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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I guess it depends on if noise and power are your primary considerations.

For some, they'd rather not see a useful machine take up space in a landfill, leech toxins into the environment, and simultaneously drive unneeded demand for the production of yet another computer.

I guess one would have to do the math and figure out what the environmental impact of a new Pi 3 B+ is.

Or they could figure out if the increased electrical cost of running an old machine over x number of years is greater than the expense of purchasing and powering a new Pi 3 B+. Where I live, I could run a 486 for a heck of a long time on $60, especially when you factor in that the Pi still needs to be powered, too.

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I fully empathize with this - I hate throwing out/recycling electronics. The power side it truly does depend on your local rates of course. If you consider a 24/7 draw of about 35 watts to power an out-of-box 486 DX2 (headless) vs like 3 watts for an RPI, you can do the math with some variance and figure out just how long the $60 will last you. But a 10-fold reduction in power consumption is pretty remarkable. When you consider that an RPI might replace multiple 486's, even more so.

Alternative uses for a 486 case - make a planter box, bird house or a bee hive. https://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-case-beehive/

Alternative uses for 486 mobo - incorporate it into furniture design, cut it up to create a wind chime, create stuff like that to avoid the landfill. :)

Dad told me he got a new computer. I asked how long he had the old one.

Apparently it was my old team fortress computer. So like 15 years.

My parents are still using the first computer I ever built, which is easily 10 years old! Power consumption on that machine is excessive, and I've been meaning to replace it, but the cost per year in excess electricity hasn't made it worth it to upgrade the machine.

How about a reduction in your personal help desk call queue? Or support incidents/month metric? I only partially kid - I switched the folks over to iPads and _everyone_ is happier.

I switched my mom to an iPad.

Fixing the computer keeps my dad busy. Seriously he has nothing better to do.

There's also the environmental impact of the energy use. That 486 is pumping out 10x the greenhouse gasses.

Not really. 10x per MIPS, otherwise 486 CPU consumes about same number of watts. The whole PC though...

I'm not sure how much use a 486 is without the rest of the PC?

486 is pre-RoHS, so there’s probably lead in the solder. I wouldn’t want it hanging around kids.

Leaded solder doesn't spontaneously vaporize and become airborne. You have to touch the solder enough to rub some off onto your skin, then put that part of your skin into your mouth long enough to get the absolutely microscopic amount of lead into your body.

Solder went lead-free (and electronics in general went ROHS) so when it's buried in landfills it doesn't seep lead or other hazardous materials into groundwater.

There is zero chance of lead solder getting hot enough to skip the liquid phase of matter and go straight to a gas in a 486.

Alternative use for a 486 case - reused as a computer case for a cluster of fresh single-board computers.

For some resources such as copper, it might actually be environmentally net positive to recycle to old copper and buy new.

And about $5 in gold in a 486 chip:

https://www.ozcopper.com/computer-cpu-gold-yields/

Citation needed. I know a ton of folks who bought those things by the cubic yard for the metals, and only managed to make an environmental mess with little dollar return.

There's much less volume of copper in a RPi than a 486, so if you recycle your 386 to get a Rpi, the net copper reserve increases.

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