Over the last few years of computer and peripheral ownership, I’ve accumulated several cables, including FireWire, USB 2, and others. I’ve set aside those I know I won’t need anymore but don’t want to throw them away.
Any ideas what kinds of organizations, groups or people I could give these to?
Call your local high school, ask if they want them. High schools are almost always willing to accept donations of computer gear.
I pick up computer stuff all the time at Goodwill. They’ll happily take anything recent off your hands.
That means you don’t waste their time with old parallel printer cables and such.
You can always try http://www.freecycle.org/
I’ve gotten rid of plenty of stuff with them, and from what I’ve seen listed on there, it’s almost nothing but odds and ends. But since you have no location listed, I can’t find out if there’s a group near you.
You put them in a drawer because you never know, you might need them someday. Three years from now, when you buy a FireWire/USB2/Whatever device, and you need a cable, you forget that you have one and run out to the store to buy a new one. A week later you’ll find the drawer with the cables in it, and curse yourself for keeping them for 3 years and then forgetting to use them.
Thanks for all the great suggestions, guys!
Sell them on eBay.
I’m packing up for a move that’s less than a week away, and just yesterday literally chucked into the trash a whole mess of old cables and computer stuff that will never see the light of day again, high school or thrift shop or Freecycle or no.
Not just “infinitely redundant cables” like Yet Another USB Cable That Came With My Device, but things like a 9-pin serial cradle for my old, old Palm V device that died long ago; 25-pin to Centronics parallel printer cables; 9-pin to 25-pin serial cables to use with a PC and the matching, 25-pin 14.4k US Robotics “Sportster” FAX/Modem; a SCSI two-port, 16-bit ISA card; an ADSL modem; CPU fans for a Socket 7 CPU chip; 72-pin 1MB SIMMs; and more.
Oh, and a couple of parallel-port interface 100MB ZIP drives, and a box full of old ZIP disks with MPGs of Simpsons episodes on them that would easily fit on a single under-$100 keychain USB flash drive nowadays.
Gad, just typing those things is a ten-year flashback. I even chucked away a dust-covered (FILTHY), but possibly still working, letter-sized UMAX flatbed color scanner with a SCSI interface and God knows what type of current software support.
I think I was really supposed to recycle a good part of these things somewhere for the silicon and whatnot in the board components, but it’s too late now. For future reference, though – does anybody know where?
Check with your county, see if they have a recycling center for those sorts of things.
Mine has one, with specific days you can drive up and dump your computer junk.
ETA: That was for robardin, not the OP, who should not toss modern cables!