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Mircea Neacsu wrote: For largish disks that you might want to reuse, you can safely erase them using DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke[^]). For anything under 500GB, just use hammer to drive a nail through it.
I second that. I have used DBAN boot cd a couple of times and it works like charm.
You need some time though. The paranoia modus needs a week or so.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Listen to your wife.
you.are.a.hoarder.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Slow Eddie wrote: Any ideas on how to safely dispose of all of th unused equipment?
Come on, anything before a 286 should be gone by now. The rest you might want to hang on to.
To be fair, I had the same problem; but a Raspberry Pi replaces all those old machines. Get rid of them, earn some man-points!
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Hording: I have an ARCNET terminator. Among other things.
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Hehehe.
During my first year, I unscrewed it. Screams were heard.
The entire network collapsed, because I unscrewed a tiny thingy. People were having their finals.
I was told not to. So, I had to.
--edit
That was a local network terminator. An ARCNET terminator would be a bit worse.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
modified 20-Nov-21 21:12pm.
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Erase the HDDs and donate the computers. Libraries and charitable organizations can always make use of those. Most everything else can easily go to a recycling center. One trip. Boom. Done.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Similar here. But in addition for the PCs I do the same thing with the coffee machines, which seldom survive long for me because I am too lazy to decalcify them.
And this drives my wife crazy 
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For spinny-go-arounds, I drill a hole down through the housing and platters and take to the electronics recycle bin. SSD's, I just cut up (haven't had many). I turned one older workstation into a backup NAS with TrueNAS. Hmmm, now what to do with the 12 year old NAS it replaced?
I take computers (sans hd's) and such and put them out next to the curb on large pick up day (unless rain is in the forecast). People comb through the neighborhood looking for such stuff and take them. We used to have a church that took old equipment and shipped it to some country in Central America. Not anymore.
The only thing that did not get taken was my golf clubs, they figured they were contaminated with bad shots and vile language (no, not VB).
>64
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Remember that all the stuff is getting worthless after some years.
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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My wife has said for years “ if you die first I’m getting a dumpster and pitching all your stuff” to which I reply “ and if you die first I’ll have more room for my stuff”. And we both laugh!
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I do understand. These days I try to hoard only simulations and PDFs.
I used to have a lot of stuff in my office. Computer and calculator related things covering about 30 years, mid-1970's through 2008. We lived in a row house and a kid two doors down was playing with matches the Monday afternoon before Thanksgiving 2008.
Took out seven homes. The brick firewall between houses helped a lot, but the rear building extensions over the last hundred years did not extend them so the back of the houses burned hot. For us my office took the brunt of it along with my little personal museum. Family pictures were in the front of the house and were undamaged and that was more important.
It became was an exercise in downsizing. For a while it seemed like I was always needing something that I lost. Now not as much. Been about 10 years since I needed an 16-bit ISA 3Com card.
What I really miss is the technical documentation and software I had of some old equipment. Specifically for 1970's and early 80's Canon computers. I was working with a guy that had one of the first computers I worked with and helped fill in some of the gaps from my memory. If I still had those bookshelves I could have provided it to Archive.org.
I've managed to hoard less since then. Yesterday I was looking at a Healthkit Microprocessor trainer on eBay. I talked myself out of it because I knew probably wouldn't get to spend much time with it. It would collect dust.
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For some of it, Pennsylvania requires recycling e-waste, and there are several companies who collect it.
For some other of it, maybe you have a local community college you could donate it to.
After the COVID work-from-home period, I was required to work in the office. I use one PC, one wide monitor, and an inherited ink jet printer in a big airy office, since I am the manager, now. The guys tried to get me to accept a second monitor, but I don't want it. The guy who works for me has my old office, much smaller, with 4 PCs and 4 monitors, and a KVM switch. I tell them I like my life simple.
I used to use the multiple PCs for Linux, various servers of all sorts. But we've moved to the cloud, tech support is so hopelessly dependent on Microsoft, and I am too old to try to change things.
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I side with your wife.
Hoarding is NOT about HOW you acquired things. It's about not getting rid of things!
you have a lot to be grateful for. First, that you could afford those things without selling some of them, etc. And that you have the SPACE to have all of that stuff!
But if you are NOT using it. Have no plans to TRULY use it... Time to get rid of it.
So, here is an easy approach. Take ONE thing a month, that you have NOT USED in a LONG time. Put it in a box. Date the box with the date that YOU ACCEPT it's probably not going to be used ever again. (This says nothing about having "value", this is about taking up space/energy/etc).
Then give your wife permission to toss the boxes on those dates. (This lets you avoid the psychological impact of "loss" by building to it, and not forcing you to go without something).
Also, I would probably put the wife in charge of your Tech Budget money. one of her Strings is removing old stuff BEFORE buying new stuff, or sticking to the protocol. That will give her some control, and she will be able to see progress...
Think of it has HARDWARE DEBT. you are accumulating it without REFACTORING your space!
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IMO, 45 years in this business would mean you'd have a lot more hardware if you truly were a hoarder. Clearly, you already do get rid of stuff occasionally.
Slow Eddie wrote: She intends to put me in a 12' x 10' storage shed in the back yard there, and there won't be enough room for it all.
Any ideas on how to safely dispose of all of th unused equipment?
Avoid that fate by disposing of the wife?
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I've had gotten rid of quite a bit of the old computer stuff by handing it down the the kids and grandkids. You might also be able to find some use for those old computers. I've got 3 of my old computers used as 'smarts' for our TVs. I like the control and extra features they provide over the builtin smarts that came with the TVs.
Oh, make it a 2 story 12' x 10' shed! 
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Best Buy stores take electronics of most kinds for recycling for free. I think they have a limit of 3 devices per day power customer. So for all your old gear, you could be rid of them safely in around 2 weeks or so.
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When I dispose of old hard drives, I completely disassemble them to get to the platters then use a screwdriver or something to scratch up and bend the platters. Nobody is going to get anything off of a bent, scratched up platter. Plus, when you do this, you end up with a bunch of REALLY powerful little magnets!!
The only thing you need is the appropriate TORX bit (I think a T10 or T15).
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Alternatively I need some sort of branch prediction for reality.
The trouble is I have an analog to digital conversion circuit that is introducing lag into my software.
It's connected to a pressure sensor that's connected eventually to a tube a user breathes into.
In order for me to sample real-time I need to be able to get data continuously at 10 frames a second.
This is supposed to be possible with the device, but something about it is introducing massive lag into my software so it effectively can't even sample at 10 frames a second.
I can sample it on a separate core, but then I'm not getting pressure sensing in lock step with the display readout and that creates problems.
Unless my users were similarly multithreaded, or if I could just predict what their breathing was like just before they did it.
I hate it when something needs to be optimized that isn't something I wrote.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Some ADCs I dealt with in the dim distant past took forever to take a single sample, but could be put into a "continuous conversion" mode, where they make a sample available in whatever is their natural cycle time. Some even allowed a degree of control over the sample rate.
Can you turn it loose, and just pick a sample from a buffer at your 100mS intervals?
Just a thought from an old fart hardware type.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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I'm trying to fiddle with the continuous mode to see if I can get better performance out of it. Otherwise I may upgrade to a faster and more expensive 24-bit ADC to see if that helps.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Got it to work - the continuous mode thing was the ticket.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Good to know I haven't completely lost the thread!
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Sorry, I took a nap. I would have said thank you but I was literally already working along toward this end when I happened upon you.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: Alternatively I need some sort of branch prediction for reality.
? [^]
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch
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Okay fair, but I was looking for something more reliable if not deterministic. *hides*
Real programmers use butterflies
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