For some reason the only electronics I get asked for help with are literal e-waste which existence must be considered crime against computing, engineering and even humanity. Because of that, my success rate is less than half of cases. Is it bad, or should I consider it good that people only call me in worst possible cases where everything else failed?

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 32 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I beg friends for ewaste and harvest their organs.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 24 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Even an Oxford comma couldn't save that one.

[–] waldfee@feddit.org 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

relevant xkcd My all-time favorite example of syntactic ambiguity comes from Wikipedia: 'Charlotte's Web is a children's novel by American author E. B. White, about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte.'

[–] mogranja@lemmy.eco.br 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And what do you do with the ewaste?

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Upgrade my own stuff and servers.
Have spare parts to fix my stuff or quick fixes for friends.
If I can repair it and do not need it, I found some groups that take them for refugees and needy folks or they go by word of mouth to friends in need. I fix them in a very lazy fashion.
I live pretty close to one of the local recycling spots, so I can quickly and safely dispose of stuff I cannot use.
eBay is great.

I have gotten a ton of free storage this way, makes it totally worth it. If they give me a few old laptops, I put all their data on one drive and take the rest.

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And their organs?

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 11 points 6 days ago

The nearest church choir gets those

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Pretty sure I could build a battery bank that would rival styropyro's most recent one.

[–] fading_person@lemmy.zip 21 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Nothing is e-waste if you're skilled enough

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Anything made by Dell is. Try disassembling one of their mini PCs. I don't know what tools they have at the dell manufacturing plant, but they must not be made of normal matter that's all I can tell you, because otherwise how have they managed to put a screw that holds the PSU in place, under the PSU itself.

[–] fading_person@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

I'd really give it a try, if I had one. I find some pleasure in trying to fix and find new life for unused hardware, no matter how old or weird it is. Well, sometimes I fail, but I keep it in case I get nrw ideas for it in the future.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

what do you do with a laptop that has 4 GB ram and a HDD of the slower kind? xfce is not really more memory efficient than plasma.

[–] fading_person@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 days ago

4 gb is pretty reasonable for light usage. The hdd can be formatted as btrfs with compression for better performance. I'd also consider replacing the hdd with an ssd and using the hdd as extra storage, if possible.

[–] Broadfern@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

HP laptops are like that, unfortunately.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 6 days ago

Never hear of them. But it sounds like the famous brand du

[–] drath@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Acers are like that in my experience. The last one I got with the complaint of "being too slow" had half the case empty because they re-used the old case that was supposed to have a CD-drive in it. And, in it's place, there was a fan with no heatpipes, no radiator, nor even any holes on the bottom, just some spacers so it sucks and recirculates the air from within the case, and blows it somewhere in the general direction of the motherboard, where, a fucking mile away, there's a G-shaped piece of foil with just TWO fins slapped on top of the CPU.

The two gigs of ram are, of course, soldered on, and there was already an ssd (though, on SATA and no secondary port either). So I just settled on blowing the dust out and swapping whatever sludge they had for a decent thermal paste, put Xubuntu on it and advised the nearest recycling plant's address. Of course, I could drill some holes and hack some better thermal solution, but I found that this 5+yr Celeron machine with 720p TN panel is just not worth any effort. It was brand new, btw...