I hate throwing things away particularly if
they're not working (I
don't mind giving away working things) I recently repaired a
cordless drill with a MOSFET taken from an old 1/2" tape drive
controller board.
Round here, it would more likely be the reverse -- fixing a magtape
controller using a transistor taken from a cordless drill :-)...
I think I mentioned I once raided a CRT from a portable TV to fix a
somewhat odd terminal (Volker-Craig VC414 with APL character set).
-tony