24 Jan
2012
24 Jan
'12
9:59 a.m.
Mouse wrote:
That always used to be the way I did it, but that was when vintage pickings
were a bit more common, and I was living in an area that had always been
quite technology-focused (so the percentage of folk who knew a PC from
something that wasn't a PC was much higher).
It's a lot different around here; sparse population, and historically very
non-technical (in terms of computing - no problem finding someone e.g. who
knows their way around an engine). There probably never was much 'big iron'
around here, but I think there might be vintage 'home' machines still
lurking, particularly as the low population density equates to dwellings
with lots of storage space and hence less need to periodically haul clutter
to landfill.
Problem right now is that I'm getting quite a few older x86 PCs and no
bites with anything that I actually *do* want - as you say, a few older PCs
and parts can be useful, but I'm getting to the point where I'll have more
than I'll ever need.
cheers
Jules
Hmm, have
people on here ever found a *sensible* way of defining our
interests such that it's obvious we're *not* interested in that x86
clone PC running Windows that you bought in 2002 and have just
unearthed in your garage?
I haven't, except to people who, while perhaps not _sharing_ the
mindset, understand it enough that they don't really need to have it
explained.
But I haven't put much thought into it, because (a) I consider turning
down (or otherwise dealing with) a dozen boring peecees to be a small
price to pay to get hold of that one oddball something-or-other from
$WHENEVER, and (b) even the peecees hold _some_ value for me.
Given a steady stream of boring x86 boxen, which I seem to have, I can
just use them as throwaway computron sources - use them for the
applications where I don't care about the machine enough that using a
vintage machine is worth doing, and, when one breaks, throw it out
(whatever that means) and put in another one.
Furthermore, they often include repurposeable extractable bits such as
disks and PCI cards, many of which are useful in *interesting*
machines.