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(COOLLIST) Big D Yields Big Finds
I took a road trip with fellow Cypherpunk and Austin science museum
founder Jim Choate Friday night. We headed up IH-35 to the First
Saturday computer sale, a ten-block large swap meet/vendor sell-a-thon
held the first Saturday of every month on Pearl Street in Dallas. We
arrived around 2:30 AM, having left Austin at 11 PM, and the market
was already in full swing.
Even at 2:30, my jaw was already dropping over all the wonderful items
on display. Dealers had piles of CD drives, mountains of monitors,
clumps of cases, and salvos of software. Most things were very cheap.
For example, I got 16 megs of RAM (2 8M SIMM modules) for $192
including tax. Once you left the realm of new goods, things got even
more interesting.
My first cool find was a guy who sold me two Colecovision systems plus
about 10 assorted games for $15. That was the first of several trips
back to my Saturn. A little later, I found a guy selling all kinds of
equipment including a 3/4" Sony U-matic VCR for $20. The U-matic
format is very old, having come out in 1972, but it is still used by
some video production firms, including Austin Community Television.
So, for a paltry sum and a little back strain (it weighed around 50
pounds!) I was able to get a combination boat anchor and dub-rack
unit. With this, I can dub directly from my master tape to VHS, plus
I can also get my Hi-8 footage from my camcorder put onto 3/4" for
editing at ACTV.
The only other things I got were the RAM, a couple of 2600 carts, and
a few joysticks. I had originally intended to find some parts to put
together my old 486-DX2/50 system, but I didn't want to spend the
$250+ on RAM to get it operational, plus about $100 on various extra
parts (floppy drives, keyboards, I/O cards) to get it working right
now.
Jim also did well. He found a TI Explora minicomputer (200 MIPS) for
$10. That and the VCR took up all my trunk space. He also got a
Sinclair QL computer (mid-1980's 68000 box from the UK) and a Sinclair
ZX-80 (the first sub-$100 home computer). We almost picked up a Sun
4/380 computer one place had for $40, but it just didn't seem quite
compelling.
This market did remind me of the incredible rate of change in the
computer market. All of this $10 equipment was state-of-the-art ten
years ago. Now, it is just scrap that some hackers think would be
cool to fix-up. I can't count the number of XT boxes I saw, plus
heaps of other clones that had befallen bad fates.
One other trend I saw was the piles of cheap modems. You could get
almost any kind of 2400 or slower modem there for $5. 14K modems were
$35. The speed of communications is increasing, but all the flotsam
of the past is there, collecting dust.
Think about that as you read this on your semi-modern computer. Where
will that box be in five years? My Sparc 20 will probably still be
useful, maybe relegated to a mail server. My Pentium 75 at home will
surely have been upgraded, the motherboard up in my closet for use in
an emergency. Basia, the 486-33 laptop, may still be going, but it
won't be too usable with Windows 2000 NT.
Well, enough for now... the next (COOLLIST) will be far less geeky, I
promise. :)
--
Ben Combee, CAD Software Developer, cryptography fan, WWW guru
Motorola > MIMS > MSPG > CTSD > Advanced ICs > Austin Design Center > CAD
E-mail: combee@sso-austin.sps.mot.com Phone: (512) 891-7141
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