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So I went scavenging again, got trophies from my hunt!

J

JDT

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 17, 2007
Messages
564
Location
Cicero, NY
I took a mental health day off from work. Got some stuff done and made time to go scavenging at the local computer graveyard (recycling & demanufacturing plant) Roof leaks, HUGE conglomeration of warehouses. Things in various states of submersion... LOL kinda nasty, smells like mildew, very humid... but I dig it.

About two hours I spent looking over water logged box of stuff. I skeef a handfull of older procs, including a 286/287 10 MHz combo from an IBM system 50? a few K5 procs, some 486s, a few 8087's of the -3 variety. and even a -2. some pentium II procs and a bunch of Pentium IIIs up to a wopping 1000 MHz! whats really funny is that I took the Pentium II procs out of 2 computers that a company I used to work for made going on.... 7 years ago? and I took a few P3s out of a few machines that the company I work for currently made 3-4 years ago.

Also found a heap w/ 1x 5150 and 2x 5160s they were all water logged, but I managed to skeef the goodies from the 5150 and one of the 5160s and I decided to take the 5160 that was least wet home with me.

Looks like I picked the right one! the 5160 Powers right up! w/ a 10MB miniscribe HDD, 640K of RAM, 8088 & 8087. Boots to DOS 3.3 score!

got a whole box of 5.25 floppies that were slightly moist... I dried em out and have been able to read/write to them without a problem... they even pass scandisk.


So anyway.. yea.. I'm a geek.
 
Sounds like a fun day! :)

I take lunch trips over to more organized geek places, but never anything like that!
 
I once dug a Samsung XT clone (I think anyway) out of a recycle bin. Nothing wrong with it at all. You can get some good stuff that way...

-VK
 
I dumpster dive during every neighborhood cleanup. Found many classic compys doing it, Including a TRS-80 Model 4. Oh, & I believe I found an XT clone once...
 
Best places to get old computers are places that take computers on trade like computer renaissance (not in the store but behind) and the computer recycling centers most communities now have.

If you get to know the folks who run the recycling place or wait outside on days folks can take stuff in you can get some real goodies for absolutely nothing (as you usually have to pay to get rid of it)

Nice to see I'm not the only one that pulled stuff out of the trash can. The best machines I've had all came from the trash, all my XT's, my commodore 64, all my vintage monitors (all 30 of them) and many other goodies. Sadly most are all analog, VGA or the fixed freq workstation type and my supply of good ol IBM 5151, 5153's are done and blown up.

Cheers
 
dongfeng said:
Excellent find! What goodies did you manage to score from the other two?
Click to expand...

Got a few 384K mem exp multi-I/O cards, some wierd card that I've still to identify, some sort of graphics pass through that was connected to the CGA card. Memory chips, math-co's and one Corvus IBM Transporter card.
 
Found a ZX Spectrum and a cassette: "HORIZONS software starter pack" not in the trash bin but in of all places a recycling bin. Couldn't find the DC adapter but that's OK. I don't have a cassette player for it, but I am assuming I can use one from a TRS-80?:confused1:
 
Wow .. that brings back memories. I had that exact cassette for my Timex 1000. Take good care of it.

Any cassette player from that era will do. Cassettes were always finicky. A mono one (not stereo) was specified. (Not sure that shoebox ones ever came in stereo anyway.)
 
Indeed, takes me as much as 5 tries to get some tapes to load. It's the tape, does the same thing on any player I have. Most of the time the 1000 will go back to the "new" stage way before the tape is done loading. Yep, get to start over and try again. As pointed out in numerous places, volume around 7 works better than say 4. I'm still not sure if the "P" setting on my CCR-82s works better than just putting it on 7.5.
 
I have yet to do any dumpster diving, but the local recycling center is where I get old computers, parts, monitors etc. The guy working there had me fix his computer a couple tomes, and now he calls me when someone brings one in to throw away, and I go straight down there and get it! Talk about a sweet deal!

chris
 
Latest computer from the dump... a Dolch 386 lunchbox, missing the keyboard (as always) but absolutely packed with video grabbing cards. Really scrummy! :D
 
Just went again on friday before I left for Alex Bay

got 43 new CPUs for my collection inc 3 Pentium Pro's that im VERY excited about, been looking for some for a LONG time.

got a 486 system with the "perfect" motherboard I'v been looking for, no PCI or onboard IDE/Floppy or IO, 3 VLB slots in a shiney polished steel case w/ 300watt PSU. Hoping to make a ultimate 486 gaming box, still have to test it when I get a free momment.

got a few 16-bit NICs and a AHA-1542? SCSI/Floppy controller
 
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