I'm sorry, but that is just absurd. Some of the servers in question are coming up on 20 years of age. We didn't have the power-conserving hardware back then that we have now. Those old SPARCstations put out heat like a hair dryer. That stuff uses a lot of power and remember that ever watt of power you put into a server needs to be cooled. So, basically double the electricity costs for any given piece of gear. This rack is not cheap to run or cool, and definitely not in a home basement without access to highly efficient (and huge) datacenter-class cooling and power infrastructure. There are reasons that this gear needs to stay at Theo's place. If you don't like his reasons, you don't have to donate. He didn't email you and ask for a donation; you read the story here.