Legacy Cabling Fail Barely Averted.

Main > Everything Else

<< < (5/6) > >>

Xiaou2:
Nearly 2 yrs ago... I had a job to remove old networking wires from above the ceiling tiles, in an old building. Some of the tubes were like 4 inches in diameter, packed with wires. I think I recall using an angle grinder, to cut the large stuff down.

In the end... I probably scored around 6 to 8 large boxes packed with copper wire. I think it rang up at about $600 at the scrap yard.
Took me like three 12 hr days of hardcore efforts, to get it all down and out.

Even copper cable that has a coating on it... pays good money. If you have an excess, box it up, and make some money.

Also, if you work with PCs a lot... dont toss those dead power supplies, without cutting the wires off. The wire is great for arcade and electronic projects. And if you dont mind the work... you can dismantle them and get the aluminum heat sinks, and transformers, collected for scrap. I found that those vibrating cutter devices, with a good bi-metal blade on them... will cut wires and components off boards like butter. If you must do this... wear gloves, a fine dust mask, and only do it in a place where you can make a disastrous mess. For most, its totally not worth the efforts.. but, if you have nothing better to do... and or are quite low in funds...

( A sledge/hammer and chisel worked ok for some stripping as well)

BadMouth:
I stare at piles of S-Video cable and try to force myself to throw it away, but I just can't do it.
I can't imagine ever needing anything other than a single 5-6ft cable if I just happen to build a cab with a CRT TV.
...but I've got a few pounds of up to 25ft lengths, switchboxes, etc.

I have many other types of legacy cable too, but the S-video is the one that makes me pissed at myself for not throwing it away.

Howard_Casto:
I think that might be one of the few that's worth holding on to. Network cable, phone cable, vga ect.... that's stuff you know is going to be fairly relevant for years to come because it's in use today. S-video is one of those where if you happen to need one 10 years from now you might pay out the butt for it because they don't make the connectors anymore.

dkersten:
I tend to save any cable that at some time in my life I needed and had to pay a premium to get. Unfortunately this means I have drawers and boxes full of IDE, floppy, parallel, serial, sata, audio, svideo, vga, dvi, nema15, phone, network, and just about any other type of cable you can think of. I recently had my assistant purge my storage room and I cringed as he threw out boxes full of floppy drives, old monitors, keyboards, mice, and specifically old routers, serial boards, and other stuff that cost tens of thousands of dollars 15 years ago that are worthless today. We depreciate all our equipment fully, so we can't get a tax break for donating it, and even churches and schools no longer take tech that is more than a few years old any more unless fully functioning. Without recycle places nearby, the most cost effective means of disposal is the landfill. Anything of remote value I throw on CL for free and some junky will come pick it up. The stacks of old hard drives pile up until I hit the shooting range for proper decommissioning, but then hit the landfill as well. I saved some copper from solid copper heat sinks once, but after a year I had about $2.50 in recyclable copper, so it wasn't worth it.

To this day, there is a high percentage chance that if I throw something away, I will have a need for it the next day or maybe a week later. BUT, if I save it, I will never find it when I DO need it, at least not until the next day when I am throwing some old stuff out (after I already bought an overly expensive replacement). This can be anything from a screw or nut to a cable to a piece of hardware or even a tool.

Howard_Casto:
It would be nice if proprietary cables would go away. Perhaps a universal series of cables..... maybe a 5, 10, 15 and 20 wire available in various thicknesses and lengths with a generic connector on the end that could be adapted like those little usb phone charger adaptor kits. Of course it will never happen because hardware manufacturers want to change you 20 dollars for a 3 dollar cable.

Navigation

 Message Index

Go to full version