Why I.T. Techs Strip

The work area of a tech in the IT field can be likened to an automobile junkyard. Both places will be littered with parts, wires, tools and dusty old metal skeletons some of which may sport innards, but most will have already been stripped of their useful parts.

To those who do not work hands-on with computer repairs, these areas make the tech look like a pack rat in his or her nest. There is, however, a method to this madness of keeping all the old "junky" computers and peripherals.

Yesterday, when relaxing in front of my home computer, I nearly went into a panicked frenzy as my monitor suddenly went black and then proclaimed to me in a bright white box that there was "No Video Input." Forced restart of the computer only brought the monitor back for mere moments. I switched cables. I unplugged and re-plugged everything. I snatched my daughter's monitor and hooked that up. All came up with the same result. Now, as a techie, my brain has ruled out problems with the cable and with the monitor itself. This left the display adapter, which is the actual piece within the computer that contains the monitor connection.

This then, is when I turn to the half-naked body of a computer that sits idly in my corner of the room. Its cover already off, I peruse the exposed innards. Aha! I spot just what I need, a removable display adapter that would fit into my current computer. Within a few moments the display adapter has been installed into its new home and I'm back to relaxing!

Years ago, before the family had their new computers, we had an old Acer that I received as a hand-me down from my bother. It sat unused, for many years. Scratch that, it WAS used, but not as a computer. It was quite handy as a monitor stand!

When I was given a "junk" computer from my workplace I figured I would set it up for my kids to learn on. There were however, a couple minor hurdles to overcome before I could do that. One, the power supply had been shorted out at some point and now only put out half the power it was supposed to. Problem number two, the computer was so old it only had 2 MB, yes MEGAbytes of hard drive. (To give you the proper idea of how miniscule this is: the average computer today is sold with 60-80 Gigabytes or more of hard drive space. In Megabytes that is 61,440 MB to 81,920 MB.)

To solve these two problems I pulled out the guts of the reliable Acer "monitor stand". Adding its power supply and hard drive (also 2 MB) to the old work computer resulted in a very odd looking computer with cables sticking out of both the front and back and its cover only most of the way on. It did what I wanted though, and worked well enough for the kids to use their educational games on it.

These are just 2 scenarios where having old computers just lying around came in quite handy. So my point is, even if you are retiring a computer to the curb, be sure to remove all of the usable parts including cables, modems, memory cards, display adapters, fans and even the hard drive if it is still in working order. You never know when you might need a spare part so go ahead...strip!