Few of my late dad's hoard
Posted by Qazaca@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 28 comments
Mostly I believe from 90's-2000s. That's not all of it, there are some more boxes of old parts, cables, printers, and there's few more I believe still uncovered yet. Very likely going to e-waste since I'm not sure if they're still working, and already overhelmed dealing with his other hoards. Had tossed some of those that are long exposed to dirt and dust due to being left outside for too long.
Keeping those myself isn't much an option due to shit at fixing, no storage space & expensive to ship those things out. And we need to clear this rented home.
Any advise what might be better keeping. At the moment I'm just taking old HDDs and RAM, unsure what to do with those yet.
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
It's nearly all junk. Just give it away. Maybe someone can use the parts but this is not treasure, it's just a hoard.
Elementary2@reddit
Keep one of each floppy, and the ram stick. It's just the kind of reminder I like to have laying around.
kriebz@reddit
That last pic is some kind of slot-or-socket PIII. Kinda cool. Quite a collection. Looks like the bottom of things got a little damp at some point, but a lot of it probably works.
Qazaca@reddit (OP)
I may uncover more of those among his other untouched hoards yet.
As for whether all of those still works, I'm unsure. He's the type that hoards and bring them home and left it rot untouched, and instead of fixing broken items, e.g. printers, he just kept them at home while he purchase new ones.
majestic_ubertrout@reddit
That last pic is interesting and is frankly the only thing shown worth trying to sell or rehome. If there's any memories on those floppies I'd try to get them off and then sell the floppies to floppydisk dot com.
Qazaca@reddit (OP)
Shipping overseas isn't an option for those floppies. Most of those are work stuffs, and going through each of them is way too much. Though I did saw a floppy marked with Windows 3.11 installation or something on it (don't think it's the original files though)
majestic_ubertrout@reddit
Didn't realize you were in Malaysia. Just toss unless there's something local.
What's the graphics and sound cards in the pc in the last pic?
Qazaca@reddit (OP)
Don't think there's any graphics and sound cards there
majestic_ubertrout@reddit
In the last photo I can see a graphics card in the AGP slot (closest to the processor). There's also a card with an angled form, which I suspect is sound. There might be value there.
chandleya@reddit
A PCChips nightmare AT thing. It’ll work when it does. I wouldn’t trash it, just know it’s terrible when you start.
Scoth42@reddit
I'm sure you could find a retro enthusiast interested in most/all of it depending on where you're located. I had some stuff I was clearing out when I was paring down my collection that wasn't even all that interesting and I had a couple people come grab all of it within a couple days. I did live in a big suburb of a major city though.
As for what's worth it to keep - definitely the floppy disks, especially the 5.25" ones. 3.5" are still reasonably available and affordable, but the 5.25" ones are getting harder to find. Especially since it looks like they may be Double Density which are very desirable for very old computers since later era high density floppies don't work very well with them.
RAM is a little more questionable since even stuff like PC66/100 SDRAM is still pretty readily available and cheap. Obviously it won't always be but I understand the tradeoff of time vs. effort to try to sell that kind of stuff if you can't find someone to take it all off your hands. If there's older stuff, or anything proprietary to specific machines like specific laptops that's probably worth investigating. Those can range from not worth much to Holy Grail level depending on the desirability of the machine and memory.
Random motherboards are a crapshoot too. There's been a big upswing in interest in the slot era P2/3 machines but there were some boards better thought of than others (VIA chipsets. Ugh.) and it was getting into the Capacitor Plague era. Might be worth investigating them to see if they're worth the trouble or not, if you end up tackling things yourself. That ASUS one in the pic might be interesting because it supports late-era P4s including the 64-bit ones that can be fun to do dumb things like run Windows 10/11 on it. The second one is a VIA chipset ECS board that I personally wouldn't want to spend a lot of time with even with the interesting dual socket/slot situation.
Hard drives are also kind of a crapshoot, especially if they haven't been stored well. They're prone to failure, especially if not stored well, and these days a lot of enthusiasts are accepting the loss of authenticity to use various adapters and mods to allow the use of CF cards, SATA drives, ssds, etc since basically every spinny HD is a ticking time bomb. If they're particularly interesting somehow, maybe older MFM/RLL drives and you can test them somehow they'd probably be worth it. Random 20GB IDE drive probably less so.
Optical and floppy drives are in sort of the same boat, especially if they weren't stored well like it looks like those weren't. They have moving parts and sensitive lasers/heads that don't respond well to dirt and humidity. That said the floppy drives are probably worth trying to clean up and test. SATA optical drives I wouldn't even bother with, they're still cheap and readily available (and still made), unless they're something particularly interesting. Maybe a Blu Ray burner or something. IDE ones are more questionable, especially if they haven't been stored well. If you have a convenient test rig to test them (both being detected and reading a disc) then maybe give them a go and see. Even fancy IDE CD-ROM drives and burners are going for $10-20 shipped on eBay and they're thick on the ground, so that's up to you. Not like you'd be throwing away rare treasure or anything most likely.
Ironically, despite being the worst to ship, any beige cases might be worth something if they're in remotely decent shape. They're reasonably popular both for retro builds and modern sleeper builds and originals are getting harder to find. Original PSUs in them are going to be hit and miss too, lots of good and crap ones back then. By and large if they still work today they'll probably be fine, but worth testing the voltages to make sure they make sense.
Anyway, I tried to keep this realistic. You'll probably get a lot of "KEEP IT ALL!" responses but as someone who has hoarding tendencies and has pared down his collection a lot to something more reasonable, I understand that sometimes you can't save everything and when eBay is full of whatever the thing is for $5 shipped you can't spend months trying to sell a box of them on top of the annoyance of selling things online. Plus I knew anything I gave away had a 50/50 shot of ending up in someone else's hoard pile so it wasn't even like I was necessarily passing anything on to someone who might use it.
Foreign-Attorney-147@reddit
Good advice in this reply.
Qazaca@reddit (OP)
No 5.25" drives here, I suppose there's no way to wipe the contents off them?
Scoth42@reddit
Not easily/reliably. A large, powerful magnet ought to scramble the data but leave them reusable but it'd be hard to verify they were particularly fully wiped.
LuigiTeaching@reddit
God Bless - that plastic verbatim 5.25” floppy disk protector case took me back!
PecanLoveNubble@reddit
You can feel the bendy plastic locking closed as you press it. Sadly, it was never satisfying.
LuigiTeaching@reddit
Yes! I see they are still out there…https://ebay.us/m/h5oupj
PecanLoveNubble@reddit
This is what it's going to look like when I die.... And a free TRS-80s. Thank you for sharing my future with me.
King_Corduroy@reddit
Psh that's not a hoard. lol
Background_Yam9524@reddit
$90 for 128 MB RAM lmao
LameBMX@reddit
shit was cheap yo.. thats the value line.....
I kinda miss the halfway decent coding of those times honestly. imagine how fast stuff would actually be if they made stuff work like ram was priced like gold a 1GB hard drive was $1k.. now shits just sooo sloppy cuz its easy to just up the system requirements.
we have a linear improvement in program quality for exponential hardware requirements over the past decades (yes some is in added layers of security).
135GB space used and 20GB of ram for rdr2... 35gb & 2gb of that are the OS lol
babtras@reddit
Just wait until my kids post their late dad's hoard. Except it'll probably be posted on a buy/sell page
flecom@reddit
Last pic is at AT socket 370/slot 1 board, that's pretty neat i am sure someone would want that
And people always want more 5.25" floppies
Where are you located im sure someone will help you deal with it
Jorgenreads@reddit
The unfortunate issue with vintage electronics: There’s a chance someone somewhere in the world wants them… maybe
VivienM7@reddit
Why not see if a local retrocomputing enthusiast is willing to take everything?
Qazaca@reddit (OP)
Didn't have any luck finding them so far, but will continue to do so. And gonna mind with other family members whether to try getting something from those or just letting go for free.
VivienM7@reddit
If you want to try and get something, I'd probably focus on video cards. Voodoo2s, GF4s, etc can be worth big money.
Sound cards too.
That ASUS LGA775 i915 board, though, that can go direct to e-waste, do not pass go.
guitpick@reddit
Just a note on the RAM, notice that the stick inside the package doesn't match the label on the outside. This is probably a stick he had to remove for an upgrade or from a previous computer and kept just in case. You might be able to sell the 5.25" floppies for a little something - especially with those boxes.