> I may have some useful hardware sitting around here at the house. Some of it may be 20 years old. How can I tell whether any of it will be useful to this project?

NetBSD developer hat on

It will likely be very useful, martin would particularly like CardBus and PCMCIA hardware, though he's kind of overwhelmed by requests right now.

If you can find some way to get the chipset identifier (maybe check dmesg, usbdevs/pcidevs if your operating system provides such a command), that's the useful information that he needs.

> What do y'all do with stuff like this?

Slowly accumulating stuff in various boxes that sits in wardrobes around the house. One time I threw a cable that I thought I didn't need and then five years later I needed just that cable so now I don't throw anything.

Broken stuff gets dissembled into pieces, basically harvesting the "important" stuff, then sorted into tinier boxes. Then the rest goes to the recycling center.

Put it into a metal chest and keep it around for after the solar flare hits and/or when retro-computing has grown a bit.

> What do y'all do with stuff like this?

eBay.