One of my all-time favorite finds: a Dell 2ghz Pentium 4, 256mb ram, 30gb hard drive, CDRW, etc! I later upgraded this to play games and then sold it. The uglier one next to it is a 900mhz HP that I found an hour later on my second dump run of the day, and behind that is a 500mhz Dell system I found in the trash last year and set up in a milk crate to send to a friend. 

I found most of an SGI Challenge XL (early 90's supercomputer) at the local university transfer station recently. It looks like one of the ones I was bidding on at the UAF summer surplus auction while I was drunk. (I almost got an Onyx virtual reality engine for $100). I didn't feel like digging out all the parts and hauling the fridge-sized thing up to my room, so it stayed in the dumpster. 

 UAF had a dumb policy of destroying all equipment that's not worth taking to surplus, but the only department that actually did it was the Geophysical Institute. Yes guys, the terrorists are going to steal your sensitive and boring aurora thesis if you don't break every stick of RAM in half.. 

The physics department on the other hand, was kind enough to throw out a lot of random scientific instruments and spontaneously combustible <something> for me! You guys rule! 

Some other items I've found in various trash cans around the state.