Why in the world do we hang onto this stuff?

[Chris H.]

Government secrets and Military weapons included in that?

I couldn't tell you. And neither would he. He'd have to kill us.

 

[afriqueart]

Threw out all my 3 1/2 floppies, 5 1/4 floppies and all the boxed windows software years ago! Maybe I should have sold all that stuff on ebay.

 

[JUKE179r]

Threw out all my 3 1/2 floppies, 5 1/4 floppies and all the boxed windows software years ago! Maybe I should have sold all that stuff on ebay.

I just sold a 50 pack of 3.5" floppies to another musician on Craigslist for $70! I bought them 7 years ago for my AKAI MPC 2000XL sampler for $32 online from somewhere. Since I switched out the MPC's floppy drive for a SCSI card reader, I didn't need the floppies anymore.

Some of the hard core musicians still use floppies for their older synthesizers, music samplers and computers (Atari ST models). So don't throw them away, sell them to a musician!

I wonder how much I can get for my 47 Zip and 9 Jaz discs???

 

[MQAAord]

Our beloved old Apple //e is still at my parent's house.

My old Dell 866 (circa 2000) still sits on our kitchen desk. It ran WinME up until a couple years ago when we put XP on it. It runs it... more or less. XP is the most that poor thing can handle. It's the kids computer. I figure if they mess it up it's not a big deal. But they don't touch my MBP!

 

[RavingMac]

Sometimes it pays to be a packrat.

A friend of mine loaned me his Veho slide scanner (I have a bunch of old slides and negatives I never got around to digitizing), but I soon found that no Mac drivers were available and Vuescan wouldn't recognize it.
"All done here!" I thought and repacked his scanner into its black tube container. Then I remembered I had an old Gateway Laptop (running Ubuntu, but unused for months) and I still had the install disks for XP.

Holding my nose, I restored my Gateway to its original Windows bondage and loaded the software and drivers for the Veho scanner. It works pretty well though I haven't done enough yet to fairly judge the quality of the finished scan. To set it up I used some B&W negatives that weren't ever all that good to begin with.

Maybe I can use this an argument for keeping that box (those boxes, actually) of cables and adapters?

 

[Nethfel]

Sometimes who knows why we do...

I've got 3.5" & 5.25" disks, 3.5" and 5.25" drives, Old Apple systems (II+, IIe, IIc+, IIgs), Sun Sparc 10, ultrasparc 80, Sun Enterprise E450, and all kinds of other stuff laying around that I really need to deal with (my arcade games aren't gonna go anywhere tho )

Some of it I know I hold onto due to memories, some of it I have no idea why I even bought. All of it though really needs to be considered for selling or pitching so I can have that room back for other things.

 

[MunkeyQ]

I still have a 386 75mhz Dell machine I used years ago, running Win 95. Installing that off a stack of floppies wasn't much fun! It's built like a tank...chassis is 1mm mild steel with cast braces to further strengthen it. No idea why it was built like that, but it weighs at least 40lbs.

Works great too! Fired it up the other day to see what was on its hard drive. Like most of you, I feel the urge to keep it though. Most of my other computer gear/junk is long gone, given away or sold.

 

[Sonicjet]

Ha, I'm kinda like this. You see, instead of finding them im my house, I find them at the flea market, lol. Expensive hobby with almost no return,lol. I do have a little old Circuit collection, Have an Intel Celron 667(it's really 666, lol) on the Shelf, a Yikes! 450Mhz as a haircomb, an Nvidia Defect 8800Gt, an ATi X1650, an ATi Rage 128 and a Dreamcast board, add one 1.6Ghz Celeron 256Mb HP with that.

Small collection , in the past I have bought and loved:

PowerMac G4 450Mhz, with keyboard and mouse, first mac...I bought it for 1$. Yeah.(OS9 Baby!)

iMac G3 333..in Bondi Blue?! (Wild Story, yes it's real from the factory, I think it was a prototype or something, the numbers match.)(OS9, beautiful example of it. Got it to run OS 10.3) $30

iMac G3 400 Blueberry.(10.2)$40
Drumroll...PowerMac G5 2X2Ghz, 2.5Gb, 250Mb, it was real fast in hindsight (Leopard) $175
eMac G4 1.42 GHz, Sold it for more than I payed, nice $99 XBMC/Netflix machine.

2011 Macbook Pro i5 .... $1,100 ,a little more than the dollar I payed for the G4...lol. needs an SSD, maybe down the road SSD prices will fall....

(For You windows fans: )
HP 1.6Ghz Celeron, 768Mb,Xp,40Gb(My First Own Computer)
HP 1.8Ghz Althlon,768Mb,Xp,120Gb (Way better, the Athlon made a big difference, miss it, died of lightning)
Asus G50Vt-X1 2.26Ghz,4Gb,Vista,320Gb(Yay Job!, Also, Yay junk wifi and Disk drive hardware that breaks!)
Asus UL30Vt-A1 1.73Ghz,4Gb DDR3,7, 40Gb SSD ( Verrry fast for such a light machine, best windows machine ever,no MBP though.)

 

[Kevriano]

You lot are mad....

While I have accumalated some stuff over the years, I tend to give it away or throw it out when it's past it's best, unless I know it has some value, then Ebay.
I do have a big box of assorted audio cables mind you....

 

[Audio.Trench]

I too have a problem getting rid of dated, unworthy, or otherwise "useless" tech..

It's a weakness.. I tend to see value/purpose beyond that of most people in that kinda "junk."

Mind you, I don't have much of a collection any more, after losing pretty much everything last year, but I'm sure it'll build back up again

 

[dero]

Hahaha, I can just picture this...
Bunch of guys sitting around a camp fire PUSHING CARDS hahaha.
Only the old guys will remember about having to punch cards, **** I do.

 

[cptkrf]

With all that junk lying around, has anybody got any 30 pin simms (min 120 ns speed) that would fit my 1989 Mac SE 30?

Shucks. If you had said 72 pin, I have handfulls laying around. I had lots of 30 pin memory, but not sure if I kept it. I will look.

As I mentioned in another post, I am cleaning out also. So far I have uncovered two 386 IBM Valuepoints, a virgin box of 8 inch floppies(!), two Apple 8" green pedistal monitors dated 1985, 6 modems, a 12" Televideo Ascii terminal, a Kleinschmidt teletype table that used to hold an actual teletype - my first printer - a huge box of SCSI cables, ten pounds of PCI and ISA cards, twenty pounds of S-100 cards, a dozen random motherboards, powersupplies, etc, , including a 1976 S-100 twenty two slot job (maybe worth some money by now) and so forth. You get the idea.

Why the heck I have held on to this stuff so long is beyond me. Some of it is over thirty years old.

Strange, the ways of hoarders.

 

[J-L]

We have an old IT cupboard at work and the thing is filled with old CRT monitors and loads of sealed software like unopened copies of 95 and DOS programs.

Whilst I have never really hoarded the stuff myself, I really have no idea what to do with it all.

Maybe we should all band together and start a Museum?

 

[callmedory]

We have a box of "stuff" I gotta get rid of. I had the 15+ floppies from my Dad for loading whichever Windows it was he had. Lots of cables that I can't even identify. Zip cassette? Check. Some floppy drive that was bigger than the usual (thicker) and was supposed to replace floppies? Check, but that's in a tower that we're gonna donate.

Yes, we have an external floppy drive that connected to our first computer, an IBM thinkpad that was required for Hubby going back to school. THAT, we're keeping. Still works and connects via usb.

My Mom went through my Dad's stuff from work. She shredded reports that she figured, had they been secret, they were now too old to matter (Dad didn't take home secret items). She's wondering how to get rid of his computer, afraid he may have had something on it. I have a "pumpkin" disc, it'll delete everything on the drive. Dad may have been a rocket scientist, but he was far better with a slide rule than a computer. He once, well twice I guess, said "yes" to "global erase?" and "Are you sure you want to global erase this drive?" Then he wondered what happened to his computer.

 

[toMACsh]

Nearly two-year-old thread, but still relevant. I gave away most of my old floppies and Zip discs when I gave away my G3. Stuff was just taking up space, so I was glad to get rid of it.