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At least for newer SATA tyoe drives, you can easily remove them from a FW enclosure and drop them in a USB 3 enclosure or HD docking station.

The good news is that USB3 drive are very inexpensive. You can get 3-4TB drives at Costco or Sams for $100-129 range. You can even get a Seagate 6TB drive for $299.

Yea well problem are those old Lacie D2 Quadra 500gb Firewire/Usb2 drives. Just complete nonsense to keep those on a nMP :D
 
I have two milk crates full of old Firewire drives with archived video that I've shot. Mostly firewire 400 and mostly small, like 80gb, 160gb, 320gb, a couple 500gb. Just wouldn't be worth the cost or effort to put them in new enclosures. One of these days I need to pull the files off these antiques, they would probably fit on one 4tb drive. :)

Yep, a lot of us have a collection of SM-ALL drives with files scattered across them. I have a few pulled from laptops, a few from old FW cases, etc. Amazing thing is, some of these antiques still run just fine in a dock. A few are clunky loud and kinda slow, but I keep most of them going just to see how long they'll live.

There's also a 1 year old 4tb Deskstar that bit the dust after just a tiny bit of use. You can guess, but Ya never know ;)
 
personally i discard drives that are that old and small. You can get a USB dongle that is larger and likely faster.

I would not bother with drives smaller than 1TB these days.
 
I would not bother with drives smaller than 1TB these days.

Really depends on what you need…. I am using a 500GB Passport Ultra to clone the 512gb SSD in my MBA. It is pretty fast for a bus-powered disk (over 100MB/s), small and cheap. Why should I pay for a 1TB drive when more than half of it will never be used? :)
 
I'm surprised at the hate here for Firewire drives.

I bought a new LaCie 1TB bus-powered firewire drive to use as a time machine drive with my MBP just a few months back. The one I have is USB 3 and Firewire 800, although I use it just as a Firewire drive as my late 2011 MBP does not have USB 3.

I could have bought the same drive in Thunderbolt, but there were a number of disadvantages. I'd have been looking at another $50 or so on the same drive for the same capacity, plus an extra $30-50 for a thunderbolt cable. On top of that, I often use a secondary display when working at my desk-a time when I want to have my time machine drive connected. Most of the lower price thunderbolt drives I see only have one thunderbolt port, so connecting both the monitor and TB drive is impossible(unless I want to drop down to USB 2 speeds).

When I use external keyboard with my MBP, I much prefer the older styles to the current "low profile" aluminum one offered. I'm using the A1048(made from 2003-2007) with my G5, and have a second one of these that I use with my MBP as the occasion warrants. I use the 2000-2003 M7803 "Apple Pro Keyboard" with my G4s and a couple of other computers.

I'd really like to pick up some of the Griffin ADB-to-USB adapters, as the Apple Extended Keyboard II remains one of the best Apple keyboards I've ever used. I'm getting ready to write my dissertation, and would use the AEKII to type out the whole thing if I could get it set up correctly. I find the AEKII to be more relaxing and less tiring than IBM model M to which its often compared.

I don't think it counts as "old", since Apple still catalogs it, but all of my desktop Macs have the A1152 "Mighty Mouse"(now just called the Apple Mouse). I also have a spare that stays in my desk drawer for use with my MBP. I much prefer this mouse to the Magic Mouse.

For OS9 use with a G4, I sometimes use a M8733 "Apple Pro Mouse" as having a multi-button mouse doesn't do any good. For pure simplicity and ergonomics, I love the ADB-II mouse, although generally only use them with ADB systems under OS9. The ADB-II mouse fits my hand better than any other Apple mouse I've used.
 
bunn wrote above:
[[ I'd really like to pick up some of the Griffin ADB-to-USB adapters, as the Apple Extended Keyboard II remains one of the best Apple keyboards I've ever used ]]

You might try a Macally "iMediaKey". They can be found on ebay cheap.
The extra "keys" above the keyboard are no longer supported, but the keyboard works just fine. Even has USB ports at the ends.
 
I'm surprised at the hate here for Firewire drives.

Did not see any hate. More like a recognition that FW, like USB 2, is an older and slower technology. FW 800 is better than USB2 as a transport. So if you don't have USB 3 or TB ports, obviously it is the transport to consider for external drives. If you do have newer SATA drives inside a FW enclosure, you should be able to use them in a USB 3 3 dock or enclosure when you upgrade your Mac. Make sure the enclosure or dock is UASP complaint to get the most of the USB 3 transport.
 
Who else uses vintage/old peripherals and why?

Fujitsu Siemens Scenicview E24W-1SD (24" 16:10 Full HD screen with just DVI and VGA connections) from 2007 as my second display.
Pioneer's S-P760V speakers with the sets original 25CD changer system (XR-P760F) from around 1995-00.
Logitech G400 gaming mouse (for gaming) from 2011
Logitech DiNovo Mini (for media) from 2011
Microsoft Arc keyboard (3-5 years old)
iomega's 250gb (USB 2.0) HDD. (5 years old)

And why?
There's no fighters against the DiNovo (especially for the 30€ I paid for it)
Arc's amazing for the price (paid 20 euros back then)
There's no money against the iomega or the Fujitsu's screen.
No need for better gaming mouse than G400.

And the speakers are just ridiculously cheap nowadays (people sell those for 20 euros).
Owned them for 5 or 6 years with no problems at all and the sound is just too good to be true (against those cheap Logitechs for example.)

But when there's money enough to spend at least the screen, and speakers will change. Screen to something more colour correction friendly and speakers to at least semi-decent active speakers (or when I buy the stuff needed to connect my rMBP to my 50 years old Telefunken).

Not original Apple stuff, but works great (and used) with Mac.
 
Bondi Blue keyboard with my Mac Mini

I've actually sort of grown to like these keyboards. They nice thing about them is that they retain a full numeric keypad, but are relatively compact at the same time.

Even though the "power on" button from off doesn't work with newer computers, it does still function as a shortcut to bring up the shutdown/sleep menu and is handy for that.
 
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