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Thrift Store Haul

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willowmoon93

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2008
Messages
288
Location
Green Bay, Wisconsin
To quote from those campy Kool-Aid Man commercials from the 70's -- "OH YEAH!!!"

All of the below games I found yesterday for $1 each at a local thrift store, complete.

* Ultima VI (5 1/4" format)
* Police Quest (3 1/2" format)
* Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Trilogy (5 1/4")
(Heroes of the Lance, Dragons of Flame, Hillsfar)
* The Immortal (3 1/2")
* Spellcraft Aspects of Valor (3 1/2")
* Dungeons & Dragons Stronghold (3 1/2")
* The Magic Candle III (5 1/4")
* Vette! (5 1/4" & 3 1/2")
* Sorcerian Master Scenario (3 1/2")
* Betrayal at Krondor (3 1/2")
* AD & D Forgotten Realms Dungeon Hack (3 1/2")
 
lol wow. Very nice grab, I think I'm gonna have to move there. All my sources have dried up for any "good" stuff now adays.
 
Nice haul.

My mom - who now lives nowhere near me - has wanted to throw out my old Sierra games, but I've made her hold onto them. I know one of them is the 256K or whatever version of King's Quest IV - we had tried to run the 512K version on my Tandy 1000 at the time, but it was way too slow. So we sent away for that one.
 
I recently came across some Apple II software in its original packaging in a Goodwill store, which is strange because Goodwill doesn't accept or sell computers anymore (hasn't for several years now). I almost bought some of it, but it was mostly educational children's games, and more importantly, I don't even have an Apple II system right now. :(

One box showed a screenshot of some really crisp, colorful, detailed graphics... but the small print said "Amiga version shown." Fiddlesticks! :rolleyes:
 
Awesome. I have Space Quest (either 3 or 4, I forget which) on my 8088 at home.

I recall many fun hours playing Police Quest at a friend's house on his 286 lol

--Phil
 
I have a bunch of the quest games boxed for the Amiga, nice stuff. It is rare for me to find old games at thrifts, Wing Commander was the last one I snagged at a goodwill.

The list you posted is pretty decent. By complete do you mean disks and manuals or boxed with everything?
 
pookdolie said:
Nice haul.

My mom - who now lives nowhere near me - has wanted to throw out my old Sierra games, but I've made her hold onto them. I know one of them is the 256K or whatever version of King's Quest IV - we had tried to run the 512K version on my Tandy 1000 at the time, but it was way too slow. So we sent away for that one.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned the other day, SCI games did say "8 Mhz or better" on the box. Actually, they do run acceptably on an 8088 in CGA, but you were undoubtedly trying to run it in Tandy mode. I would guess you had one of the 8088 models of the Tandy 1000 and not an 8086/286 model. KQ4 also used different CGA drivers (different palettes and dithering patterns) depending on what production run it was from.

My copy of KQ4 isn't from the original production run (which had files dated September 1988 ), but from the second run (August 1989 file dates). It has the order form for the AGI version, but I got the impression that was only available for a few months after the game's initial release.
 
My mom - who now lives nowhere near me - has wanted to throw out my old Sierra games, but I've made her hold onto them. I know one of them is the 256K or whatever version of King's Quest IV - we had tried to run the 512K version on my Tandy 1000 at the time, but it was way too slow. So we sent away for that one.
Click to expand...

uh, why dont you take the games to your place if she wants to trash them? i figure that would be the safest or one day you come home to your mom and find out she threw them out anyway.
 
vwestlife said:
I recently came across some Apple II software in its original packaging in a Goodwill store, which is strange because Goodwill doesn't accept or sell computers anymore (hasn't for several years now).
Click to expand...

Hmm, what area are you in? I know the Goodwills around Austin, Texas certainly do, and the ones around where I live do (Western North Carolina/Northern South Carolina). Not every Goodwill sells computers, there are dedicated computer reseller centers. Software included, although they usually toss out floppies if they're not blank or boxed. And most of the computers have their hard drives and RAM removed. Privacy concerns, apparently.
 
phreakindee said:
Hmm, what area are you in? I know the Goodwills around Austin, Texas certainly do, and the ones around where I live do (Western North Carolina/Northern South Carolina). Not every Goodwill sells computers, there are dedicated computer reseller centers. Software included, although they usually toss out floppies if they're not blank or boxed. And most of the computers have their hard drives and RAM removed. Privacy concerns, apparently.
Click to expand...

Too bad, I love holding RAM and trying to feel what files were stored in there when the power was on.
 
I was at a DAV thrift store one day, found a mint Xerox "IBM-PC compatible" scanner, would've picked it up at $6 if I'd knew what it really was, I also saw what I thought was an NEC PC-98, some model being sold with an MSX and Herzog game.
 
The whole "I'll remove your hard drive and RAM to protect your privacy" thing seems like such a scam. You know someone is hoarding all that ram somewhere for his own gain. Only the Hard Drive needs to be removed. They did that to all the old county computers recently, making them junk because of how hard it is to find ram these days. Some little weasel is probably selling computers with that ram installed as we speak.
 
I miss those old Sierra games, especially Police Quest. I can recall hours spent at friends houses playing either Police Quest, King's Quest, or Space Quest. Good times. I've been meaning to get an old computer to play that stuff again. Would be a great trip down memory lane...
-Jon
 
Eh, the stores here in Austin don't sell too much good stuff anymore. Not sure if it's lack of supply or lack of demand though.

The removing and liquefying of RAM was really a top security federal standard for NSA/DOD systems after they found some information can still be retrieved with an electron microscope and storing the memory at extremely low temperatures can actually keep the content in tact. (Also can be done with memory cards).

Anyway, obviously at a federal security level the answer was liquefy the hardware and track the disposal of the hardware. Obviously other government agencies got word of that and thought they should do it too, and so on.

Not sure if it's due to laziness or ignorance (well I saw the latter when I was hired at once place and had to inform the IT manager that removing the partition with fdisk doesn't actually destroy the data) but there was certainly a surprisingly large amount of data out there when you get used/surplus systems. I have some from the city where they didn't delete anything, an insurance company with all their software including insurance generation and uploading. It was entertaining for the night with some friends seeing how much different accidents would jack up insurance (got the highest one for one friend but we added a vehicular manslaughter charge) but for about $1000/mo that person could go out and do it again.

erm.. anyway it's interesting and yeah I see both sides to the argument but still unless you have legal information on a client and need to worry about someone having the time and money to look at the drive on an atomic level one should just run Darik's Boot and Nuke on it a few times and let someone have it as a functional system.
 
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