Retro Spotter Inside A Thrift Store

[kiyotewolf]

I'm not going to reveal which company I work for, but we accept computers, and have to recycle all of them, no exceptions.

Things I've seen.

NeXT computer, Color Workstation, Sound Box attachment, NeXT lazer printer. [unknown if worked or not]
Amiga computer monitor with 9 - pin input, and dual inputs, for either Commodore 64 chroma / luma inputs. [worked]
Apple //GS, computer & mouse [dead]
IBM 5150 case [empty.. totally gutted] with an internal speaker, to headphone jack mod. I was tickled and impressed by that.
Tandy 1400HD laptop [worked, turned on, but screen was dead.. had an external monitor port, but no way to test] - was old white & blue LCD.
IBM PS/1 low profile box. [unknown if worked]

PDP12 computer manual - Actually was able to buy this, after it made it to the floor. I'm going to get a page style scanner, and make a PDF of it eventually. [I think it's a PDP12 book, I have it here, I'll update this later if I'm a bit off.]

Lots of random 5 & 1/4 inch floppys. Saw one that was an old VGA driver disk.

MicroSoft Game Maker Studio - old game making kit, with QBasic / [quickbasic?] in the box. With QBTetris. [was complete, with 5 & 1/4" disks. for a CGA platform, or HGC platform]

Not a computer product, but, 8-track cartridges, and the occasional 8-track player.



~Paul

I'll either post more to this thread, or modify this, if I think of anything else. Drawing blanks for now.

 

[DOS lives on!!]

My goodness.....Can't stand....the thought......of all that.....being recycled! I couldn't work at a place like that, knowing that I couldn't take home things like a //GS and a NeXT. Do other people there know the worth of some of the computers you listed?

 

[NeXT]

A lot of that stuff I have also seen and got recycled. Asset write-off is always a painful thing to do.

 

[Unknown_K]

Anyone who has picked up stuff at a recycling center would have seen tons of interesting hardware being scrapped at any time, you just can't save them all.

 

[Atari26003]

However, usually if you crawl up ladder in some local places like i've said before. You can usually get few things changed, or i "accidently" left it beside the bin lol.

 

[luckybob]

There used to be a computer recycler near my house that would "turn their back" on someone who would "volunteer" at the shredder. Basically, if they expected 10# of shredded metal and got that much, they looked the other way. Their only thing was, no hard drives.

They are still around, but now they sell everything on ebay. http://www.ebay.com/sch/actionpc.com/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686 I still get the occasional item from them.

 

[creepingnet]

When I lived in Everett there was a local shop who collected stuff for PC Recycle, for the longest time they would let me peruse there and got some good finds - a Mac SE, a NEC MultiSync 9 pin mono/RGB/VGA monitor, some small parts for my machines.

One day I came back and they stopped doing that, their reasoning was that people were actually taking the recycled stuff and putting it on E-bay, which I had never done. Makes me wonder how much REALLY good stuff I missed out on since I heard they got a Commodore 64 in once, and an IBM PC 5150 awhile after that.