Today I got brave and broke down an old computer I had in the attic.

[Paper Roses]

Advice needed:
This old HP is now in a million parts, So many Phillips screws I thought I'd scream.
One cut on my finger later and I have it in as many parts as I can distinguish.
Old Yankee that I am, I have sorted all the metal parts for one recycle bin, the plastic for another.
I am not sure what parts of this old time machine have to go into the hazardous waste bin. I don't want to pay the fee to pick up old computers. In my neck of the woods, it is 15 to 25 dollars.

Have the hard drive separate---what do I do with that?

Oh the joy of cleaning out the attic!!!!!

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Wow! In my town the dump has a special place to...

drop off any electronic stuff for free. They sell it to some recycler who probably has it shipped to India or China where they poison the land to get what little gold is in there.

Anyway, as much as it hurts me, I suggest you just take the boards and other non-recyclable guts of the thing and double-bag them in the trash.

The hard drive might be able to be popped into your current computer, but that's unlikely. More likely is you can buy a gadget for 20 bucks or so that you can plug the drive into and then plugs into a USB port. Considering that the drive is probably small and slow and you can buy even a terabyte external drive for under a hundred bucks, I wouldn't go that way unless there's important stuff on the drive. If there isn't, throw the drive into the garbage bag with the chicken bones and fish parts. People who look into old drives for personal stuff only go so far so you should be safe.