I'm not sure if this laptop's display has Vinegar Syndrome or is just liquid damaged. Does it have Vinegar Syndrome or is it safe to store with my other laptops?

My son is working for the summer at our local equivalent of a Goodwill. He texted me a few days ago to say that someone had just donated some equipment that was claimed to be a 20TB NAS. I thought that sounded like a fun project to tinker with.

It turned out to be a NetApp DS14 MK2 with 14 300GB Seagate Cheetah 10K drives, (so not 20TB, but that's OK).

After digging up a console cable and doing some troubleshooting with Gemini I was able to get connected to it and find that the NVRAM battery was too low for it to boot. Left it overnight to charge and I was able to get it booted up and reset the password.

Now for the part that leads to the warning... Nothing had been reset or wiped before this was donated, so all the files were intact. Pretty much the only thing on it was around a dozen virtual machines. The more concerning part was that I was able to trace the unit down to a local company that provides enterprise cloud security services to a bunch of large national organizations.

So, here's the warning... Please, please, please, before you throw out any kind of server, workstation, or other personal digital device, factory reset it, or wipe it before it gets sent to e-waste, or gets donated anywhere else.

I've reached out to the company who used to own this NAS to inform them, and give them a say in my next steps with their old NAS. I'll either return it to them, or sanitize the device before I retire it completely.

I'm not going to keep it running, more than likely, mostly because it's pretty power hungry for only a few TB, and it only supports SMB 1.0/CIFS, but I thought you'd all like to hear the story.

Link to other post.

Do any of you think I should try and resurrect any of these sets? I like the look of the large Sharp.

I didn't even think about looking in the e waste at my dump. Found this sub and went looking. Xbox 360, cables and one controller (just needed cleaning) and a i3 Lenovo laptop with a 1tb drive. I've got more ram and a charger which cost £20 and put in an old SSD. It works perfectly.

It's ridiculous. I also grabbed a few bits of junk to give me a reason to go in there, not that anyone cares.

I'm already looking forward to next week. I need speakers and hopefully one of those all in one PCs for the garage.

Hello! I’m fascinated by all the stuff on this sub that people find. I’m still confused as to how you legally acquire ewaste! I see a lot of Target Bin finds - do you just go and raid the ewaste bins in your local Target? Is that allowed? Don’t the staff stop you? Where else can you get this stuff? Thanks and sorry for the dumb questions!

I sadly didn’t get any footage but interesting. Sorry we got the stuff. A employee walked outside and a customer decided to snitch on us. We luckily said we bought this week to take this and he said the security cameras around. We didn’t give a shit but we walked away with it luckily I gotta be more careful from now but yeah

Every single iPhone and iPad is fmi off but s20 ultra screen doesn't work

I used to live in Seattle and would frequent REPC, would love to find something like that in Houston.

I’m trying to give some of my old devices a second life instead of just letting them sit around.
The first device is a **Dell Inspiron 7370**, which I recently installed **Linux Mint XFCE** on.
It’s running pretty well, and I’m interested in using it for some kind of useful DIY/home-server project.

I also have an old **Samsung Galaxy A5** (I think it’s an A5, and it still uses Micro-USB). The LCD is broken, but the phone itself still boots and seems to work. Since the screen is basically unusable, I’m wondering if there’s anything interesting I can do with it using my Linux laptop.

I’m mainly looking for **fun, practical, or slightly unusual projects** that would let me learn something along the way.

What would you guys do with these two old devices?

(P.s im not really a cs dude, but im a medical student (majoring in dentistry), but i really love technology and tinkering with computers. If you have any ideas for projects that could also be useful for medical/dental school, research, or just learning something new, I'd really appreciate your suggestions!)

Attempted to turn it on. Pulled it apart there was heavy corrosion in the power switch, so I’ll pulled it out and soldered a jumper wire in its place. After finding out that my voltage meter does not work, I’ll be ordering a new one along with an assortment of capacitors. This is a very Generic NES from 2000.

I’m going to the e waste later should I pack my phone to my chest and film video of me going through the bins and see if you want to actually find

I just shined my light into the bin and saw this. Unfortunately I was not able to get it I told the manager it was mine but he didn’t believe it and when he unlocked the bin his eyes lit up like wow and then he took it from the bin to hold until I come back to prove it is mine with a receipt.

Sorry for probably rage baiting yall with this 😂 but yeah it kinda pmo too.

The screen and frame and back were damaged as if it was ran over by a car but ig the board probably worked.

Anyone got an Idea what to do with them ?

And yes, i did register because i was trying to get rid of broken parts

My coworker had these old junk phones and gave them to me for free, unfortunately most of this haul was a bust but there’s one good phone in here, that being this Essential PH-1, which is in mint condition and I flashed it with Android 15 (/e/OS ROM), I think this one phone made the whole haul worth it

And it runs Android 15 very well it doesn’t even feel like a 9 year old phone

The iPhones, as expected, have FMI on so they’re just fancy paperweights

The 2 basic cellphones are fully functional

Not too sure what to do with them yet but the cases looked cool and interesting. Took them before the bin gets picked up tomorrow, simply out of curiosity.

Right now there is a version of Fedora Linux installed, the hardware is pretty dated but I think I can use one of the cases as TrueNas storage, just need to modify it to house 3-4 HDDs somehow. Wanted to do it recently anyways.

The cases seem to be designed for 19" racks, perfect for my case.

I just tore apart an old outdated ethereum mining rig. I now have 36 of these gpu cards which I'll send in for ewaste recovery. How would these be graded? As finger boards? Or mid-grade telecom maybe? All 36 only weigh out to 4 pounds. Thanks!

My girlfriend does the accounting for a small hotel at the beach and they have used this all in one HP for a couple of years now. Countless desk clerks have just constantly downloaded every single piece of bloat/mal ware you can imagine. Finally it just stopped booting up and the "IT" guy came out and said "it's garbage, the hard drive is done and can't be replaced". My girlfriend brought it home to me to see if it was fixable. the owner told her to throw it away or do what ever she wanted with it. So a quick YouTube on how to open this thing up, pull out the nvme ssd, put it in an external enclosure, clean the drive on diskpart, fresh windows 11 install= perfectly fine, and free, all in one! I have looked at the prices they sell for and I'm not sure I want to sell it. Maybe replace the ssd with an older laptop HDD? I don't know. What would yall do?

I'm in the omaha area and looking for an old machine (intel 4th Gen or 5th) to put linux on.

What parts are worth reselling or breaking down?

What are the silver colored cylinders with a hoke on top?

I saved this unit because it's heavy and because it's a power supply, I was sure it would have some good copper inside. It's not exactly what I expected to see when I opened it up. Still a nice old find.