Back when I was in college, I was on my way to class when I happened by a fenced off area where people drop off trash bags and the like (and by fenced off, I mean a wooden fence with a rather large opening on the one side). As I passed by it, I was looking in its generally direction and realized there was packaging for the original Xbox laying on its side. "Hm." I thought. "How sick would that be if that box actually had an Xbox in it." Well wouldn't you know it, I walked in there, picked it up, and there was in fact an Xbox console in it! There were no cables or controller or anything in it, just the system. So instead of going to class, I rushed up to my friend's dorm room to hook it up.
We used his cables and controller to start the machine and it seemed to start up just fine. Seemingly, it's only problem was that it had issues reading discs. Lucky for me, this same friend liked to take apart and mod Xbox's, so he had a spare disc drive that he wasn't using that he tried installing in this system for me and it was a success! So whomever threw out this entire console, only did so because of a bad disk drive! So after I went to GS and picked up some cables and a controller, I now owned what was basically a free Xbox! I salute you, my Xbox-chucking-in-the-dumpster friend. Thanks to you, I've now gotten to experience years of Halo joy... and the entire rap song collection you left on your hard drive!