On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 9:05 PM, Chuck Guzis<cclist at sydex.com> wrote: I'm still mourning the loss of things I got rid of over the years. I had an original 5150 with the high persistence monochrome monitor and single sided full height floppy drives. I also had an amiga 500. I had a number of vintage hand-held games also, like that classic red display football game, a merlin, that little professor math educational calculator thing, a colecovision, and a big track with the dump truck trailer. But the worst of all was a nintendo famicom with a dozen games and the computer keyboard and cartidge add-on that I bought new in person in japan back in the early 80s. Then when my wife's grandfather was nearing his end, I had the option to acquire all of his vintage computers including an apple 2e, and another computer I haven't quite identified. I believe it was a TRS-80. The give-away for everyone here would be that it came with a suitcase that fit all the pieces. Anyway, I passed on all of it and grandma put it at the curb. Face-palm. Most of my stuff went through various garage sales over the years. I've managed to replace some of it. But other things would be expensive to replace now. And now that I'm old enough to feel a perceived quality difference between things that I used in the 70s and 80 vs things now, it's getting difficult for me to throw anything out. Will things be even crappier in 10 or 20 years? I'm really starting to resist the disposable society. I'm also seriously into woodworking which is a disease all by itself. Woodworkers never throw out wood scraps figuring they'll fit perfectly somewhere eventually, same for dull drill bits and chisels we'll sharpen some day. Then there's vintage machinery. The only way to buy woodworking machines that are made in america now is to buy used. It's an extreme case of "they don't make them like they used to". The chinese machines in my shop are very serviceable, but it's just not the same. I have plans to eventually restore a 40s or 50s era tablesaw (and others) when I find the time. brian

Round here, it would more likely be the reverse -- fixing a magtape controller using a transistor taken from a cordless drill :-)... I think I mentioned I once raided a CRT from a portable TV to fix a somewhat odd terminal (Volker-Craig VC414 with APL character set). -tony