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Your "elephant's graveyard" of ancient tech

G

GanChan

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 21, 2005
617
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For many years I kept a dead 1998 iMac in my closet simply because I couldn't figure out how to either activate it or remove the hard drive. (I finally just tore it apart or something; I can't recall.) Currently I'm keeping a brick of a Mac Mini (the old white-body style) sitting around because I can't access it through target drive mode or reset the PRAM or anything else that might let me erase the drive. So it's part of my permanent museum :)

I also have a few ancient phones lying around, including a Palm device, and I watched all my TV on an old 27" CRT until last year.

What old-school stuff do you have lying around the house, either in working condition or not?
 
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GanChan said:
For many years I kept a dead 1998 iMac in my closet simply because I couldn't figure out how to either activate it or remove the hard drive. (I finally just tore it apart or something; I can't recall.) Currently I'm keeping a brick of a Mac Mini (the old white-body style) sitting around because I can't access it through target drive mode or reset the PRAM or anything else that might let me erase the drive. So it's part of my permanent museum :)

I also have a few ancient phones lying around, including a Palm device, and I watched all my TV on an old 27" CRT until last year.

What old-school stuff do you have lying around the house, either in working condition or not?
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I’m pretty sure I recall @LizKat boasting about a couple 8-tracks and a reel-to-reel under her bed. Next to her autographed portrait of Herbert Hoover.
 
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Does this count? I converted a floppy drive to be a SuperDrive, with an SSD in the bottom too.
 

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Cables. Cables as far as the eye can see. I have too many old USB cables, IDE cables, Molex adapters. I haven't needed them for about 15 years, but if the world is ever coming to an end and all we need to save it is an old twisted Mini-USB cable, an IDE Ribbon Cable and some crap zip ties, just call my John McClane.
 
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Still use some vintage 80s keyboards regularly, such as the IBM Model M and a NOS Keytrak with Blue Alps switches. Keyboards are great for this since they haven't changed all that much and can be easily connected and used with modern systems.

Have some vintage rifles (40s/50s) that still work like new as they tend to age well with good care and storage. Old watches can be nice, too, though I don't have many.
 
Gutwrench said:
@chown33 with punch cards in 3...2...
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Sorry, none left.

I do have a box of 8" floppy diskettes (back when they were called "diskettes"), and some narly (or gnarly) SCSI cables.

At least I think I have the SCSI cables. I took a quick look in the Closet of Elephants Past and didn't see them. I may have given them to a friend to hand off to a metal recycler he knows.
 
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Gutwrench said:
I’m pretty sure I recall @LizKat boasting about a couple 8-tracks and a reel-to-reel under her bed. Next to her autographed portrait of Herbert Hoover.
Click to expand...

Now now... those 8-tracks were actually Panasonic boomboxes, long since donated to a halfway house's entertainment center after I converted all my tapes to CDs (and the CDs to mp3 tracks).

And the portrait, well that is of kin who lived here under King George III... but they were on the side that gave him the boot, even if some of their descendants may have been dumb enough later on to vote for Hoover. Have to say they looked like they sure thought life was long and then ya die.

The best of my "elephant gear" is an unenhanced 512k Mac. It still boots though, so it doesn't really count as junk yet. I do have a Tandy doorstop upstairs in a closet, with a couple hard drives that need to be degaussed. Somewhere there are also surely a kb and monitor and maybe the dread dot matrix printer?

Sigh... decluttering... my eternal occupation these days, but I only do it on Tuesdays so as to provide comic relief for the refuse hauler on Wednesday mornings. He accepts household trash plus certain small appliances for diversion from the landfill stream to scrap metal processing.

"You had one of these toasters?! Ha ha, my grandma had one of those, they're crap!"​

I should pick up the pace and rent a dumpster from the guy once I finish separating the e-recyclables and scrap metal from the true landfill candidates.

If you read this far, you have just used up one of your three free Ambien substitutes. :)
 
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GanChan said:
For many years I kept a dead 1998 iMac in my closet…Currently I'm keeping a brick of a Mac Mini (the old white-body style)…
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Don't know what to say to that.

Currently operating in my living room is a 2006 2.5Ghz PowerMac G5 Quad, a 2005 2.3Ghz PowerMac G5 DualCore, a 2003 17" PowerBook G4, a 2006 17" MacBook Pro and a 1999 B&W PowerMac G3. The G3 is my home server running OS X 10.4.11 Server.

If you have real problems with what to do about PowerPC Macs you should drop into the PowerPC section of MacRumors. There are users in there with collections of these Macs they could open museums with but most of them are working, doing something.

I've got a few old things, but mostly, I use my stuff, old as it is. I've got an iMac G3 in the garage that functions as an iTunes device, another 12" PowerBook G4 and a 2.7Ghz DP PowerMac G5 that function as test computers. I've also got an iPhone 5 I use daily as a secondary iPhone (I clock in and out of work using that phone), an iPhone 4s and an iPhone 4.

I don't like my old tech stuff just sitting around.
 
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LizKat said:
The recipes for grilling are believable though. :)
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Dude never posts anymore! The only famous political people I ever met was a long time ago and they were involved DC scandals from years prior. I've met and spoken to more actors than political leaders. Treat them like normal people, they'll have a quick chat. The actors, not the politicians or those who study them so much it consumes their lives.
 
I have a Radio Shack Tandy 102 portable computer and a couple of PalmPilots, including one with the U.S. Robotics logo. All of them work. The oldest Mac I have is a IIfx.
 
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