What is the weirdest item you have in your box of spare parts?
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If you look at my profile, I was born in 1981.... What's an 8-inch floppy? ;P
Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix Chihuahua, Mexico
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If you look at my profile, I was born in 1981.... What's an 8-inch floppy? ;P
Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix Chihuahua, Mexico
Around when you were born, I was writing code, 8 inch floppies were the rage, running OS off them and having ones dedicated to compilers and source. Intel 'blue boxes' used them as primary storage if you didn't have the $10,000 for a 10MB hard drive. The floppy held incredible amounts of data, 160KB. Unbelievable?? Truth is stranger than fiction. Unless you were playing a game with twisting passages, all alike.... also before your time. paul
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I recently came across a VGA to USB adapter. Not quite sure what it's for, but it may be useful someday i guess. I used to also have an internal tape drive circa '91 that used a "clip" type floppy cable. I had a few other things, but i don't remember anymore, though nearly everything i wouldn't intentionally buy is salvage stuff. Roswell :)
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
Around when you were born, I was writing code, 8 inch floppies were the rage, running OS off them and having ones dedicated to compilers and source. Intel 'blue boxes' used them as primary storage if you didn't have the $10,000 for a 10MB hard drive. The floppy held incredible amounts of data, 160KB. Unbelievable?? Truth is stranger than fiction. Unless you were playing a game with twisting passages, all alike.... also before your time. paul
"Unless you were playing a game with twisting passages, all alike.... also before your time" I was just about to post that I still have an 8" floppy with the Collosal Cave Adventure on it - and no way to read it... Luckily there are lots of ports of it availabe these days :-D
There are three kinds of people in the world - those who can count and those who can't...
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Christian Graus wrote:
VGA to USB ? What does that go into ?
Not sure... The USB end is a "blade" (PC end) type connector, and the other plugs either straight into the video card or the monitor, but it's only about a foot long.
Christian Graus wrote:
I have piles and piles of cables, cases, CD drives, you name it. Hard to say what is strange, I doubt I can beat VGA->USB I do have the cable that my old matrox card needed to be dual head.
I'm a hoarder, so at one point i've probably had as much stuff as you do (before we moved), so i can understand. The only stuff i willingly get rid of is neither old, interesting and rare enough, nor still usable by me. The things i've been able to keep thru the move are most of my cables (i still can't find my serial and two sets of parallel :( ), and heatsinks of all shapes and sizes, as well as all the working (or expensive but broken) computers. The 8X CD-ROM drive had to go:laugh: Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CAActually, while this is "weird", it's not that old. I think USB video adapters haven't been around that long. Plug it in, load a driver and you've got an additional VGA port for another monitor. Matt Penner
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I recently came across a VGA to USB adapter. Not quite sure what it's for, but it may be useful someday i guess. I used to also have an internal tape drive circa '91 that used a "clip" type floppy cable. I had a few other things, but i don't remember anymore, though nearly everything i wouldn't intentionally buy is salvage stuff. Roswell :)
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CAThe "weirdest" item I have is an old Mac PowerBook SCSI adapter. It allowed you to plug a standard 25pin SCSI I cable into the PowerBook's SCSI square connector. I think I used it like twice. You're always afraid to throw stuff out. Years ago I finally threw out my 5.25 floppy drive. Two weeks later I had a friend who wanted to take all his old 5.25 floppy data and put it on 3.5 disks. Ugh! :) Matt Penner
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I have some stitches from surgery I had. But, when I had some teeth pulled, once upon a time, I asked if I could keep them and the Dentist said no, that it was illegal to let us take the teeth. Still can't figure that one. My toolbox runneth over with my Father's old hand tools. Like wooden handled awls, augars, etc. Plus some very unique leather punching tools, including a piston style hand pump leather drill. My computer stuff all went bye bye with the wife!:laugh:
____________________________________________________________________________ "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." -- Douglas Adams -- Shohom67
shohom67 wrote:
I have some stitches from surgery I had. But, when I had some teeth pulled, once upon a time, I asked if I could keep them and the Dentist said no, that it was illegal to let us take the teeth. Still can't figure that one.
I have one or two teeth around here actually. I've never heard of it being illegal to give them back. My logic would be: "I spent ten years growing those, so I'll take them." Lol.
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I still have one out in the garage also (at least I think it is still there ;) ).. Along with my old ZIP drives.
Rocky <>< Blog Post: LINQ Scores a Yahtzee! Tech Blog Post: Cheap Biofuels and Synthetics coming soon?
I still have an old PCMCIA Clik drive, about 3 40MB Clik disks (still work), and the USB port/adaptor/dock for the Clik drive. One of the disks still has some old VB6 programming files from 2001 stored in Windows 98 Backup format.
Please don't bother me... I'm hacking right now. Don't look at me like that - doesn't anybody remember what "hacking" really means? :sigh:
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I nominate this for the "Best Answer To A Straight Line of the Year" Award.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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I recently came across a VGA to USB adapter. Not quite sure what it's for, but it may be useful someday i guess. I used to also have an internal tape drive circa '91 that used a "clip" type floppy cable. I had a few other things, but i don't remember anymore, though nearly everything i wouldn't intentionally buy is salvage stuff. Roswell :)
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CATYPE 522-X Modified Teflon lubricating powder. Some write rings. Strips of beryllium copper. Thinwire ethernet terminations. Diamond-turned metal optics. 12000 grit sandpaper. A PDP-8/M, 8k 12-bit core, OS-8 operating system (pip, pal, for, teco, ...) FDDI card for eisa bus. Post cards from Martin Gardner and Dave Barry.
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I recently came across a VGA to USB adapter. Not quite sure what it's for, but it may be useful someday i guess. I used to also have an internal tape drive circa '91 that used a "clip" type floppy cable. I had a few other things, but i don't remember anymore, though nearly everything i wouldn't intentionally buy is salvage stuff. Roswell :)
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CAI don't think these count as spare parts as such, more like memorabilia The RXS11-M O/S on fan fold paper tape - circa 1970,s Reel of paper table from Ferranti/Elliot hybrid (analogue/digital) circa 1960, results I think A gang punch - circa 1930 or perhaps earlier Several reels of magnetic tape (circa 1970-1990) 2311 disk (not the drive just the platters) (circa 1970,s) A Memory card from a GE Datanet controller - I think "first" internet ran on GE (or Honeywell -- same thing) Datanet controllers - circa 1970,s. Favourite - 48 bits of mercury delay line memory from a Ferranti Sirius (circa 1960,s) - you could actually watch the stuff switching. A 10M hard drive from an XT A VT100 terminal A PDP11 system with Dectape for I/O and some digital IO interface cards
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Thats a nice thing to keep, i would have to say my weirdest thing is the disks from an hold burnt out hard drive.