Found laptops on the street fully abused and often smashed to bits. Recently pulled a 160gb SSD out of one. That’s worth keeping, as well as the RAM, often.
TV tuners/media players: they sometimes have internal hard drives. I recently pulled a 320gb 2½″ HDD out of one. Even though that’s likely too small to serve as someone’s laptop system, anything bigger than 120gb is big enough to store a copy of the whole Debian system including all apps (5 blu-rays merged these days).
All DC powered electronics: it’s useful to cannabalize the female barrel connector. There are many universal PSUs with a collection of male tips, but never female tips. The female tips are useful for making your own barrel adapters, instead of cutting and soldering your OEM PSUs.
Do you think you could put together a guide on what to look for in these parts for someone who doesn’t really know anything about tech? I’d really love to learn and I feel like ripping open a busted laptop would be a great way to start, but I don’t even know what “female barrel connector” or “OEM PSU” means. “160gb SSD” though, I know that one. That’s so many damn photos. My partner always shoots JPGs because storage is expensive but I always shoot RAW if I can…