for them.

What would a homeless person do with a phone that can't connect to a cellular network?

Obsolete tech eventually becomes practically useless, even if it "still works." At this point, I'd say 3G phones are a (very small) white elephant, mainly only useful for weird hobbyist stuff or quirky retrocomputing.

I knew a refugee who was given a 68k Mac laptop in about 2003, it was more of a burden than anything. It was impossible to get online with anything close to a then-modern browser (IIRC, too little memory). It made a lot more sense for him to just use one of the computer labs.

[+] rob74|4 years ago|reply
I'm using an old Android phone (Moto X) as a "two-factor security dongle", i.e. I have the M$ Authenticator app installed on it for VPN and Exchange access from home office - unlike my "regular" mobile phone, which I may forget to take with me while I'm at home, it's on my desk the whole time...
[+] Scoundreller|4 years ago|reply
Just throw them on eBay and some intelligent broker will harvest them for parts or ship them off to the part of the world that still uses 3G and values them the most.
[+] dsr_|4 years ago|reply
Download a bunch of MP3s that you don't like, get cheap long USB cords, and set them up as programmable musical alarm clocks.

(Why music that you don't like? Because any music that forces you to wake up will eventually become music you don't like.)

[+] ugjka|4 years ago|reply
I'm thinking of turning my old phones into webcams
[+] theandrewbailey|4 years ago|reply
I have an old desktop in my basement that I use as a server (web, database, NAS, music, pihole). After that, I try to find someone I know who could use old but working parts and systems and give it to them; otherwise I drop off at second-hand charity stores.
[+] gjsman-1000|4 years ago|reply
To be fully honest... I recycle them if none of the family wants.

My family's previous retired laptops were 2 old HP Core i3 4th gen models. With 1366x768 15" screens, one of which was cracked. One would blue-screened randomly after a few hours even with a OS reinstall. I stripped them down and sold the motherboard and RAM of the non-blue-screening one on eBay and made about $80.

The rest was recycled because, what would I do with them? If I wanted a Plex server, a Raspberry Pi 4 is powerful enough for most things that don't need transcoding, and consumes far less power and physical space (laptop motherboards are not very space efficient for a server unless you got a super long and thin case for them).

[+] gigatexal|4 years ago|reply
Older laptops I throw Ubuntu LTS on and give to those in need.

Older desktops -- if not noisy gaming PCs -- become servers or get harvested for parts to bolster an existing one, otherwise they get donated or recycled.

[+] svec|4 years ago|reply
I offer old hardware to local charities that reuse/recycle it, or on a “buy nothing” Facebook group where people will almost always take it and (hopefully) make better use of it than I will.
[+] agentultra|4 years ago|reply
I have a frankencloud of old re-purposed laptops that have become firewalls, storage servers, build servers, and VM hosts to run scripts and bits of automation.

I donate excess computers I don't need anymore that are in serviceable condition to local charities: there are lots of under-served communities that need laptops and routers and modems in this day and age with remote learning during lockdowns, etc.

The rest I try to tear down for useable parts (to keep the frankencloud running) and the rest I recycle as best I can.

[+] aninteger|4 years ago|reply
1. The same thing we do with Raspberry Pi's

2. Retro gaming / retro development, which given the age of something often means C or C++.

3. If things are really broken, e-waste is probably the only option.

[+] thrower123|4 years ago|reply
I have a whole shelf of broken laptops, obsolete monitors, junked hard drives, etc, that will probably still be there when I die and my heirs have to clean out my house.
[+] tedyoung|4 years ago|reply
Same, though every year I'm able to part with some of the truly dead pieces of equipment at the recycling center. Those old hard drives pile up, though. But now I've got half a dozen broken laptops—which have awesome screens that I wish I could use.
[+] kwhitefoot|4 years ago|reply
That's a waste. Just take a few pictures and put it on Ebay or some local equivalent.
[+] rvieira|4 years ago|reply
Not a functional advice (my old laptops still all serve the same function), but:

I'm using Apple since 2014 and realised I've gathered quite stack of old Macs (one Macbook Air, one MBP and one iMac). I've installed Linux in all of them for the heck of it and its quite a welcome break for macOS.

I try use the old Macbook Air only as a thin client (tiling window manager and most TUI applications for IRC, email, coding, remote admin, etc).

[+] littlecranky67|4 years ago|reply
By coincidence I just asked myself the same question and made it my holidays project. I installed El Capitan on my mid-2014 MBP (it does support Big Sur but it was unbearably slow & laggy and battery runtime was not good), and it seems a 2010 mac mini should be capable to run El Capitan too.

Why El Capitan? Because the most current Chrome requires El Capitan (Mavericks does not work). Actually I use ungoogled-chromium. While it might seem super dangerous to connect to the internet because of security, I took some measures:

On my Router (Fritzbox, but any other quality router will do):

- Isolate that device to "Guest" WiFi so it can only connect to the internet, not other devices in my LAN (works by Mac Address Filtering)

- Do not allow unknown MAC Addresses to connect to WiFi at all for all my home network

- Only allow outgoing ports 80/443 TCP and 53 UDP on the Mac, refuse all incoming connections (its NAT anyway but just to be sure)

- Disable UPnP for that device

When using the device:

- Never use ANY login/private data on that device (see exceptions below)

- Never enter any private data, so no social media, email, iCloud etc. just plain surfing

- I strictly only use AirDrop from my modern Mac or a readonly SDcard to copy files ONTO it (Movies, Music, Ebooks, Podcasts), never download or copy the other way around.

- The only Applications I installed are ungoogled-chromium (plus ublock origin) and VLC

I use it to watch (offline) movies, music podcasts and sometimes Netflix. Additionally I connect my E-Piano with a piano learning website to it over USB (Benefit is I can use GarageBand instrument library with it). For those two websites the passwords are strictly unique. When not in use, I always do a full shutdown (no sleep).

I know that a super-dedicated and driven hacker might - with lots of work - use the device as attack vector, but I mostly think this is a highly unlikely event. Especially since it is way easier to compromise servers with log4shell right now :)

Edit: Btw it is super easy to downgrade, just hold CMD+Option+Shift+R on powerup, and the internet recovery will install the macOS version the device shipped with. Then go to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 and download the full OS as a simple .pkg file on another machine, copy to SDcard and start installation.

[+] sys_64738|4 years ago|reply
I run Monterey on my 2014 MBP and it runs super fast so not sure of your issue. I installed Catalina on the 2010 Mini which also works well but I've moved on from Catalina which is why this system is EOL for me.
[+] chrisseaton|4 years ago|reply
Sell it back to Apple, or recycle it through them. They're best placed to recycle it as they know all the components and materials. Anyone else recycling it will probably just ship it to another country to go into landfill.
[+] bellyfullofbac|4 years ago|reply
Their propaganda^W PR fluff about the weight of gold recycled from iPhones has a line that triggered my bullshit alarm: "2204 lbs of gold" [1]. This has been regurgitated by news media[2] as "more than 2204 lbs of gold" without them doing any more fact-checking.

1000 kg is 2204.62262[...] lbs. For them to put the exact number "2204" smells like someone told them "about 1000kg of gold" and whoever wrote that report just converted that to "2204 lbs". And since it's a rounding down, they can claim "More than 2204 lbs". Apple not knowing how significant figures work and giving out a number that was probably a guess to be an exact figure? That's why the alarm I mentioned above got triggered.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-ton-of-gold-recycling_n... has a link to Apple's PDF: http://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_... where you can search for "2204".

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=apple+2204+lbs+of+gold

[+] Veritio|4 years ago|reply
eBay if: It is still relatives new and still worth a lot.

If I have the feeling that someone else might find it useful.

Recycling: If it had sensitive data on it and cleaning it up is not worth it at all like small and old hard drives or old and slow USB stick.

Gifting:

If I have the feeling that it would help. Like a laptop which is old but not too old for normal daily use. I will clean it, fix it and search for someone to gift it.

I do try to do something with those things fast as it only makes it less useful longer I wait.

It also annoys you when it is inconvenient like when you move and find all of the old stuff. Or you lost that space for ages and then you throw it out anyway.