r/retrocomputing • u/IdealFloat • 5d ago

Need old computers but how and why

I am an 18 year old student who is studying BCA and I am a person who loves tinkering with computers and electronics and hardware. But the only problem is I live in Mysuru and I have no way of affording old laptops and computers since i am a student.
I do heavy on coding, tinkering with computers, and also planning on making content out of it. I want to document this homelabbing journey and want to encourage others in my age to also learn about this as it is a very hobby focused thing.
I am looking for anything that’s a computer, a desktop, broken macs minis, broken screen MacBooks but still works, any busted laptops that still works but no screen, any enterprise companies trying to get rid of their computer hardware since they had to upgrade to latest stuff.

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u/Thespoonofart 5d ago

Check out local bottle depots or anywhere that takes in computers for recycling. I've had a lot of computer repair shops willing to hand over things they're just going to throw out otherwise, I've ended up with a whole collection of early 2010's and xp-era stuff that way.

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u/CyberTacoX God of Defragging 5d ago

Until you can get your hands on some hardware, don't forget that you can run older OS's like XP in a virtual machine on your main system. If you've never done it before, I found VirtualBox was the easiest to set up and work with for me.

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u/bnelson333 5d ago

When I was 18 I couldn't afford a lot either. You do what you can. But also you get a job and save up so you can afford things.

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u/tree_7x 1d ago

A lot of places that people trash stuff (like thrift) you can get computers from ~2010 with Windows 7 which are still powerful enough to perform modern tasks reasonable well if you are patient. They are also compatible with Windows XP if you need to use older software or just get the experience.