6 historic tech items that were rescued from the trash

[Brent Hilpert]

A few of us were standing about talking in the hallway between our radio museum and the ham club, and I happened to notice a small module of PCBs in the trash bin. Unable to resist finding out what it was (or more accurately: what it once had been) I reached in and pulled it out.

Turned out it had a 4004 system on it, so turned it into this:
	http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/4004Monument/index.html

The SWTPC 6800 I obtained a few years ago was, shall we say, diverted from going into the trash.


On 2015-Jun-22, at 1:58 PM, Ian S. King wrote:

> One day my girlfriend came home and told me she'd seen some people dumping
> what looked like circuit boards into a dumpster just a few blocks from our
> apartment.  We took a drive over and there are at least a dozen ADM-3/a
> logic boards.  Best yet: *all the chips were socketed*.  And when I
> acquired some complete 3/a's a few years later, I had the character
> generator ROM for lower case!  The girlfriend is long gone, but I'm sure
> some of those chips are still in my TTL stash.
> 
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 5:59 PM, tony duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> I have gotten some of my best stuff from the trash ... One day I will
>> never
>> 
>> I suspect a lot of us have....
>> 
>> When I was at university I had official permision to skip-dive (dumpster
>> dive). Got
>> all sorts of things. Pulled my HP2100A + 7900 drive + paper tape reader
>> right out
>> of a skip. Nearly did my back in, but,,,
>> 
>> Another time I got a nice AR88LF communications receiver.
>> 
>> Then there was the time I saw a load of HP stuff... I grabbed the H1350
>> graphics
>> translator (lovely unit), etc. At the bottom was what looked to be an
>> HP9825. Well,
>> I had one of those but I thought I could probably find a home for a second
>> one. In
>> any case I'd grab the I/O modules from it, and see if it contained any
>> ROMs in the
>> front ports. So out it came. When I looked at it I realised it wasn't a
>> 9825 at all,
>> it was the (much, much, rarer) 9831 (running BASIC not HPL) So of course I
>> grabbed
>> that.
>> 
>> But a lot of my finds came to me before they were thrown out. I was known
>> for
>> wanting just about any old electronic or computer gear.
>> 
>> -tony
> 
> -- 
> Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
> The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu>
> 
> Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org>
> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org>
> 
> University of Washington
> 
> There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."