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why is it hard to throw old things out?

Its not hard for me to throw stuff out. I just put it on the curb, and someone takes it. At least I know someone else will be putting to good use. If they toss it.... out of sight, out of mind.

vwestlife said:
Same with my Apple IIGS. I just like looking at it, even if I hardly ever use it --
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That or you are still waiting for Test Drive II: The Dual to finish loading off of a floppy....
 
I think curb-side recylcing is great, for various reasons, but I tell you, the one thing that p**'s's me off is when someone takes something, and then drops it back off the next day or so. In my curbside ethics handbook, that's just wrong. If you take it, you're responsible for disposing it.
patscc
 
Never heard of that one before. That's just rude. But sadly, not all that surprising.

patscc said:
I think curb-side recylcing is great, for various reasons, but I tell you, the one thing that p**'s's me off is when someone takes something, and then drops it back off the next day or so. In my curbside ethics handbook, that's just wrong. If you take it, you're responsible for disposing it.
patscc
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carangil said:
But it just feels wrong for whatever reason to ditch working stuff that get new stuff, and I have no idea why. I drove my old Saturn car around until it was pretty much unfixable. I used the same minidisc player for years before moving on to mp3s.
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My kids tell me I'm cheap.

The car is a good example. Think of it this way. Suppose the transmission goes out in your 10 year old car. It costs $1000 (USD) to get the transmission rebuilt. I know many people who would never do it. It's too expensive. But what's a new car payement? $500 a month? So if you drive that old car for a year, you've spent $1000 instead of $6000. You just saved $5000. Maintaining your old car is often cheaper than a new one.
 
Oh heck yeah. I've never owned a new car; taking your example math, my last car ($1200 for a little over three years) was under $33 a month. Even factoring in the repairs I did have done, it's not more than $60 a month. So much cheaper.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I seem to be accumulating a pile of Slot 1 systems, mostly because that was before ISA support was broken. Later chipsets may use an ISA bridge, but few get complete ISA support right--in particular, DMA. i440BX was about the last decent chipset for ISA support. But I've got too many of the things...
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Yea, Intel replaced the ISA bridge with LPC when they moved away from PCI as the chipset interconnect in 1999. And AFAIK, the last Intel chipset where full ISA support was possible with a separate ISA bridge chip was the i865:
http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/whitepaper/318244.pdf
 
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OT but car related, my favorite memory in my first job was a bunch of engineers and phds at AMD. Dudes all made 6 figures, I was happy with my $7/hr lol (was an internship) but they were always making helpful life conversations and one of them was never buy a new car. They pretty much all buy 3-4 year old cars. Most of the time the warranty is still good and transferable, someone else paid the $10000 price reduction for you while they drove it for a few years and had everything fixed under warranty, and a lot of folks who just like the fad of having a new car get through 1, pay it off or trade it back then go for another new model and there's nothing wrong with the car. Anyway it's something I certainly believe in. The fact that they'll charge you $18,000 for a minimal vehicle that you could drive off, drive back and offer to sell them and they wouldn't probably budge over $12000 is BS.

Anyway, back on trackish emotional attachments happen to lots of stuff. I would guess we all have a few other things or little collections of stuff we wouldn't want to get rid of besides computers. For me it's a lot of childhood memories and not growing up with much disposable income I came to appreciate the little things that were given to me as my own personal valuable. Ironically not everything matters though, cars I could care less about but I don't end up with any personality with them.
 
My second problem of gathering things comes with vintage radios and the occasional B&W TV. I can't get rid of some of them, mainly because the look nice and I've spent weeks restoring it and trying to get those confounded built-in 78 record players to work. I love the sound of a giant Westinghouse in the living room. And who knew so many people want to get rid of these things at yard sales. That was the last place I'd expect to find them.
 
I'm going through this right now. I have ENOUGH computer systems in the house, but I want to update my daily use 10 yr. old Gateway running XP pro with a brand new shiny super-dream-gamer-computer desktop. I want to build it myself. So the computer I am willing to sell (sorry Pat) is the '95 Gateway 2000 system. I have it posted on craigslist here: http://cleveland.craigslist.org/sys/3228449591.html Yes, I know I have a shockingly staggering price on it. But my thinking is that if someone is willing to pay it, they must really mean to give it a good home. Then when (if) it sells, the Windows 98 SE440BX-2 computer will take its place. The current XP pro Gateway will take the old Windows 98's place, and I will have an opening for the new shiny super-deluxe desktop. :p

I am still keeping the 386 based dual booting PC-MOS system, and it doesn't count the wife's computer, or our laptops.
 
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Upgrading your daily-use machine isn't really the topic of conversation -- it's the 30+ other machines that many of us have. I don't include my Pentium 4 or Core i7 systems as part of my "vintage" collection.

BTW if you sell that 486 at that price, I'll eat my hat. You're asking about 5x what any sane person would pay for that. Unless the Cleveland State Hospital still has some inmates stumbling out of it, I doubt you'll find any buyers.
 
Who wants to chip in so we can see a video of Jim eating his hat? .. anyone? ;-) Didn't a Gateway 486 sell for an unusual amount of money here not that long ago (or feebay)? Coulda sworn Erik sold one or someone did a video of theirs and it sold for somewhere around $200 IIRC. Not a common thing of course but it was surprising and I wasn't sure what the difference was.
 
I think a lot is down to the nature of IT. There is a saying "you always have one too few backups" and that works for hardware and software. So if you always have one too few backups you never throw anything out...
 
Unknown_K said:
People who blow money on Gateway 486/66 systems seem to want VLB not PCI.
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Now that's interesting, because it took me a long time to find a 486/66 with PCI (found a Compaq deskpro model eventually). VLB videocards are hard to come by, whereas PCI videocards are $1. I wonder why the interest in VLB, considering it was more common and less capable.
 
Trixter said:
I wonder why the interest in VLB, considering it was more common and less capable.
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Its period correct. Most 486 users never bought a PCI 486 new, they upgraded to Pentiums when the time came. That and VLB stuff used to be dime a dozen (usually free). EISA+VLB boards however....
 
The nutjobs who wanted a kick ass high end server/workstation 486 lust after EISA systems (and they cost a mint today, luckily I have a couple).

The die hard old school gamers want a 486 VLB with high end graphics cards, caching SCSI and EIDE VLB controllers, and even VLB ethernet (yup, got all that in spades). The wavy Gateway 2000 486/66 desktop systems were very popular back in the DOS gaming days, and people who had to make do with a clone (like I did) end up paying some cash down the road for one (or more). Most VLB video cards out are cheap 1MB tridents or maybe a low end cirrus logic cards, the 2/4 MB high rez ones are very hard to find.

The geeks with no friends of course want the IBM PS/2 Model 90/95 MCA 486 systems or maybe a Model 80 with the hard to find and expensive 486 upgrades (try finding a MCA soundblaster for under $100).

And finally the how fast can I make a 486 go crowd want the last generation PCI 486 systems where you can easily run a 486/133 at 486/160 or get support for the Cyrix 5x86-120 plus have cheap 72 pin SIMM slots you can dump a ton of RAM into. You also get built in IDE and lots of PCI slots for much faster video cards (yea, I have one of these as well).

Sadly scrappers have hardons for 486 chips so anything 486 era is getting hard to find. While I have a ton of VLB cards they are much harder to find these days then they used to be, at higher prices, and most likely are going to be harder yet to find soon. Sad since the 486 era offered everything under the sun ISA, EISA, VLB, MCA.
 
Unknown_K said:
The geeks with no friends of course want the IBM PS/2 Model 90/95 MCA 486 systems or maybe a Model 80 with the hard to find and expensive 486 upgrades (try finding a MCA soundblaster for under $100).
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Well, ummm, there goes my signature....

But from what you said, I've apparently made up for that with my 486 Gateway systems.:)
 
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