Cleaning out the clutter

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

Not a rant, but something some of you hardware geeks might appreciate.

As part of our company's office suite reconfiguration/renovation, it was my responsibility to "clean out" the network room.

When I first started working here nearly 6 years ago (when there were 15 people instead of the 9 we have now), it was already stocked with developer CDs from 1995, 3.5" floppies, 5.25" floppies, and a smorgasbord of hardware apparently intended to support the myriad of PCs we had at the time.

Behind the cut is a list of amusingly ancient artifacts I discovered during my quest to retrieve what remained useful to us and our current PC/network hardware.



Cuz, you know... Indiana Jones... Archeology... and I'm actually in Indiana... anyway. The list:

PS/2 to serial adaptors
Serial to parallel adaptors
SCSI adaptors

(We actually still use SCSI cards in some of our PCs for CDRWs that were liberated from duplicating machines, but we have more adaptors and cables than we have cards or devices, so I thinned the herd a bit).

Male to Male, Female to Female, and Female to Male adaptors and extenders for each of the above...

Drive rails (hardware to mount 3.5" drives in 5.25" bays)
Floppy drives
1x CD-ROM drives
PCI slot covers for computer cases

Mice without scrollwheels (how spoiled am I)
1 Serial mouse
3 Gateway 2000 keyboards (tossed these because we had plenty of extra Dell keyboards that were more compact)

Driver diskettes for sound cards
Driver diskettes for modems
Modem cards

Microsoft Developer Network CDs from 1995-1999 (four books and three boxes worth - thankfully they come on DVD now)

Thousands and thousands of power cables (seemed like it anyway)

And my favorite: a PS/2 to DIN-5 adaptor.


I was hoping to find some ISA cards, but the only ones I've seen were in the couple of Pentium 100 MHz desktop PCs I threw out earlier.

(xposted to krrayn and techsupport

Comments

[wyrdrune.livejournal.com]

Ah, the joys of a Damn Good Clearout(tm) - I must get round to having one of those myself. :-)

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Flog it all on ebay :D Someone's gonna buy it...

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

The time to catalog alone is mindnumbingly daunting. No, per the boss's orders, I made dumpster runs... four of them, I think; maybe five.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind having one of those old Gateway keyboards.

I prefer the older keyboards to the ones that you can get now. I still long for my old Amiga keyboard. [sigh]

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

they're in the dumpster, if you want them :)

btw, dunno if I ever mentioned, but I love your icon.

[pleaseremove.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, that’s a little scary, i think I can find most of that list in my room, even the ps/2 to din 5 connector...I think I may even have both ways of that one...

Oh dear, this is so sad.

And to the task in hand, I quite enjoy clearouts….I find it’s a good way to speed a lot of time doing something not very taxing, whilst achieving very little and then still getting paid.

[knottie.livejournal.com]

You should always keep the old cables--they make excellent christmas wreaths and tree garlands! (you can always tell the techy departments around here at holidays--we did a graveyard of old parts one halloween that was truly scary)

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

You have a very recent definition of "ancient"

::glances at boxes of 5.25" disks up on the shelf::

I made dumpster runs

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

dumpster diving time!!! Where is your office at? ;)

a very recent definition of "ancient"

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

::glances at the box of 8" disks up on the shelf::

Re: a very recent definition of "ancient"

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

I don't have a box on the shelf, but I have a bunch in the garage. :-)

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Therefore vicariously you love me. Awww.

sup_internets made it for me. She does that.

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I spent about 90 minutes to two hours in there clearing stuff out and all I had to show for it was a box of network cables... and two and a half dumpster runs.

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

Your department is probably larger than my whole company, but that's a fantastic decoration idea. :)

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

I was waiting for someone to call me on that. I did throw out about five plastic diskette holders, the kinds with the transparent tops hinged in the back, full of 5.25" floppies. None of the PCs left in the office even have such drives, not that the disks themselves would be readable.

Re: I made dumpster runs

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

Indianapolis. If you're that desperate, let me know when you get into town and I'll give you more specific directions.

By the way, it's been raining here ;)

Re: a very recent definition of "ancient"

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

I saw some unused 8" drives in my high school electronics class, shoved into a corner; but that was 16 years ago.

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

Well that's a little better.

I'll show you me collection of relays, vacuum tubes, and punched cards sometime.

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

What, no reel to reel? Or is that too advanced? :)

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm......I don't htink so.

Though I have a lot of 8mm video stuff...

And I'm set up to go straight from 8mm to DVD.

Re: I made dumpster runs

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

dang. Well, what if I know someone nearby? ;)

[spitefulcrow.livejournal.com]

I have a really old IBM keyboard. You know, the 5-pound steel-backplated scissor-action kind that's really good for touch typing.
No Windoze keys or anything, just the way I like it.

[spitefulcrow.livejournal.com]

That's fun. I just picked up a Power Mac G3 for $50 at Salvation Army when I drove a friend there to get stuff for a Halloween costume.
We went in, I saw shelf full of computer components, I saw G3 box, I opened G3 box to make sure everything was there, plugged it in to make sure it got as far as the chord noise, and bought it.
You can never have too many computers.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I like :) I like the clicky-clicky.

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

At least you don't have to support two WORKING 486s running WFW 3.11.... ;-)

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

Holy crap. Can I *buy* your company a pair of PCs less than 10 years old? Out of my own pocket?

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

They won't work! The data collection equipment they're connected to won't give accurate results when on anything faster than a DX2-66....

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

I figured it was something like that; mandatory obsolescence to support existing infrastructure.

I can't really afford two new PCs anyway ;)

[cyrus7.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, that’s a little scary, i think I can find most of that list in my room, even the ps/2 to din 5 connector...I think I may even have both ways of that one...
Yeah I have some of that stuff in my room too.
- PS/2 to serial adaptors
- Serial to parallel adaptors
- Floppy drives
- PCI slot covers for computer cases
- Mice without scrollwheels
- Serial mouse
- Thousands and thousands of power cables
- PS/2 to DIN-5 adaptor

Damn I'm such a packrat...

[lions-tambua.livejournal.com]

ok. here in my apartment (about 100m²) i just got an Digital-Kienzle 2825 Terminal-Console-Server.
who says you cant use EXTREMELY old things quite well ? :)

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

i have two p4 2.x/3.x machines with ISA slots. Took awhile to find a p4 motherboard intel chipset that has ISA. One has a CMM controller board in it, the other has a synchronous modem. It was $5000 to replace the CMM board with a PCI version, and no idea on the modem, I didn't look too hard for a PCI version of a Hayes Optima.

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

there's a Gandalf MUX over at one of our US side plants, the plant manager wouldn't let me throw it out, "in case we need it again"

I'm not sure when we'll need something we removed from service in 1997.. it was for our dumb terminals that we removed, that talked over 9600 baud leased lines that we removed, that talked to the RS/6000 that I dumpstered this year that was removed...

there's a couple 9 pin dot matrix printers there too..

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

I always meant to turn that box of old co-ax cable into metal-edged bathroom mats...

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention the old ethernet coax T-connector I found...