My brother inlaw accumulated a fair bit of stuff when he had a '42 WLA single and an outfit as well....eventually he sold the single and gave the outfit to his son....then looking at the bits left over they simply bought another frame from the States and now have a nice new third WLA.....

Not computer bits...but bits all the same...

I have quite a bit of old parts... forced myself to pitch a few things here and there, but I likely could build 4-6 computers if I wanted... granted, 1 of those would be good...

I can get kind of crazy but my dad has a full room full of old computer parts.

I have a whole closet full. Actuall still have a P100 processor and the old memory chips that came with it. Even have a ISA SoundBlaster16 audio card. Still even have MSDos on floppys. You name it I probably have it somewhere. My wife calls me a horder and she's probably right.

Just checked....the WEI for the drive went from 5.0 to 6.8 ....not bad 'for nothing' ....

And you now have an unused laptop platter drive, another good spare part to have . 

Side note - You fellas should really be thinking about us creating a giant robot using spare parts to destroy some segment of the world.  I shall provide the torso.

I think I have one somewhere...

Yeah, I strip down those less than desirable rigs for their working parts. I kept some cases but tossed quite a few because they were those damned mini towers or just plain ugly with awkward interior setups that are just hard to work with.

I've pretty much kept everything internal, hence the growing pile o' bits... which could turn into newer bits if the current trend continues.

So, does wifey refuse to enter the parts room... handing you all the cleaning equipment to do it yourself?  I got that until I put it all neatly into containers and drawers, etc.  I still get the vaccy and mop foisted upon me some days, but not as often now.

That's mostly how it works around here, replaced parts going to other machines, whether they be ours or the extended family's.  Thing is, sooner or later you run out of rigs to put it all in, and then the pile grows, and grows, and grows.  I've been pretty lucky with my higher-end GFX cards, though. Fortunately, I've always found those a home... but I do have a swag of Nvidia 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx series cards, and a few ATI's.

I don't recall seeing one while sifting through things, not that I was ever really looking for one.  I'll have another look, but don't hold your breath cos I somehow don't think so.

Now you mention it!   I might look into something that'll go fetch coffee/tea and lunch/dinner, etc.... and something to scare off sales people and religious canvassers, cos the dog's too small to menace/intimidate anything and thus is useless.  Yeah, I really hate it when I'm truly engrossed in something and the doorbell rings and it's some religious canvasser or salesperson trying to sell me shit I don't want or need... like the other day when I had my hands full fitting a CPU cooler and couldn't answer the door straight away.

Ding dong, ding dong repeatedly: "Look, we know you're in there, we can hear you moving around through the screen door."

"What do you want?"

"We Just want to pass on the good news about the Lord and his second coming"

"Look, sorry, but I'm really busy right now and can't come to the door."

Ding dong, ding dong, ding, dong..... "But sir, your life depends on it."

"Look, I'm really not interested and I really do have my hands full."

Ding dong, ding dong, ding, dong more frantically this time: "But sir, we need to pass on this important news."

Ah, the CPU cooler is secure and at last I can go to the door....

"Listen, you pair of gobshites, I asked you nicely three times, now [somewhat loudly] what part of fuck off don't you understand?"

I really hate having to resort to such tactics and possibly upsetting my neighbours, but what do you do when they refuse to leave?  Worse still, I have a "Salespersons and Religious People, Please do NOT Knock" sign posted on the door.  Just because I have a doorbell the bastards think they can ignore it.... shall have to upgrade my sign to include it as well, then.

Anyhow, back on topic....

Exactly, and there's some old applications people like to use that don't run on new machines.  A former neighbour of mine refused to let go of his Win 95 rig because it ran things he said wouldn't run on 98.... well that was his story, back when Vista had been on the shelves for 12 months or more.  I tend to think it was more that he was as tight as a fishes bum and didn't want to spend on 98 or beyond.... but that's another story.  What I'm hearing more as a reason to go with the older stuff these days is the inability [lack of funds] to upgrade to newer equipment, so I guess that's reason enough for me to hang on to this stockpile of old stuff.

*EDIT*

Oh yeah, with regard to the religious canvassers.  People have the right to believe in what they want.  I'm fine with that!  What I'm not fine with is having them calling at my door with it, especially when I have a sign specifically asking them not to. 

I border on hording when it comes to old PC parts. The worst part is that I don't see where I could possibly use any of them, especially the memory sticks. I have one old PC I'm toying with making a streaming media center out of if I can figure out how to make it part of my network with ubuntu on it. I did revive a Dell 2650 with 256mb ram with Macpup 528 (linux) and it runs amazingly well. (If you're looking for a really good version of linux to run on something that has the absolute bare minimum in hardware, etc., Macpup is fantastic)

I also have a crapload of old software (games, MS Publisher, Corell SUite, and unopened version of MS 3.1 that I found cleaning out my old office. I've installed some of the games on my PC for my daughter to play but they are so old, Windows 7 doesn't like to play with them very well.

I think I even have a couple video cards.

I don't know why I can't just throw this stuff away. lol

You got it. THAT IS JUST HOW IT WORKS.