SALVAGE

I find so much electronics on the street in my town. All my hifi speakers and some wharfdales I dont use, printers, flat screen tvs, a box full of manga VHS I didnt keep cause no player (well I kept 3)..my amp, the busted PA speakers Im using as a table for my laptop right now. I love making as use for this stuff. Today I found a flat screen tv/DVD combo, and althought the screen was cracked I got a cd to play. I put in a throw away just like last time cause these thing eat cds. Cracked screen had a nice aesthetic and whilst I was fkn with the menu that I couldnt read, I was trying to dim the screen to save on power. For some reason I went through every menu the function obscured, even tho I pretty much knew Id exhausted the screen options. I did this until I selected a function that locked the settings and so turned it off to reset it. Of course it wouldnt turn on again from standby and is basically fuarrrked now. So there goes my short lived attempt at having a cd player in my kitchin next to the radio I also found. I even tried pluggin my PS4 into as this turns on my other tv when it boots up thru the hdmi. This didnt work however. Im gonna leave it til tmr, I think my only other option is a remote of amazon. I just wanna play some tunes on this glitchy fuarrrked up thing. You have any good salvage?

found a classic blue linksys router and a home pc with no passwords, unencrypted, tax returns, ssns, and all last summer on trash day. people will put anything in the garbage, honestly. user accounts, pictures, documents, from every member of the family, just out on the curb. yeesh. haven't tried to get the router working yet.

>>2816 I found one of those really old film projectors, don't ask me why the fuarrrk someone thought to put that out on the road but I took it home and am now tryna find some film for it.

>>2817 I should have taken a busted old pc I saw just for the hd to be honest. My salvage stats must be quite high now. So much of my stuff has just been left for people to take. One time I needed a drum stool then walked past a music shop and there was one left there, it cant be adjusted so they couldnt sell, perfect for me tho. I also have a sweet tiger picture on my wall that was just left against a tree....oh and a bike I fixed once

I'm from France so there are a bunch of old Minitels lying around everywere. I got myself one and i'm trying to transform it into a dumb terminal. Enough guides online, although not everyone says the same, the issue is that the minitel uses different voltage so i'm trying to make an adapter that works, first real electronics project it's pretty fun.

>>2853 I wish I had a minitel terminal to mess around with, they have this nice aesthetic but unfortunately the videotel terminals that were used in the us are incredibly rare and it would probably be worth less to get a minitel shipped over than try to find a videotel terminal.

>>2816 I have a small collection of old car stereos from going to the junkyard. Junkyards are a wonderful place.

my first ssd. i remember seeing that old rained on pc then running home to get a screw driver. i got what i thought was a salvagable gpu but it was corroded beyond repair. i ll post a pic when im home

I found a big old crt tv, it doesn't have any VGA ports though, what are the best kind of converters?

>>2971 Clarification, it has the typical yellow white red input cables and 2 SCART ports

If any of you live in the US in a suburb, where do you go to find this kind of stuff? Even if it's not literal dumpster diving if I could find some really underpriced cheap tech at a thrift store or something that would be great, but I've never seen any good deals or even interesting products anywhere.

>>2972 just look for composite video to VGA converters online. they can be had for very cheap.

>>3124 Late reply, but Ill still bite: I live in a suburb of a big city, where I would look is the following: Thrift stores like Salvation Army and Goodwill. FreeGeek might have a location near your city, they have a ton of older tech for good prices and great volunteer and learning opportunities. Ebay has good stuff too Just in general keep you eyes peeled, I saw some older gentleman on YT who was giving away free commodore amigas in perfect condition, Id totally get one if I had the space for it.

Buuuump from the dead.

>>2853 I am so sad your mintel network shut down. It seemed so interesting.

I salvage 18650 li-ion cells from dead laptop batteries. More often than not some of them can still hold a charge. I test them and use the viable ones to fill up empty chinese power-banks.

>>5341 and someday ill drop the dead ones at a recycling center

>>5341 Good idea. I should try to sell this VAIO I found and fixed. No spare power adapter though.

>>5341 That's the problem with 18650 cells, some of them discharge faster, while some are still half full, the controller charges the fully discharged cell, while the "half full" one gets overcharged causing them to wear faster. Usually it's one or few bad cells, and the rest is still fine. btw how safe is it to repair my laptop battery pack by replacing fresh cells?

>>5341 cyb af pic

>>5360 It's safe if you can do it both without damaging the cells/wrapping and protecting them in use. I've yet to find a battery I could pull apart without completely destroying it.

>>5342 You might want to tape the ends up on those. If the box gets jostled they could possible short and start a nasty fire.

>>3124 Cruise around poorer neighborhoods, particularly apartment complexes. People buy a new tv or whatever and throw the old one out, or they get evicted and the manager throws all their stuff by the dumpster.

>>5383 They're the dead ones and they are super dead. They couldn't start a fire even if i wanted them to.

>>5384 >>3124 Pics from under the staircase in one of my uncle's apartment building, where i live. There are 2 CRT monitors. 5 TVs, an OG bondi blue, other stuff... I dont know what to with them. I live in a city, and most of the time when i see a crt tv on the street a metal-scrapper busted it open to take the copper wiring. The scrappers do rounds on garbage day and gather up copper/lead pipes, tvs, fridge compressors, ceiling fan motors, and whatever else.

>>5387 Are they working?

>>5522 yup

>>5360 >btw how safe is it to repair my laptop battery pack by replacing fresh cells? this: https://www.karosium.com/2016/09/the-weird-fuses-in-laptop-batteries.html tldr: probably wont work, laptop batteries have non-resetable "externally triggerable" fuses that go off when they detect that a cell is missing.

>>5536 The blog you linked and few topics at thinkpads.com discuss successful thinkpad battery recelling and adjusting controller for reporting proper capacity of newer cells, there are examples for some generations.

>>5539 oh it does huh. guess im fuarrrking stupid nvm.

Hi guys, EE senior grad here. My research topic is "electronics salvaging, repairing, disassembling and reusing." I live in third world soykaf hole, and it's actually quite hard to find electronics laying around in the street. But they still end up at landfills and junkyards. Right now, I'm doing a case study involving some ATX's inner components, and what you can do with them. There's a lot of capacitors, some nice thyristors, transformers, heatsinks, lots of cables etc. I'll probably make a 5V source out of it and write about it in the paper. Whenever i have anything substantial, I'll bring to you guys.

I found some abandoned speakers, thinking about giving them a second life. Do you think chang's amplifier will be ok?

Go for it!

Quick question lains. I used to find a BUNCH of salvage material near a store next to the dump in my city. They would take every electronic that had a chance of working and put them into this large warehouse. Long story short the place eventually went bust. How can I "get access" to the heap of electrical parts that are bound the be in the junkyards jurisdiction (without obviously working there). Is it reasonable to assume they just sell it as scrap metal? Considering what I found years ago its definitely worth a shot to investigate.

>>5734 >How can I "get access" to the heap of electrical parts that are bound the be in the junkyards jurisdiction (without obviously working there). >>5734

>>2853 Please document these things!

>>5735 Good idea, that way you can get forceful intrusion (or whatever it's called) and properly damage charges on top of trespassing when you get caught. There's a reason a locked fence or gate is avoided when dumpster diving.

>>5740 "Avoided" is code for "circumvented".

>>2853 >the keyboard Thought I was having a stroke.

>>5741 And jail is just fancy name for a room. Can we stop with the idiocy?

Hello lainons. I live near the woods, and everybody uses the zone to dump their trash (very trashy people indeed). They threw three old televisions, but removed the electron gun. I'm studying physics, so salvaging one was a good investment in experiments to come, but thats the only part they took (probably because the copper wiring). Does anyone have ideas on what to do with them? A friend says i could use the tv screen as a giant magnifier or stuff like that.

>>6150 If they're rear projection TV's then yes, the screen on those is a giant fresnel lens. If they're CRT, which is what it sounds like and would be the likely candidate for dumping, then maybe there's some electronic stuff in them. Mostly it's just a big fuarrrking glass bulb full of lead and mercury. If you wanted to be a mensch you could look to see if your city has a free hazardous waste recycling day and take them in. Does my post look unautomated yet?

Every now and then I see monitors and the like laying around near failing businesses but I get freaked out by the possibility of bed bugs, or just other bugs in general inside if it's been outside for a while. I don't really have the space to leave it outside to clean it out or whatnot where I live too, it's frustrating seeing this just pile up but if I do grab it it's just one egg away from being a nightmare situation.

Hello. I have this LCD screen I salvaged from a car GPS system. Is there any way to use it as a small monitor for my phone or computer? Can you slap a HDMI output on it?

>>6170 I couldnt find the datasheet for this exact panel but i found one for its next of kin. It takes an analog signal, PAL or NTSC. Check page 4 of the datasheet for pin desciption of what i assume is the ribbon cable.

>>2853 hi, fellow baguette here, worked in the administration as a summer job once and they had one in the archives among tons of paper and cardboard boxes, didn't have the guts to ste-borrow it on the long term. I'd like to experiment with one though, where do you find them ?

>>5718 I made a setup and it works fine just check the wiring not to short the output and check the voltage

>>6170 Not worth your time anon

>>6170 it probably works with a universal lvds driver board and get better results with VGA/DVI because HDMI often needs a EDID board adapter to get the right frame/res

https://archive.org/details/Blacklisted411-Volume8Issue3/page/n41/mode/2up

>>6315 Article also has a list of websites to visit.

>>6229 This, if it was a good screen then sure, but you're probably better off just buying some mini-monitor off of amazon.

is pic related salvageable?

>>6491 Anything wrong with it besides the center of the left top speaker being pushed in? That piece is called the dust cap, and as the name might suggest, isn't integral to the speaker's functioning... usually. If it gets damaged like that sometimes it'll buzz or affect the sound. You can usually just open up the speaker and pop it out again, or order a replacement. As for any electronic issues, as long as the drivers themselves function there's very little that can go wrong that you wouldn't be able to fix easily. However, if the driver is dead the speaker is essentially "totalled". You could see if you can find a cheap replacement but chances are you're better off just pulling any parts you want and throwing it out.

>>5524 Mines much more powerful as its a 400mhz g3 but those models have the ability to put in g4 upgrade cards as well. Id suggest to put 1-2 tb in the g3 and install linux. They make great jukeboxes. Also I suggest maxxing out the ram too. Install os x first though as you have to run a patching program thatll allow you to put more storage in it (itll write to the boot that higher capacities are recognizable). urv a lucky man

>>5734 I have a recycle center near me and I can access it at any time. Basically all you need to do is call them first and say youre an artist looking for scrap for an installation project. I actually went there because I am an artist but the excuse works for basically anyone.

>>2853 Based. Now I want one.

>>6492 >Anything wrong with it besides the center of the left top speaker being pushed in? Center left is pushed in and center right has a tear, but the drivers seem to work just fine. ill try to pop them out, but i assume ill have to replace the one thats teared up. Maybe i can loot a dustcap somewhere. Follow-up: these long bois are way too long, could i just like cut them in half and make them smaller or alternatively combine both long bois into one to make a soundbar? i assume it wouldnt mess up the harmonics too much

is there a way to recycle pcbs? ( I don't mean getting the components out, I know this is possible. )

>>2853 Minitels are dope af, with the integrated keyboard and CRT I bet you could make cool stuff instead of dialing 3615 SEXE

Found an old Hewlett-Packard laptop from the early 2000's stashed away in an office building. Absolute unbootable wreck but the LCD panel was surprisingly not only funcional but without any scratches. Bought a cheap controller for it and attached everything to half of the lap rest I found with the laptop. Very quickly put together but gets the job done, and I'd be using it as a secondary screen for my ThinkPad if I was actually going out. So it's currently just sitting on my desk as an extra monitor for my desktop; can even be used it in portrait mode at certain angles without being too soykafty.

>6564 >is there a way to recycle pcbs? ( I don't mean getting the components out, I know this is possible. ) yeah you sharpen them and make knifes out of them

>>6500 I'm assuming it's long to give the sub a cavity to resonate in. If that's the case it will fuarrrk it up if you chop it down.

>>6618 You can make a better shiv using wood and some lacquer, try better.

>>6621 >lacquered wood is harder and sharper than fiberglassed copper lolwat

I found 2 fully functional computers One had a 550w PSU and an i5 motherboard the other had a working 1tb HDD filled with a 12 yr old kids minecraft lets plays .. I also always find screens and soykaf but no place to stash them at my small place so I just leave them.

Someone dropped an ibm system x3650 m3 server a while back, idiots couldn't figure out how to take it apart so only the fans and some cables were missing. I've got it running again with some desktop fans for now, I also fixed up some of the cables as best as I could, and I wanna get some drives for it next, I have plans for it...

>>9205 you hit the jackpot lol

This used to be easier to do. The fact that it is harder is a good thing though because it means there's more awareness and more facilities to dispose of old tech rather than tossing it. Has anyone here tried college dorms at end of term? Particularly the end of spring. They bring dumpsters in and all the dumb rich kids going on summer vacation fill them with.... not just electronics. Expensive clothes, furniture, appliances, jars of change even. It's madness. You used to be able to find computers, I wonder if anyone here has any recent experience? This is a Canada and US thing, dunno about other countries.

>>9226 Shouldn't call them dumb rich kids. It's an understandable and regrettable situation.

>>9240 you're right theyre evil fascist children

>>9240 Why not? Their parents or someone spent money to buy them this stuff and they throw it in the garbage with seemingly no concept that it cost money and resources. They have no idea of the value of material things because they have never had to worry about this. Did they even try to donate these items? Why accumulate it if they are just going to chuck it? Dumb rich kids.... check, check and check.

found my current videocard from trashbin, covered in flour. Works well, good enough to render stuff with Blender!

>>6592 I'd love to know how to do something like this. I have some beginner electrical knowledge from helping out my electrician father out in his job, and some further know-how concerning simple electronic components like resistors, PNPs, etc., but have no idea how to begin doing something like this. What controller are you using here, and what can I read to learn more about this sort of work? What do you recommend to someone who is interested but seemingly lost?

>>9278 >>9278 He used this kind of boards https://www.amazon.de/Audio-Eingang-Controller-Board-hsd190men4-m170en06-43-30pins/dp/B06X9NJ2NR You can get the same cheaper on aliexpress/ebay I cannot recommand them however because for $20 you get a 20" dvi (hdmi) monitor where I live and they don't seem to support every monitor (they claim to do many however because all those laptops screens use the same interface LVDS which is a parallel signal with a high bandwidth yet low requierement of decoder ICs and the like. These boards also take care of the backlight with a CFL driver or a power supply for the led backlight, you really need only to get a compatible flat cable and make an enclosure.

>>3124 I live in Los Angeles and I can usually find some good stuff on Craigslist. I got 2 CRTs as well as a dual xeon x5660 rig for free.

>>3124 what about europoors, where can i salvage things? i don't know where to search really.

>>9887 You might go dumpster diving behind a store that sells TVs and computers. Note that if there is a lock on the dumpster or the area is fenced, you shouldn't go there. Honestly, I would just go to a recycling center and buy stuff from there (it's usually cheap). You should check larger flea markets too. Another option is to look for cheap (or even free) stuff on some local online auction site.

>>9887 usa user here, im not sure if in your country they have these commonly available, but places where ive been able to snag some great finds are: thrift stores & 2nd hand stores flea markets (both and the above are hit or miss some days) discount merchandise stores (for electronic knick knacks for scrap and the like) neighborhoods before bulk trash day (should your local municipality provide this service) I've been able to snag semi-functional netbooks, notebooks, fully functional monitors, etc. If you live in a area with a high amount of illegal migrants, usually if they flea the country they leave a lot of their belongings behind. I've found old phones, miniature refrigerators, tvs, projectors, etc.

>>9887 https://trashwiki.org/en/Main_Page There is a pretty decent "scene" in Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Northern Italy, Spanish resorts and France. Anything from supermarket food to slightly outdated electronics. Things go scarcer as you go to the East and South.

i've once found a fully working CRT TV, it was pretty large and i couldn't store it at my place at the time, so i gave it to my friend so he would store it for me until i can take it from him, he was talking about destroying it and selling some parts but i told him not to, after a month or something like that i called him if i could pick it up, but he told me he destroyed it thinking the parts are expensive but after checking online it turned out they were worth maybe 10$, i've also found a Shrek 1 VHS which is pretty cool

A junk shop near me had an old old AM/FM radio. The FM side I didn't care about. The AM side is sonic gold though. Until you find a radio station it can pick up, the noise is so freaking dope. Using a field recorder I managed to get some excellent samples to make percussion for electronic music.

I went with a friend around my town and encountered a functional chainsaw, some batteries, a skate and an insane amount of speakers

>>6491 >>6500 I have had success pulling out dents in speaker cones without opening the boxes with double-sided tape on the eraser end of pencils. Like with car dent-removal you want to begin at the outer edges of the dents. And no, you do not want to cut them down. The low-pitch audio frequencies require long air passages inside the speaker box to resonate properly.

Used batteries that end up in the battery disposal bin are not always completely dead. A lot still have some juice left in them and some are even completely unused. I haven't bought 9V, AA or AAA in many years thanks to this. You can fish them out with a magnet on a string if you're patient or just open the bin if you have the proper tools. I bring home hundreds at a time and check them with a voltmeter and usually about a quarter of all batteries are still usable in some capacity. The batteries that indeed are dead I of course chuck into the ocean where they belong.

got me a new monitor. 20$ edp controller taped to a dead laptop's display works great.

>>10899 >voltmeter telling you anything about capacity of a battery other than nominal voltage electrical engineer here. You're braindead and should waste your time with more productive endeavors, like hauling stones from pile A to pile B

>>10908 but do you *have* to be this much of an asshole about it?

>>10908 They teach this in middle school these days. But at least you got to tell everyone that you're an electrical engineer (you must be smart!).

>>10908 if all electrical engineers are just as braindead today, humanity is doomed. FYI: dead batteries output lower voltage.

>>10908 >Electrical engineering >Difficult o boy lain got taught what a frequency is, the rest of us are peasants

>>10908 did you see the word "capacity" and think they were saying they can use a voltmeter to measure amp-hours

If you're the robot & machine building kind of tinkerer: Try printers. Specifically big old office printers, lainons. I regularly check behind the local school, uni and multistory office complex and have scored three big ones and a bunch of small so far. The loot: three NEMA 23 stepper motors with reasonably good torque ratings, a bunch of nonstandard smaller steppers, their driver boards, DC motors with optical quadrature encoders, actually useful power supplies (36V 0.4A, 24V 4A, etc) and one even came with a industrial Wifi-L>AN box bolted to its side. The older they are the better, the paper feed tends to be the most jucy part. Just don't get toner or paint all over yourself. And the local university lets their old lab equipment sit out back on collection day. We have scored a slightly leaking vacuum pump, servo motors worth about 2k used, and a centrifuge that exploded when we spun it up (oops). Great stuff.

>>9886 Shit, what if you're the same guy on CL who is coming to pick up my computer tomorrow.

>>2816 wish i could find a bunch of tech in my town... nearest interesting thrown out tech (2 broken printers) are like 6km away near and in between a town hall and a hospital(?) and not much else...

I'm trying to splice a 3.5mm audio cable but no signal is coming through. I read somewhere that there could be some kind of coating on each internal wire, but I can't remember what it was called or how to get it off. Does that sound familiar? (The cable was working fine until it got cut in half by a cart wheel.)

>how to get it off. Burn it. The heat from a lighter or a soldering iron should be enough.

I once found this old computer and used its carcass to house my main machine. Then, a few weeks ago, I found this awesome cherry keyboard, probably from the 90s, and I was instantly imagining how badass it would be combined with my computer... but unfortunately, and rather unsurprisingly, I couldn't get it to work. Now, I'm not great at fixing things, so coud some /diy/ guru give their thoughts on this predicament? How do I go about knowing whether it's fixable or not? Incidentally, there's also this HP laptop from 2001. I was told it's beyond saving, but I wonder if I could get something out of it. It looks cool as fuarrrk, I wish I could replace its entrails somehow.

>>12827 First thing I would do is take it apart and check for water damage and busted capacitors. If there is water damage, throw the board out. Well, there are ways to repair PCBs, but I've never done it. If there are dead capacitors, replace them. If the board looks good, check whether the cable is letting current through and not shorted, and replace it if needed. If it still isn't working, some chip probably got burned or something. No point in trying to repair it if you don't have a spare keyboard to canibalize. For the laptop, if you have the monitor's model you may find hdmi adapters for it. Then you could fit some SBC in and figure out an interface for the keyboard (there are "universal" converters you can find online, if the number of pins is correct it's probably good), and the touchpad (most likely usb or ps/2)

>>12827 the laptop pcb i'm sure you can replace with an SBC. RISC-V for extra points, else ARM. thekeyboard connector for the laptop is surely PS/2 or USB disguised as a ribbon cable, you can adapt it, but it will take the most time. for the screen, search in aliexpress and i'm sure you'll find an adapter for that model number, to convert it to HDMI. house all the converters and cables n' soykaf where you had the PCB before, together with the SBC, and you're set. for the cherry keyboard, get yourself either a PS/2 or a DIN connector adapter to USB and you're set. i'm taking the long route with my membrane ergo keyboard and doing DIN to PS/2 to USB

>>12828 >>12829 Thanks a lot! Seems I have of learning to do...

>>12827 For the keyboard, it's hard to help you without knowing what you tried.

>>9887 If you are from a small town/village go to the local recycling center and ask if you could have a look at the electro garbage. I used to do that before some cromagnon decided to break in and steal every gram of copper.

>>5735 If it's a junkyard, you may just ask; chances are that if the person working there is not a cunt, they will allow you to browse a heap of old laptops or something. Just be nice and a decent human being—don't be too greedy and leave that place clean.