Stingy bast"£$rd or sustainable?

[Gledison]

Hey guys,
I was just throwing my garbage away today and I found in my building's disposables room 4 old computers. a Pentium 4 and 5. 
im wondering if I could do some recycling on the elcronic parts such as IC's , capacitors , etc..
The power supplies are also available (lots of nice cables )
please let me know if you  think that there is any part that might be usefull for pedal building.
Cheers

[nieradka]

Be careful harvesting electolytics, look up capacitor plague, there was a rash of that in computers from the late 90s to mid 2000s. I cant think of much else, its likely mostly smd, and I cant think of a useful IC. The powersupply might provide something, at minium some wiring. Irrelevant to pedal building but always take apart the hard drives for their magnets. 

[hammerheadmusicman]

May be some useable ribbon cable?

sometimes the ribbon is ok in those things, sometimes too thin.

[midwayfair]

Power supplies have a good half dozen transformers in them. Fuzz? Mini amp?

[culturejam]

My first thought would be to make a media server. A Pentium-4 ought to be able to do a decent job at that.

[juansolo]

70s-80s Hi-Fi's, tape decks and video recorders have been some absolute treasure troves for us. Hell yes get in there scrounging.

[timbo_93631]

Yeah, computers never really yield too much for me, but 70's and 80's hifi, and again the biggie, organs.  I think the topcoat wire I've harvested from 70's Hammond and Lowrey transistor organs is some of the best stuff I've ever had.  The other nice thing in them is the sea of 100v film caps, house numbered transistors, and inductors to play with.

[Strategy]

Some cities have recyclers specializing in computer equipment. In Portland we have an amazing not for profit called Free Geek. You can volunteer there X number of hours and get a free salvage souped up linux box from them. This organization has connected thousands of low income Portlander's to computing and the internet. Their thrift store is a fun source of enclosures. You can bring them almost any electronics

http://www.freegeek.org/

I think this type of place is becoming more and more common

Electronics are a huge source of toxic landfill stuff and should be disposed of consciously! You are right to try to salvage.

[alanp]

My first thought would be to make a media server. A Pentium-4 ought to be able to do a decent job at that.

+1

Buy a copy of Windows Home Server and a few cheap WD Green drives.