The Hardware Salvage Thread

At some point we all have some things to throw away but never actually ponder on what we can salvage off of them that might be usefull later on. Let us focus on computer hardware and stuff related to them.

I will ask the moderator to monitor this thread and update the responses on this post so that others may see the info gathered.

What I know so far is:

1. HDD magnets
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKzPt18aE_0
2. Mouse Buttons/Switches
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U70h4ZDRAC4

Let us gather more items that can be salvaged and see what we can come up with.

Hard disks and optical drives use continuous motors, floppy drives have stepper ones. You can take them apart and reuse for other projects. Sometimes it's also possible to reuse the (working) PCB from a hard disk to recover a defective one of the same brand and model.

ICs and capacitors can be detached and reused on other things, but the pins on the former tend to be ultra-thin, so you need to be a god(dess) at soldering.

Old processors have about $0.25's worth of gold within, but advanced chemical processes are required to extract it, so this is mostly an interesting fact.

Power supplies can be used to power non-computer hardware. Old AT ones are very handy for this because of their on/off switch (my school has a bathroom with an AT-powered motion sensor and automatic toilet flusher). Or you can just cut and reuse the universally useful cabling. Fans and heatsinks can also cool other things.

Connector plugs (USB, PS/2, 3.5mm) can be used to repair a broken device by cutting off the original one and resoldering. The same goes for the actual speakers in a set of speakers.

And last but not least... mousewheels make excellent spinning tops!