I have an old Sony vaio VGN-S1xp laptop that i just took apart to clean the fan out as it was running hot only to damage 2 ribbon cables when putting it back together. Then spending an hour looking for replacements on eBay with no luck. Then taking it all back apart to take the ribbons out so i can see cable numbers to look for those and aonther hour passes and I start to put it back together to put in the pile of stuff i may get round to fixing when I had an idear, maybe I can cut the broken ends of the cables off and scrach the insulation down to the wire to make a new end. So after another hour and with all my fingers left (I had to use my 12'' carving knife because I couldnt find my scalpel ant its the only knife that i have with a sharp point) I have a working laptop again after a simple job turned into much more and I was so close to puting it away to do another day. This got me thinking how long do you keep dead hardware just incase its not realy dead and have you ever come to try and fix somthing only to find its now working or you have an idear just before it goes out the window and luckly you manage to fix it.
Depends on the hardware and whether I need it working again. If I need it working then it gets fixed straight away (With acceptable delays for delivery of parts). If I don't then it gets recycled, freecycled or disposed of via ebay. Kids toys are a different thing though. There's a dolls house door I need to make a new hinge for and a LED illuminated butterfly I need to solder the wing connections on. They'll stay broken for a while yet as the kids aren't moaning at me.
I normally try to figure out what's wrong with it, and than the cost to fix. If it's dead and requires a large investment to repair, I don't mind trying some of the shoddy repair jobs to get a bit of extra life out of it, but in most cases I'll just recycle it and replace it. If it's already broken and old, there usually isn't any harm in taking it apart either just for curiosity sake.
I had a phone, an LG Renoir, it was an upgrade from my LG Viewty (one of the best phones available at the time and for a good few years after). That thing went through a pretty hard life. About 18 months after I bought it (6months left on the contract) the mic/speakers were going. It was difficult to hear people unless it was on loudspeaker and they had trouble hearing me. But only 6 months and I could upgrade, I'll keep using it. About 4 months to go, I moved to switzerland. While there it developed a curious quirk in that the touchscreen wouldn't respond unless you squeezed the top of the phone. This got more and more necessary until I ended up taking it apart and wedging paper under the screen to keep the pressure on. Cut to another month and it pretty much required the insertion of the large blade of my swiss army knife through the top of the phone and pretty severe leverage to work the screen. If I removed the knife carefully sometimes I'd get a few minutes of knife-free phone action. It probably looked weird, my phone would go (text message). I'd pull it out, jam a knife in then start replying. Still, it worked. I'll just keep using it. 2 months to go, I'm in Zurich, it's very hot. We decide to jump in a fountain to keep cool. I throw off my shoes (but not my socks for some reason), my tshirt and jump in. I neglect to remove the phone and my wallet from my pockets. Surely this is it. It's got quite a few holes in it now so the water can easily get in. It doesn't work for a few days before sputtering back into life. It actually still had water behind the screen which would pool at the bottom of whatever orientation the phone was. There was water inside the camera causing some cool mosaic effects for a week or so until it evaporated. It still worked, so I kept using it. Another month to go, this time we're in Lausanne and decide to go swimming in the lake. I make a point of checking my phone is not in my pocket before we go in. We're in for over an hour. Many jokes are made about my phone probably still being in my pocket. Laughs are had. Then I realise my phone was, for some reason, in a different pocket than usual and, thus, under water. I'm convinced it's dead so I don't even bother removing the battery. I just leave it in my bag. A few days later I try it and it comes back to life. No worse for it's lengthy swim. This phone is indestructable. The 24 months rolled round and I updated my contract and replaced the phone. I didn't get rid of it though, I retired it gracefully. It still works. Every so often I charge it and fire it up. It's so battlescarred with bits (chunks) missing, a large, deep scar on the screen where I got frustrated and slammed the knife into it. It's spent longer under water than some fish probably do yet still works.
