What to do with my Dish 921 DVR?//

I have a Dish 921 DVR. I actually bought one 3 or 4 years ago. Something went wrong with it - took a power surge or something (died during a storm), but it was under warranty so Dish replaced it for free. I kept the old one, took out the HDD to see if that was shot. It wasn't, so I kept the HDD and chucked the busted unit.

Now I get a call from Dish telling me that they will upgrade me to the new ViP721 for free (MPEG-4 compatible) and if I don't switch over, then I will stop receiving a viewable signal. From what I've read, that's a bunch of BS. I would still be able to receive SD signals, since they are only transmitting HD in MPEG-4. But, it's a free upgrade, and even though their HD selection sucks IMO, it's a new receiver, and I do have one HD TV. So I asked the tech who installed the new one to leave the old one with me.

I'm not going to use the old one because then they would charge me $6/month more for using 2 DVR's, and I don't need/want 2 DVR's. But I can't see myself totally throwing away a machine that has nothing wrong with it. I see some going on sale for up to $100 on ebay and craigslist, but I'd rather strip the HDD out, as it is of similar value to me and would save me the work of listing it and shipping it.

Is there anything I can do with this machine besides rip out the 250GB HDD (IDE)? The 250GB HDD from my original DVR is still alive and kicking, and I could use an extra 250GB for my Popcornhour. Any hacks where I could still use the DVR hardware? A hack I would be interested in is to totally use the hardware for something else if it's possible - not like getting free TV or anything. I don't care what's on the HDD right now and have no interest in extracting events. I would just re-format it.

I haven't had much success finding anyone who has done anything with it. A point in the right direction would be great.

Thanks in advance!