Been a great week urban mining!

Found another mint i5 tonight in a all-in-one computer. Thats what I enjoy about scrapping, its the "thrill of the hunt" that is fun. A mild rush I guess you could say.

I still cant hardly find any 386, 486, etc.. machines. Only 1 so far in 18 months of e-scraping.

Originally Posted by aaron p

Found another mint i5 tonight in a all-in-one computer. Thats what I enjoy about scrapping, its the "thrill of the hunt" that is fun. A mild rush I guess you could say.

I still cant hardly find any 386, 486, etc.. machines. Only 1 so far in 18 months of e-scraping.

I hear you. You just never know what you might chance upon. I like the new learning too. You can see how the tech grew and evolved over the decades. That's an interesting story all in itself.

It might be locational with the older stuff. It's rural here and folks tend to hold on to things on the chance that they might be needed someday. They will throw it out it the barn and forget it's there after a couple of years. Twenty years later they get the urge to do a bit of spring cleaning and out comes the old machine.

An old machine is kind of a nice find for a scrapper. Not big money by any means .... but better than average. The old processors are worth a few dollars whereas the newer scrap ones are only worth a quarter or so. The finger cards are nice and the motherboards pay a little better per pound. The main downside is that the older machines can be a booger to disassemble sometimes. They hadn't quite worked out ISA ( Industry Standard Architecture ) just yet. Some companies had overly complicated designs that can eat up a lot of time when you're doing the breakdown. A ten minute job turns into an hour if you have to fuss with oddball rusted screws and weird construction techniques. It's kinda 50/50 i guess. The stuff inside is worth more, but you often have to work harder and longer to get it out of the box.

Strictly from the money point of view: There's a lot more profit potential with the newer core i machines that you're running across in your area. The processor alone might be worth more than the scrap you would would get from five or ten 386 era machines.