• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Schools are a great place...

L

lyonadmiral

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 3, 2009
Messages
2,431
Location
Peru, New York
As a school board member who was recently (within the past 10 years) a student at the same school I thought I should tell you of my experiences. As a student there was a room filled with old technology; old Apple II's (the black Bell & Howell kind), regular Apple II's, IBM PC's, IBM PC XT's, IBM PCJr's, a DisplayWriter, we even had a 5100 with 8" disk drive option, you name it, the place was just stacked to the gills. Of course with it being stacked for 20 plus years, the thought of surplus selling this equipment wasn't even considered, it was just deep sixed.

The reason I bring this up, is your local school may still have loads of this stuff buried away some place. Take the initiative to talk to your board members, principal's, and Superintendent's about this stuff. They may not know, but they may have someone who works inside the district who does.

I also encourage you to engage yourself in school politics, regardless of whether or not you have children in the school. It has been my experience, some cases bitter, that the school district can be an economic catalyst if it partners with private sector business in the community, to deliver skills necessary for business growth.

Thanks,
Dan

P.S. If there any of you who serve on a school board, I look forward to your experiences, and if any of you have found stuff from a school I'd really like to hear those experiences.
 
Our school district recycled anything older than 2002 a long time ago. :|
They were pretty aggressive about it too.
 
School

School

I work at a school and I die whenever they have the surplus sales. Yes, it's nice we can get a really nice computer for a couple of bucks, but I myself think they should have the seniors test, photograph and get it out on the internet and make some money off of it, plus it would be a great tool for teaching them. They could teach them shipping and so many things, plus make some money for the school. I've seen them throw away Apples, IBM now Dell. I don't think we have a very good system for getting rid of the electronic equipment. They have gold mines, and have to pay people to take it away. I was told the school cannot sell parts, computers, etc. because of some law or something, and if that is the case, we need to change the law.
 
Edlin said:
I was told the school cannot sell parts, computers, etc. because of some law or something, and if that is the case, we need to change the law.
Click to expand...

Education Law varies state to state unfortunately. Here in New York, the local school board has to authorize the surplus, but at as long as it can prove beyond a reasonable doubt, the board can surplus damn near anything it wants.
 
from some guy's blog i was readinging, his theory of "computer recycling" is that the workers take what they want from the computer (as long as the computer isn't too old) and just throw everything else in a dumpster.

My form of computer recycling is, you give me your old computer, I charge nothing and I keep your old computer.
 
There are not enough collectors (or hoarders) to take every machine that gets junked each year, so recycling is not a bad thing.
 
While I may not serve on the school board, I am currently employed (27 years now) at the same High School that I graduated from. I would say that probably 70%-80% of the contents of my collection were decommissioned items that I rescued before they hit the landfill.

We are a private educational organization so I'll have to admit some ignorance of the red tape involved with handling of surplus equipment in a public school system, but the problem of computer disposal is certainly relevant for us also.

As it is right now the all of the school administrators are well aware of my hobby and are more than happy to give me first crack at the surplus. Typically, I'll return the favor by setting aside an evening (after normal work hours of course...) armed with a screw gun and proceed to break down the excess computers into their three basic elements. Metal, plastic and circuit board. The plastic can go into the normal trash without a problem, the metal is recycled for cash, (usually the profits are deposited into one of the club accounts to benefit the kids. Service club, athletics, whatever....) and fortunately our local municipality has an annual scheduled event offering free disposal of electronics. So we just save the boards for then.

It may not be a perfect solution, but over the years I'm sure the school has saved some money and I got to take home some cool toys to boot. Pretty fair trade as far as I'm concerned.
 
Actually that's great...

Actually that's great...

TomFCS said:
While I may not serve on the school board, I am currently employed (27 years now) at the same High School that I graduated from. I would say that probably 70%-80% of the contents of my collection were decommissioned items that I rescued before they hit the landfill.

We are a private educational organization so I'll have to admit some ignorance of the red tape involved with handling of surplus equipment in a public school system, but the problem of computer disposal is certainly relevant for us also.

As it is right now the all of the school administrators are well aware of my hobby and are more than happy to give me first crack at the surplus. Typically, I'll return the favor by setting aside an evening (after normal work hours of course...) armed with a screw gun and proceed to break down the excess computers into their three basic elements. Metal, plastic and circuit board. The plastic can go into the normal trash without a problem, the metal is recycled for cash, (usually the profits are deposited into one of the club accounts to benefit the kids. Service club, athletics, whatever....) and fortunately our local municipality has an annual scheduled event offering free disposal of electronics. So we just save the boards for then.

It may not be a perfect solution, but over the years I'm sure the school has saved some money and I got to take home some cool toys to boot. Pretty fair trade as far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...

I think its amazing that you do that, I wish we could do it here, but neither the facilities exist or am I allowed to do it; that is spend time to break down systems into their basic elements.
 
My kids went to a pre-school that was adjacent to the district's storage area. They would do a clean out every once in a while and would pile stacks and stacks of discards in back of the garage area for recycle. I got permission to poke through the piles a couple of times. Finds included a couple of Apple //e systems, several PS/2 keyboards and a few bits of educational software.

Most of the stuff was 386-Pentium desktops, 14" displays, laser printers and the like.

There were a few IBM Selectrics that I considered but didn't have space for and there was never anything really cool.
 
School collections.

School collections.

I worked for my high school's tech department over last summer, as a lackey. I basically was the muscle for one of the 3 in-house technology department staff members. My job was to move the newest computers into high priority computer labs, move last year's computers into second priority labs, and move the ones from second priority labs into storage, and move whats in storage to a a temporary zone before recycling them.

I got to see some of the high school's secret areas where old technology went to rest. It was quite a treat, I must say, and so I got to see the old rack-mount servers and the machines I used when I was in middle school. Most of the computers were all from 2002 forward, but occasionally I found a gem that had been sitting around for even longer.

I did find a stash of 3 very old Macs (not my usual interest, mind you): a Macintosh classic II, and 2 or so Macintosh SE/30s. I had never heard of these models before, and so I thought that the Mac classic II was worth more of my time. My boss said I could save it for myself. I wish the stupid thing would work.

Schools are definitely a gold mine.
 
School Surplus

School Surplus

I'd like to give them to the kids, since that's why we are where we are. I think it could be used as a great incentive for all, if I could just figure out a way to do it, and of course change the law. I'll put that on my list of things to do!
 
CommodoreKid said:
I worked for my high school's tech department over last summer, as a lackey. I basically was the muscle for one of the 3 in-house technology department staff members. My job was to move the newest computers into high priority computer labs, move last year's computers into second priority labs, and move the ones from second priority labs into storage, and move whats in storage to a a temporary zone before recycling them.

I got to see some of the high school's secret areas where old technology went to rest. It was quite a treat, I must say, and so I got to see the old rack-mount servers and the machines I used when I was in middle school. Most of the computers were all from 2002 forward, but occasionally I found a gem that had been sitting around for even longer.

I did find a stash of 3 very old Macs (not my usual interest, mind you): a Macintosh classic II, and 2 or so Macintosh SE/30s. I had never heard of these models before, and so I thought that the Mac classic II was worth more of my time. My boss said I could save it for myself. I wish the stupid thing would work.

Schools are definitely a gold mine.
Click to expand...

SE/30's are much better machines then the classic II (can hold more ram, have expansion for network cards or cpu upgrades).
 
The SE/30s also hold up better as well. The Classic Series doesn't like sitting idly in storage. They have annoying little capacitors that swell in hot conditions leaking fluid into areas around the different ICs, causing the Checkerboard pattern on the Classic II and the Scrambled screen on the Classic. I've actually restored about three to operational status by doing the craziest thing you can think of: Windexing the motherboard, then towel drying it, then blow drying it.I actually hear putting the board in a dishwasher works.

One of them however will never make another sound effect again, the fluid from the nearby capacitors caked up around the Sound chip, keeping it from working even after a thorough cleaning.

The SE series is made of sterner stuff.

However, as with any old Mac, there's the possibility of the battery corroding, destroying the motherboard if the leak/corrosion goes on long enough. I've found several Macs that had this happen.
 
Here in Charlotte County florida, the school board does have a store that sells off the old surplus. I hit that place about 3 times a month and got some good deals too. Got to know a few workers there and once a Apple 2e showed up with tons of software, I got special prevliage to look through the box and got some disks I was missing with my 2 Apple 2e systems! The whole computer,2 drives,monitor, printer and big box of software was for $50 and I wished I had the money. It stayed on the shelf about a month then was gone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top