$18 SE/30 and First Recap + A Rant

[CompuNurd]

Let me start this off with a rant: The only electronics recycling facility within close distance is overpriced, unorganized, dirty, smelly, and has downright rude staff. I was going from thrift store to thrift store when I stumbled upon a sign reading "computer recycling". I decided to check it out, thinking they may have a few "breadbox" Macs. The first time I went, I looked, but didn't get anything. They didn't seem to mind too much, since they supposedly sell out of the warehouse when they want to move inventory. Suspicious, since they said the Macs haven't moved in five years. The second time I went, I got an SE/30, an IBM 5150 and 5160, 5153 color monitor, and Commodore 64. I spent $90 total, so that is $18 per item! Around the fourth time I went, there was an older man there. I told him I was interested in old Macs from the 1980s, and I picked two systems from the shelves I wanted to get a price on. I picked an SE and SE/30, keep in mind these are pretty banged up, with rust on the plastic (how?) and several adhesive marks and scuffs. He spent, I kid you not, 45 minutes taking pictures of them and sending them to his boss for pricing. There was another guy there who was very nice and wanted to help me find a good system, but they can't sell anything without going through their boss. Some time later, the older man is talking to his boss, and I hear the owner/boss say over the phone, "$250 now or they are going on eBay tomorrow." I wait for him to get off the phone, then he walks back to the SE (no /30) and asks $250, or $350 with keyboard and mouse. I told him I would be lucky to get $45 for that, then, obviously wanting to get rid of me, he smiles and says, "Thanks for looking." I asked him if he wanted to take my number, in case they didn't sell them for that price, then he said he would rather take a hammer to them. Obviously, I will not be returning. It is amazing that I got out of there the first time with what I did for $90. Also, judging the way the man was talking to his boss on the phone, I had a feeling they knew who I was, and thought I was trying to rip them off. They probably just wanted to waste my time and give an outrageous price so I wouldn't come back, but who knows?

When I left there I got the $20 Strawberry iMac at a garage sale, then bought a boxed Mac SE with all software, manuals, keyboard, and mouse for $90 shipped on eBay. Did I also mention both were in immaculate condition and fully functional?

At the time I bought it, I didn't know how sought after it was; I only picked it because it was the only one that booted to the OS and wasn't in horrific condition. I started reading about how the caps go bad, and how to fix them, but not until I got a floppy disk stuck in the drive and broke the gears in the eject motor. It sat on display for a while, because I was still afraid of opening something with a CRT in it. I soon overcame that fear, and cracked it open. I pulled out the motherboard, looked at the caps, and saw the area around them was not as shiny as the rest of the board. I ordered an SE/30 board recap kit from trag, and heated up the crap $15 iron from Radio Shack. I tried to desolder the caps with two irons, then I tried to use one, then I got the pliers and literally snapped the caps off the board (please, don't do this!). Luckily, I didn't lift a single pad! I took the board outside and power washed it to get all the cap goop off, and dried most of it with an air compressor. Not sure if I recommend power washing your board, but as long as there are no batteries on the board and you dry it with compressed air immediately after, you should be fine. The reason for this is regular tap water has minerals in it, which can leave a residue on the board. This residue is what makes the water conductive, so it is not something you should let build up on your boards.

These Radio Shack irons are so cheap, I had to take a block of sand paper to the tip every 2 caps to remove oxidation! Definitely not the iron of choice for SMD work. Surprisingly, I was able to do the entire recap with one tip on one crap $15 soldering iron!

After I got everything back together, I fired it up.

Full sound, no Simasimac, no smoke, no burning smell. It booted right to the OS first try! Before, there was a 50/50 chance of Simasimac, so I power cycled it a few times, and no Simasimac! I also got some eject motors from CC, so the SE/30 is fully functional!

 

[Elfen]

Congrats on the SE/30!

As for the recycling center - F'em. It is obvious one of workers or kid thereof old the boss, "Well, I can sell them at Ebay for $300 a shot!" which is BS. I been through something similar with Advanced Recovery long ago, when a friend owned it. It was when he sold his recycling business for $30M (I kid you not!) the new owner stated that he could sell anything there at full market value - what ever that meant. Personally I know that the Gov't of India used to go there and buy cargo shipping containers of electronic junk at $1M per container, which they use to recycle the parts and teach at their tech schools; they used empty out the yard 3X a year! But my friend literally gave me stuff off the pile, all he asks is that I did not get hurt climbing about the mountains of stuff that was there! Most of my Macs were from this place, and at the time all working! Further more, he made money taking stuff - I think it was $8/pound or something lie that. Bloomberg Inc. was one of his biggest customers - emptying out their offices of their computers when they upgraded every 9 months... at $8/pound! So he (like most recycling centers) were making money both ways! But the new owner, Shit... he went greedy. Like you, I could not touch a Mac unless the "Boss looked at it" and it was over (back then around 2000) $150 - and that was for a Plus! One time he had a shit-load - thousands(!) - of LCs from the local school district that upgraded to G3s, and I tried to buy one, he wanted $400 for the box - KB and mon was $300 extra and he went into the LC and pulled the HD and ethernet card out of it demanding another $200 for each! I told him to take it and shove it. That was the last time I went there.

Business is business, that's one thing I understand. But when business owners want to give their small customers the shaft because they think they can get more elsewhere, they can go screw themselves into a light socket and flick the switch up and down all they want! they lose me as their customers, and I usually bring many friends with me to buy so they can have more business but no more. They lose a lot with me.

 

[olePigeon]

Yeah, those places are hit and miss.  I've run into recycler guys exactly like that guy.  I probably ran into the worst of the worst at one point.  I think there's a thread on here somewhere, but there was a guy with a new old stock original 128k Mac.  He was trying to sell it for gold scrap.  I emailed him telling him it was worth more as a collectable vintage computer than any gold he could get out of it.  The guy was off his rocker.  He wrote back a horrible email about how he'd rather destroy it than let a nerd get it.  Filled with nothing but insults, ranting about his Alfa Rameo, blah blah.  It was so random and weird.  Couldn't tell if he really was in the business, or simply got off trolling random people.  Maybe XBox Live was down and he didn't know what to do.

Sometimes you have recycler people who are in it the business because they like technology in general, and see good value in recycling it (not for scrap, but as in working products.)  Excess Solutions is one of those places, so is Weird Stuff.  The staff there are genuinely interested in the stuff, and often very knowledgeable.

 

[trag]

The guy was off his rocker.  He wrote back a horrible email about how he'd rather destroy it than let a nerd get it.  Filled with nothing but insults, ranting about his Alfa Rameo, blah blah.  It was so random and weird.  Couldn't tell if he really was in the business, or simply got off trolling random people.

I think that sometimes you may run into the red-neck recyclers who have a chip on their shoulder about "college boys". I've seen that more than I like (though not with recyclers) here in Texas. Then again, it may just be that they've been sniffing the gold reclamation chemicals a little too long.

It seems that Goodwill is contracted to do all of Austin's computer recycling, and if they don't feel like putting something on the sales floor, there's no avenue that will let you get a look at it.

Jeff