[COFF] Typical Fate of Older Hardware

Wesley Parish wobblygong at gmail.com
Tue Aug 1 16:30:05 AEST 2023


I've also done a fair amount of work breaking up and down old PCs and 
Macintoshes, in the early 2000s.

The business owner talked about getting a furnace built to render down 
the old CRTs, but it hadn't happened by the time I left that company, 
and I doubt it had happened by the time of the Chirstchurch earthquakes 
2010-2011. I do know we sent the metal cases off to the local metal 
recyclers. But what happened to the boards, I have no idea.

Wesley Parish

On 31/07/23 08:33, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Grant Taylor via COFF wrote in
>   <5ec59010-d848-8adc-9872-7a4e6fb599eb at tnetconsulting.net>:
>   |On 7/29/23 6:26 PM, segaloco via COFF wrote:
>   |> Howdy folks, I wanted to get some thoughts and experiences with regards
>   |> to what sort of EOL handling of mainframe/mini hardware was typical.
>   |
>   |My experience disposing of things is from the late '90s and early '00s
>   |and is for much smaller things.  So it may very well differ.
>
> Around 1990(+ a bit) i worked during holiday for a company which
> collected old computers, monitors etc from authorities and, well,
> other companies.  Myriads of (plastic) keyboards, cables, etc., it
> all was thrown into containers (ie rolled down the floor, then
> blindly thrown), all mixed up.  I (a prowd owner of an i386 DX 40
> by that time iirc) shortly thought of, you know, but to no avail.
> I have no idea, i am pretty sure it all went down to Africa or
> India, where young people and other unlucky then had to pave their
> way through, as is still mostly the case today, _i think_.  Let's
> just hope they do not have illnesses because of the (likely) toxic
> interour.  (Having said that, i myself also worked for a short
> time for another company where i was crawling through cable and
> such shafts, .. without any mask ..  Not to talk about waste
> incinator and chemical industry here (Merck and Rhön etc), they
> were also filter free, .. and then i was also smoking for over
> twenty years.  How did i end up here now??  I hope i am still from
> one of those generations which can live a hundred years
> nonetheless.)
>
> --steffen
> |
> |Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
> |der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
> |einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
> |(By Robert Gernhardt)


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