> Yeah.  I wish there was an easy way to feed it into engineering
> education or something.  "scrap for schools."  Heh.  easier said
> than done, I suspect.  It was a couple years ago that I made one
> of the kids teachers happy with a batch of wire that our lab techs
> apparently get paid too much to untangle...

I do try and get rid of useful surplus (multi-strand cable, LEDs,caps
etc) to the local high school, as well as spare mdf. As long as I don't
dump rubbish on them they're appreciative

> I find it somewhat depressing when the most useful parts I can
> get from what used to be five figures worth of router board are
> an inductor or two and some LEDs :-(  But the rest tends to be
> fine pitch SMD, much of it custom ASICs.  Generally useless to
> the hobbyist, even if you could get it off the board without
> damaging it...

The microwave switchers I got are a case in point. Crystals,
LM78xx, LM350s, LEDs, switches, general-purpose ICs (pin
and SMT) for the parts bags. Most of it is GALs, PALs, specialty
VLSI or bits I'd struggle to find an excuse to use, and that's
something you need to keep thinking about as you rummage. But I
don't begrudge all the parts I am getting for nothing, even though it's
such a pity most of a $10,000 unit is effectively out-dated rubbish


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