PART ONE Let me begin this story with the caveat that an all-too-easy typo could quite easily have seen you now embarking upon "The Unanticipated Horse". A somewhat different tale perhaps!, but let not thy mind boggle. I began yesterday with a raft of chorejobs, and decided to lighten the middle of the day with a quick trip around the three recycling/donation places a few suburbs over in the industrial zone. I had a shortlist of a few parts and thought I might get lucky and pick up a couple: *An old KVM, or at least some cables I could put towards the eventual total *A DOS joystick *A 5 pin DIN cable - i.e. AT keyboard style, but for MIDI use *As you get older, memory often fails on the fourth item of lists Now at this point I should point out: I live in a small provincial city in New Zealand, population about 50,000. Think Tamworth, Shepparton, Mildura, Gladstone. It's literally hours of travel to any major city. Of the retro computing and gaming open market - there is simply nothing here. You can look every day for a year and the net result will be at best a small handful of nothing special, to which Stormy Daniels could no doubt attest if she were here. (Zoidberg: Again with the boggling of the mind! Clack clack!) Back to the story it's not hard to find, ninja's not just of the body it's of the mind - with that firmly in said mind, I perused Store the First. A 5-pin DIN cable for $1, tick. Store the Second: An Intellimouse Optical for $3, sure why not. Store the Third: A few PS/2 cables dug out of endless crates. That'll do. Nothing serious today, but at least I don't walk away empty-handed. [To be continued....] === PART TWO: https://forums.overclockers.com.au/posts/18652265/
After yesterday, I don't think I need sympathy in that area any more. You'll see, as the story progresses...
Am busy, my man Writing True Stories falls into the "not relaxing with a game in one hand and a circuit board in the other (+ a soldering iron gripped in the mouth)" category, the preference which already has to take a back seat to the usual chores and work of life. And sleep, as elvis mentioned earlier. That irritating obligation which can, if permitted, drastically reduce one's available Nerd Time.
PART TWO Regular readers may recall me mentioning a few weeks back that upon driving away from this place (Store the Third) I'd spied, wrapped within a pallet destined for recycling, what appeared to be a 36" Sony Wega box. At that time, the Other Half's reasonably-imminent future had included urination, not to not put too fine a point on it, so there'd been no chance to check it out. By yesterday's visit I'd all-but forgotten about that, and in any case that particular set exits stage left here. But in a near-repeat of proceedings, as we were about to drive away yesterday I noticed near the loading bay a pile of assumed to be destined-for-recycling : I was sure I could see a couple of CRT TV sets, and what appeared to be some empty OEM computer cases. "OK", I say to the Mrs, "I've gotta have a look this time. (BTW, no peeing)". So I wander over to have a closer look at this pile. Sure enough, there are a few CRT televisions amongst it - 21"-ish sets of no particular note, albeit likely still functional. Interesting. Despite their middling quality, I'd still had no idea there was a small but steady stream of CRT televisions transiting through local recycling on their way to larger centres for strip-down. At this point, the wee rabbit hole of note starts to open. A bright young man saunters up to where I'm gazing at the pile, and asks how's it going. We chat for a moment about the CRT TV's, and he informs me about the above process whereby they're handed on, and the general way the leaded glass + other is separated out for recycling, with some parts eventually going on to end up in for example Japan. We move on to talk CRT computer monitors, and the young man asks if I'm "into that sort of thing, old computers and stuff". "Yeeeeeaaaaah, I *kinda* am. Just a little bit, you know... this neckbeard didn't grow itself", I don't say, because in real life I'm neither that witty nor that much of a knob. "You need to talk to someone", he says, in the faint tone of an acolyte leading an applicant to the Pope ... [To be continued....] === PART THREE: https://forums.overclockers.com.au/posts/18652910/
=Part three= *The Young man fetches a Hoarders HelpLine pamphlet, gently encloses it in Shredders palm, and points to the EXIT*
https://www.google.com/search?=hoards+of+the+deep+realm loved this on the Bee this hoard better be as good
PART THREE He leads me into the rear half of the building. I tend near-sighted, so I don't initially take in much detail of a big space, but it seems to be a moderately-large workshop and storage area for incoming recyclables. A man with somewhat the look and demeanour of a ship's captain was busily directing matters within, dealing with special customers coming direct-to-him, and dispensing tasks and advice to juniors. The nice young man (let's call him Robin) deferentially hands me over to the custody of Captain Y with a brief explanation. "G'day!, I'm Captain Y", he lightly booms - "Into the old computers and stuff are ya?". I stumble through an incompetent nerd briefing about growing up a 90's DOS gamer, x86, etc. The slightest wisp of figurative smoke curls from his ears, and I can see his brain whirring into a Sort Operation named WhatDoIShowHimFirst(), as he intently glances this and that direction in the effort of mentally locating objects. His phone appears in his hand - "check this out, this is what I do!". A quick glance through selected photos including reams of old gear, starting with the pristine 486SX-25 machine he recently restored to the full. Then "look at this pile, which I recently got given FOR FREE" <incredulous look shared> - a photo of a tabletop liberally coated with Amiga, pristine C64 and Vic-20, among other things. "There's another Amiga out-of-shot too - perfect with screen". All clearly being the mere tip of his personal techberg. By this point, I'm beginning to realise "OK people! we've got ourselves an elvis Pierre Mcpower here!". The Captain starts making his way around the rear workshop, pointing to this and that Wonder along the way. The perfect G3 sitting down there on the floor. No I can't have it. The G5 tower up on the shelf. The old PCs, including Commodore and the like. Other things I can't recall offhand. During this quick tour my near-sightedness starts to resolve further, and I become aware of the shelves lining the walls full of OEM crapboxes and other misc detritus. OK. By now I'm slightly discombobulated, as the "yay $1 cables dug out the bottom of a crate" had in the space of 5 minutes turned into the largest amount of computer equipment and interest I'd ever seen locally in my entire life. "Oh! you HAVE to see this...", Captain Y mutters excitedly. Off he disappears into the shelves, to come back with a perfect condition first-gen Win95 Thinkpad, most of 10 bloody centimetres thick, and we umm and ahh over it for a minute and reverently press it's keyboard. It's so old and massive that at first I didn't even recognise what the huge, cartridge-sized PCMCIA slot was! I remembered the trivial items I'd come to look for. "Got any KVMs?", I ask. The Captain looks to Robin - "Fetch the *Box of KVMs*!" Out comes said box of KVMs. Robin MrClippy's-up a moment later, brandishing a 16 port beast of a thing, and reporting that there's another. Not that I need one of quite that breadth just now - I don't doubt I could populate it if I tried!, but I've got my hands full with just a few active PCs. Anyhow, you can all rest assured that my DOS and XP boxes are now quite satisfactorily KVMed. But we're not done yet. "Is the Thing still open?", the Captain asks Robin. It is. Out we head, to a nearby shipping container. Packed with yet further shelves containing plague-o-locusts HP blackboxes, and oh, did I mention the literal boxes full of consoles?? I did not look long, however my mental snapshot includes piles of various Xboxes and Playstations, and a bloody Box of N64s. Down in the corner is a small box literally and haphazardly packed full with Various Casually-Junked CPUs from the past 20+ years. That's about all I can handle in one sitting. There was more, but my mind was full and buzzing. Cast your thoughts back to earlier when I told you what a small, isolated place I live in. Yet there I was, on a casual mission of no import or expectations, suddenly finding myself having physically seen about as much stuff as one would see in about a year's worth of threads in this subforum. It was truly an unanticipated horde. Needless to say, that will not be my last visit. .THE END. P.S. Oh, and the 36" Wega : I asked, and yes it had been real, and had gone off to Be Recycled. Not the first or last.
