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[jack21]

I do recall selling some mid-90s Toshibas at low price for similar intended use.......2 for car diagnostics and one for an elderly specialised hot-wax printer that produced decals for model car/planes.....and needing Win 95/98/2000 drivers.
And an early 90's Omnibook (?) which the buyer wanted with Win 95 for some reason.
But to be honest, preparing them for sale - clean install, pre-sale testing, after-sales support etc - was not economic in time and effort  just to make a few pounds.  I'd now rather remove or wipe the hard drive and give the machine away for free to someone who has a good use for it.......or scrap it.
The last ones I tried to sell (£20 ono each). maybe a year ago, had no interest shown, so were dismantled.....and then later-on, scrapped.

I do not intend to acquire, or be given, any more old stuff!!

[HPsauce]

I have the following that has all been dormant for years:
- a fair few Netgear DG834GT and DG834G(various versions) models which I am reluctant to scrap, many with DGTeam firmware.
- a couple of BT Voyager 210's and a TalkTalk SmartAX MT882, all non-wireless of course.
- A BT HomeHub 2.0 and HomeHub 3.

Back on topic after some interesting digressions, I'm keeping the DG834*'s for now and the HomeHub 3.
The others were dismantled around lunchtime, though I've kept the PSU's for now as there a variety - 9V, 12V and 15V! You never know when you might need a spare PSU. 

[NewtronStar]

- remember a 15 or 20-year-old car is nothing that unusual but a 20yo laptop is something you would barely recognise!

My old Amiga 1200 is still working and still gives me that warm computing feeling 23 years on, purchased a Toshiba 40" smart TV it died at the age of 1 year and 3 months with main board failure the cost to fix was more than a new TV 

[Weaver]

I'm hoping I still have some Netgear DG834v3 devices in my cupboard. The v3 is the latest of the TI AR7-based devices. No G-suffix means no wireless, which is IMHO the way to go. A classic. If you can find a PSU to go with it then so much the better, unless the PSU is particularly sickly.

It has been pointed out that nasty capacitor failure is a reason to be wary of really old devices such as these.

btw:: I don't know much about the DG834v4 unit, which is Broadcom-based. Is the v4 good on long lines? It certainly seems fine on medium-length lines.

There are loads of other units with different suffixes after the "834". Not sure what they all mean. Some might be to do with being locked to one particular ISP, so best avoided.

[jack21]

Hiya Weaver,
After testing well over a hundred different modem/modem-routers 2008-2014 on my (then) very long ADSL (later) ADSL2 line; 5+km and 70db attenuation, I settled on 3 models that out-performed all the others.
1. BT 2700HGV - the best (until 2014), provided that the default SNRM was already 6db. V useful diagnostics page for attenuations reaching above 63.5. I still have 2 in the cupboard.
2. DG834GT - with DGTeam f/w, the best (till 2014) if the default snrm was above 6db.....I would then tweak the snrm to 6 or lower. Used with a traditional transformer psu. I still have 2 in the cupboard.
3. In 2014 - a Billion 8800NL - the best overall of all.
But I'm now on fibre.....and the Billion 8800NL is my no.1 choice.
Jack

[Weaver]

@jack21 - did you get a chance to test the Billion on a long ADSL2 line then, before going over to FTTC ?

[jack21]

Oh yes, based on my liking for Billions for speed, especially 7300 and 7800, I bought an 8800 as soon as it became available - the only 'router' I've ever bought new - and within a couple of days on ADSL(1) was so completely won-over by it that I ended my long-time quest for the ideal router for me. So stable, speedy, configurable and dependable (and snrm-tweakable). After around a week on ADSL1 I switched to ADSL2 and it was even better!  ADSL2+ didn't do quite as well.

Soon after, a kind BTOR chap swapped me onto a different E-side pair and the total downstream attenuation dropped from 70 to circa 58db, with corresponding speed-rise. I did experiment with ADSL1/2/2+ a little more, but settled on ADSL2 until fibre arrived 12 months later. The linelength from house to PCP is around 900m (PCP to Exchange is 4+km) and I'm now on around 39Mbps as opposed to the previous 2Mbps......whoopee!

[sevenlayermuddle]

Hoping HP won't mind that we've drifted off topic....

I'm also a fan of billion, in my case 7800. 

I only had it for a few weeks on my 56dB ADSL line and, to be honest, noticed no significant improvement in line stats over the netgear it replaced.   But aside from all that, I just like the thing.  The 7800 (at least) is in a nice big clunky case with lots of ventilation, never gets remotely warm.  Wall-mountable too, if that matters.

ISTR that WiFi did seem to work better - longer range and better throughout, than any previous router.  I've disabled 5GHz because it doesn't suit me, but did work when tested.

Some quite elaborate networking can be set up including guest networks with varying degrees of isolation, thereby allowing visitors access to Internet, but not my home network.   It's not that I don't trust my visitors, more that I've no way of knowing what sort of malware might be on their devices, so I don't want them on my LAN.   Other modern routers also have guest networks, but I find it hard to believe they could do it any better than billion.

It has also proven 100% reliable - not once, in the 18 months or so I've owned it, has it required an unscheduled reboot.

And of course, having the Wan port, when FTTC came my way I was able to seamlessly keep it in service with all my fancy guest networking configuration.

[HPsauce]

Hoping HP won't mind that we've drifted off topic....

Not at all, I'm done on the original question as I think was clear. 

As for DG834xx models it was only the V5 that was a PITA due to a different chipset IIRC. Though some of the really early versions did have other limitations and I've got rid of those. I think I have V3's and V4's though can't recall the exact mix of wired/wireless, plus of course I keep every GT while it still works.
PSU's are not a problem, I keep those anyway and it's a very common standard.

[burakkucat]

As for DG834xx models it was only the V5 that was a PITA due to a different chipset IIRC.

I know the DG834Gv5 well.    It has a Conexant chipset, which is a retrograde step from the Broadcom chipset of the v4. (I refer to the v5 in the present tense, as I still have one in my grotto.)
 

PSU's are not a problem, I keep those anyway and it's a very common standard.

If I ever need a replacement PSU, I will always go for one of Netgear manufacture.