Blog entries tagged with "hard rubbish"

I announced a few weeks ago that I was going to downsize my computer collection. Over the past few days I made a start and tonight the first items are on eBay.

I haven’t yet listed the Indys, but I have started with the bulkiest Apple items, each for $0.99:

• Apple Macintosh LC 575
• Apple Macintosh Quadra 950
• Apple OneScanner

I was also going to list the black PowerMac 5500, but that one is completely dead. It might have something to do with the evidence of water damage on the back of the logic board (a buildup of rust…), but I’m not going to bother finding out. This is a definite for the hard rubbish, but I will list the black keyboard and mouse combo.

Speaking of hard rubbish…

This weekend is BarCampMelbourne, so I will be busy. The following weekend is when I have to have the items out for the hard rubbish collection. So the bulk of what I am going to list on eBay will be listed prior to the weekend. If it comes to it I could list items for five days next Tuesday, three days on the Thursday or even one day on the Saturday, but the chance of someone seeing those listings gets lower and lower.

I have been neglecting my computer collection. The last time anything changed was when I acquired the Apple IIc with LCD, and apart from booting it up once and taking a photo it has sat idle for almost 9 months.

Two years ago I handed off my IBM PCs and IBM PS/2s. One year ago I eliminated the Sun items.

This time I am going to be ruthless, and most of the collection must go as the space could be better used for other things. For example camera related gear.

But what few items will I keep? I have thought about this before and from a glance around the shelves here is a list, ranked by likelihood of keeping:

• Apple IIgs
• Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
• Apple IIc with LCD and external battery
• IBM JX
• IBM PC Convertible
• Apple TechStep
• Apple PowerCD
• Apple Macintosh Portable
• SGI O2 (with widescreen LCD)
• Dauphin DTR-1 (Windows 3.1 based tablet)
• Apple IIc Plus
• Apple Portrait and Two Page displays
• Apple Powerbook Duo and DuoDock II

I have a lot more, both systems and peripherals. My priority will be in downsizing (via ebay) the systems as they take up the most space. First to go will be the SGI Indys and then I will start on the variety of Macintosh and Power Macintosh systems.

Although this has been on my todo list for a while, I only realised today that the Annual Hard Rubbish Collection is just over a month away (for the area I am in). This means I don’t have much time and while I will start with the more signifigant items, if I don’t get organised a number of systems will be thrown out.

Not necessarily the best outcome, but unless I set myself a deadline, nothing will change for another year…

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was using the local council’s hard rubbish collection as a reason to sort through my collection.

That was actually a year ago and, apart from getting rid of the Suns and some minor additions, I have yet to do any major sorting of my collection.

Now that I have a fixed deadline by which I need to have some more sorting done by, I actually need to be working on a talk for perl mongers this coming Wednesday.

Although I had itentions to cull my collection, I didn’t get very far. However, last night I did put a couple of items out for the hard rubbish collection.

Around 8PM I put out two old desktops (proprietary HP and Compaq units) that I had scavenged a couple of years ago. An hour or so later when I put out another two systems (the Pentium 233 that used to be Gromit and the Pentium II 266 that ran the network, served the intranet and played MP3s at our LANs) I noticed that the cases of the first two had been opened.

Then when I passed them on way way out this morning I saw that all four of them had been opened: people were checking out what components they had. The the later two they didn’t have much luck as I removed the drives (in case there was any identifying data), the RAM (might be usable in a Macintosh) and the CPUs (a friend collects them) before putting them out.

I am considering a bit of scavenging myself. I spotted a Powermac 7200 series system on my way home. If it is still there tomorrow morning I’ll have a look to see it it has an intact foot thing that is used when unfolding the case…

On Sunday night the auction for my PS/2s ended and they are due to be picked up tomorrow.

While I still have a couple of items on their way inward, I really need to get a move on in culling the other bulky items in my collection. I need to have them sorted and appropriate items listed on eBay by the end of the coming weekend in order to be able to put them out in the hard rubbish if (for some reason) they do not sell.

Despite spending the day picking up a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh I also got around to listing my IBM PS/2 50z and IBM PS/2 65sx systems and parts on eBay.

Contrary to what I said earlier in the week, I decided that I couldn’t be bothered listing the parts individually. You have to remember that my main goal here is to reduce the number of actual items in my collection down to a manageable level, not to make a profit.

If there are no takers I only have to hold on to these items for two weeks after the end of the auction. That is when my area is up for the Annual Hard Rubbish Collection.

That also means that I have only three weeks to perform the culling of other bulky items. Nothing like a deadline to make things move.

I have just finished following through on my resolution to get rid of my IBM PC, IBM PC XT and related parts.

This time next week I will either have someone to take them off my hands (eBay auction) or I will be finding somewhere to store them until the upcoming hard rubbish collection.

Right now I am considering doing the same thing with more of my IBM items; the IBM PS/2 50z and IBM PS/2 65sx.

The decked out JX I spotted on eBay ended a few days ago with no bids. Since then I have exchanged a couple of messages with the seller which has prompted me to think about the purpose of my collection.

In the beginning I had an Apple IIgs which had been our family computer. Then I discovered hard rubbish collections which has been the source of around a third of my collection. Apart from unique items such as the Two Page Display none of these items have been particularly special.

Another quarter of the collection have been obtained for free from other sources, mainly through friends or relatives that gave them to me instead of throwing them out, or their work throwing them out. This is how I got the SGI Indys, the SGI O2, the IBM JX and the Dauphins.

The final five twelfths (approximately) of my collection were purchased almost exclusively from eBay with very few of them costing over AU$100, mostly lower than AU$50.

For most of this time my primary goal was to have an example of every computer manufactured by Apple. Unfortunately once I was well on the way to this goal I realised that there isn’t really anything special about a lot of them. For a while I have been thinking about reducing the total number of items and there are a lot of Macintosh models that I don’t really need to keep.

So what is my current goal for the collection?

• Significant Apple computers and peripherals; and
• Non-Apple items that are special, unique or rare.

Originally I didn’t think that I would pay more than a third of the asking price for that JX. Then I am thinking of paying two thirds but now I am considering going even closer the the asking price in order to get such a rare item…

Today marked the first day of the annual hard rubbish collection run by the local council. As it would be problematic to pick up everything from the entire area in a short amount of time they divide it into six areas, each of which is assigned a particular week.

Most of my ride to work is through area 4 which has been assigned the week starting 4 September 2006, ie FOUR WEEKS away. Despite both the website and an article in the local paper telling people that they shouldn’t put rubbish out until two weeks prior I am seeing a huge amount of rubbish that is already drifting onto the road and footpath. Since they are not following the council’s instructions should these people be fined for dumping rubbish on the nature strip?

For the past few years the council has also stressed that “Scavenging is an offense under local law and offenders will be prosecuted.” A co-worker pointed out that since these people are not following the instructions for hard rubbish is it still an offense?

As the hard rubbish collection for my area starts tomorrow I spent the afternoon sorting through my collection to find anything that I could part with.

I only ended up parting with a couple of items, all of which were not unique in my collection and were also missing a signifigant component such as a power supply or drive cage. I also pulled out any cards or memory as they are much easier to store…

This afternoon I put a couple of early pentium desktops and a couple of empty cases out for the Hard Rubbish Collection and already half of them are gone…

At work today someone mentioned that they had a hard rubbish collection in their area and since I knew that they also lived in the City of Monash it explained why I had seen that a number of people had put stuff out.

This year I’m not going to go out scrounging and since my area is up next week it means I’ll have to do some sorting of my computers this week. Ideally there is nothing to dispose of but I know I’m never going to do anything with things like a non functional Pentium 90…

If I hadn’t given away those two SGI Personal Iris’s back in June they would be going out now…