Moving Along - What to Throw Out

My lovely wife of almost 30 years and I are in the process of selling our home and moving to something smaller. The kids have grown and moved away, and Shirley is no longer able to take care of the garden (and I have black thumbs when it comes to green things) that was one of the major reasons we purchased this house 17 years ago.

The problem is, I've been largely working from home all this time, and in the computer industry 17 years is almost 10 generations of hardware, figuring 18 months per generation according to Mr. Moore's Law. Add to this the fact that when we moved in we didn't get rid of anything from our previous home - in fact up to this point we've always been getting into larger and larger homes (5 since the kids were born) so this is the first time we are downsizing. I still have software from my old Radio Shack Model 1, purchased before we got married!

So now we're tripping down memory lane while simultaneously having to decide what to keep, what to throw out, and what might be worth something to others. Maybe you readers can help me decide - your comments (sooner rather than later - we're expecting to move in the next couple of months) may help us find homes for some of the bits and pieces.

Amongst the 4 rooms full of computer bits and pieces I know I have several 5 1/4" floppy disk drives - and I have boxes of diskettes. At one point I had entertained the thought of reading each of them on last time and writing them to hard disk. At densities from 75K to 1.2Megs a lot of them can fit on what is now an all-but-useless 200 Gig drive that itself has been replaced by first 320Gigs and now Terabytes.

Nope - I'm just going to get out the old bulk-eraser (big electromagnet, used to erase audio tapes back when I first purchased it) and ensure they simply don't work. I could also take them over to my friend David's place and run them through his industrial shredder, but that would interrupt their tax business.

The real question is what to do with all the old computer carcasses and interface boards and such. I have stuff going back to the 5 1/4" full-height ESDI drives and SCSI drives. Many of them have proprietary and private information on them, so I have to either ensure they are destroyed or somehow crank up a machine that will run them and then erase them. Much easier to open their cases and remove the platters. A big batch of felt feet from the dollar store makes them into interesting drink coasters.

The wonder of Craig's List is that there are people around who will either pay for most of this stuff, or at least come and pick it up if you offer it free. I guess if I ever need something back I can just keep an eye on the List and pick it up from whomever is then in the same boat I'm in currently - downsizing and having to decide what to do with all that stuff. Even few remaining used computer stores are pretty much full to the brim and not interested in most of the old stuff I have. I'm not sure that a yard sale is worth the organizing and other hassles.

The real question is - do I want to keep some of the "historic" stuff - the Timex-Sinclair and other first-generation items. Between them and the old cameras I have they take quite a few boxes, most of which I have not even opened since we last moved. I'm keeping the cameras - many I inherited from my father. I wonder if my kids and their kids would really covet an early computer they got from me? Somehow I don't think so.

Ahhh well, I guess I should get back to working on the garage. I recall an old Sun "pizza box" workstation complete with OS tapes and manuals. I think it's about as powerful as my Blackberry phone is - and with somewhat less disk space if I recall. I guess it's time to turf it.

Anyone want an 800MHz Pentium with Linux installed on it? Free?

richard

Tag: moores law sun timex sinclair radio shack