nforce4max wrote:

It is worse for those who have limited money to burn after new taxes like obamacare that is socking people for thousands now. As a college student and in a economically depressed area (thanks a lot you masonic scum bags) the rising prices because of these greedy scrappers is just too much to endure. Can't build half the projects that I was used to building from even a few years ago. To top it off local stocks of vintage systems has for the most part dried up and even fewer honey pots (more than one vintage find).

WTF..?

Have you at least considered, perhaps, that maybe the local stocks of vintage systems have dried up because no one is making new vintage systems and accordingly such stocks are of a finite capacity that will inevitably diminish one way or another?

Maybe you want to stockpile old junk for all eternity, but it is unreasonable to expect the same of everyone.

I don't understand what you're complaining about. Remember that this old hardware that you're talking about - 486 era stuff - really is if no use to 99% of the population, and that probably applies to anything up to and including P4 era stuff. Worst case scenario is that it ends up in landfill, a slightly better result for the planet is that it's scrapped and some part recycled.

You don't want that, but you also don't want people selling this hardware and trying to make a profit out of it. So what DO you want? You want people with old hardware to waste their time trying to track down the small percentage of people who want this stuff, and then hand it over for free? What do they get out of it? We - vintage hardware collectors - are not saving mankind with our stashes of old PC's, we're playing DOOM.

badmojo wrote:

I don't understand what you're complaining about. Remember that this old hardware that you're talking about - 486 era stuff - really is if no use to 99% of the population, and that probably applies to anything up to and including P4 era stuff. Worst case scenario is that it ends up in landfill, a slightly better result for the planet is that it's scrapped and some part recycled.

You don't want that, but you also don't want people selling this hardware and trying to make a profit out of it. So what DO you want? You want people with old hardware to waste their time trying to track down the small percentage of people who want this stuff, and then hand it over for free? What do they get out of it? We - vintage hardware collectors - are not saving mankind with our stashes of old PC's, we're playing DOOM.

P4 stuff is common in trash piles these days. I found two of them just a couple of days ago. Older than that, even P-III era stuff, is getting harder to find out for trash and anything pre-Pentium II is just about impossible to find at the curb on garbage day anymore.

On the Mac side, I haven't seen anything pre-Power PC out for trash for about 7 years. I''m still waiting to find a working Powermac G5 which really bugs me because the earliest ones should be getting old enough now that people seriously think about just trashing them rather than selling them on ebay.

I just wish people would treat older computers with the same sort of respect they'd give to older gaming consoles. Like, I can go into a used games shop and pick up an SNES quite easily, yet they'll never have a 486 box up for sale. 😜

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Like, I can go into a used games shop and pick up an SNES quite easily, yet they'll never have a 486 box up for sale. 😜

I don't know what your used game shops are like, but generally every brick-and-mortar establishment I am familiar with has grossly inflated prices that people will occasionally accept. Very few people are going to pay that sort of money for a 486. And besides, a lot of the cartridge-based consoles were exceptionally durable, whereas a 486 box is full of mechanical parts that may or may not be on the verge of irreparable failure.

Also, SNES-compatible clones are still being made, and apparently people are making good money on them. Of course, the other advantage to those is that you just have to plug a cartridge into them and the Work. Getting a 486 up and running generally requires copyrighted software. Even if you want to install FreeDOS, you have to have floppies and a second computer with a floppy drive, and I am generally very happy to have as little as possible to do with floppies anymore.

The ones around here have grossly over-inflated prices as well. 😜 I once payed $35 for a copy of Super Metroid, though I don't consider it a waste since it's one of my favorite games of all time. That said, the same shop charged $100 a few years back for an FC Twin, which I think is a very poor substitute for a real NES/SNES.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I once payed $35 for a copy of Super Metroid, though I don't consider it a waste since it's one of my favorite games of all time.

That's an absolute bargain!

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Even my uncle (and he is the one who introduced me to computers in the first place); last year he gave away his still working Media Vision Multimedia Kit to a local scrapper simply because it was old and useless to him! He refused to just give it to me and never told me even once what he was planning to do with it! Once I heard what he did, I could only shake my head in disbelief 😢 .

🤣... thats terrible! I'd be so dark at that uncle!

sliderider wrote:

Blame the green weenies for the whole "Recycle Everything!" mentality. They have most of the world brainwashed, especially in Europe where they even make you recycle your food waste and will send the police around to pick through your garbage cans and issue you with a summons to appear in court if they find anything that shouldn't be in there.

sliderider: are you in Europe? That is truly outrageous! What an invasion of privacy.

I think we can all agree what the scrappers are doing is terrible but we are such a minority. Originally when I spent substantial time searching for free and affordable retro parts I would often get laughed at the mere mention of being interested in 386,486 computers 😀

Most of the population have no idea there is even a market for this stuff or that anyone would be interested.

Jorpho wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I once payed $35 for a copy of Super Metroid, though I don't consider it a waste since it's one of my favorite games of all time.

That's an absolute bargain!

Really? To be fair, I bought a Player's Choice edition cartridge. 🤣

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I once payed $35 for a copy of Super Metroid, though I don't consider it a waste since it's one of my favorite games of all time.

That's an absolute bargain!

Really? To be fair, I bought a Player's Choice edition cartridge. 🤣

...Upon closer inspection, that actually seems to be fair market value. (Slightly surprising, but then it is on the Virtual Console these days.)

@rgart

Nope, not in Europe, just speak to several irate Germans on another site who told me they do that there. Supposedly they make biofuel that replaces part of the fuel that the garbage trucks would normally use from it.

I'm sure you could find plenty of Americans who are convinced the police are going through their trash as well. :p

That's why you just throw stuff in a metal barrel and burn it! 😁 That's what a lot of people around here do. 🤣

With old PCs and second had value I always saw it like a big wave that is slowly moving from time. The wave has one low point, that represents whatever can be had for next to nothing at the moment. Anything older and newer goes up in price.

I think at the moment the low as arrived at the Pentium 4 era machines. They can be had for next to nothing. Pentium 3 stuff is getting slowly more expensive and Core 2 Duo stuff still has value.

It was the same with 386 computers, then 486, then Pentium, then Pentium 2. Pentium machines have gone up quite a bit and for DOS gaming it's the end of the road in a way. So I see 386, 486 and Pentium machines just keep going up in value as time goes on.

A friend of mine, he just lives across is planning his retirement around old computer bits. Mainly sealed software packages and harddrives. That guy thinks in other dimensions. He will return tomorrow from Perth with 150! HDDs in his trunk. He is after the smaller capacities, seals them all and stores them in large plastic containers. One thing about HDDs: They are HEAVY when you start collecting. REALLY heavy.

Now you might go and think that there are SOOOO many HDDs around, and in a way it's true. Every machine came with at least one HDD. But there are a ton of companies that drill holes in the drives to be sure nothing can be read.

He might be onto something because every computer needs a HDD, whereas graphics cards and sound cards are more specific.

The stuff I have has gone up in value, but not to the point that it makes a difference. Even the "expensive" things like Roland gear isn't THAT expensive when you think about it. A few days of savings and it's yours.

I am sure someone out here has a database, tracking the value of items and riding that wave to the bank 😁

Jorpho wrote:

I'm sure you could find plenty of Americans who are convinced the police are going through their trash as well. :p

Why not? The government already monitors our telephone calls and emails. They've even cracked all the internet security protocols so they have access to the passwords to all your online accounts, and it's not just Americans they are monitoring they are monitoring people outside the US, too, including foreign politicians and dignitaries.

Surveillance cameras are coming. They start off installing cameras to monitor speed and people running red lights but then they make them multi-purpose for monitoring people. In the UK, every city or medium to large town has surveillance cameras now and the people have gotten so used to having cameras around after decades of using them for traffic enforcement that they raise no objection to them anymore in spite of the fact that they make no attempt to hide the fact that the cameras are there for the purpose of watching people and not for traffic enforcement. That sort of thing SHOULD be unacceptable anywhere and have people marching through the streets with torches and pitchforks. Sadly for them, torches and pitchforks are all they have left after all the guns were taken away.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

With old PCs and second had value I always saw it like a big wave that is slowly moving from time. The wave has one low point, that represents whatever can be had for next to nothing at the moment. Anything older and newer goes up in price.

I think at the moment the low as arrived at the Pentium 4 era machines. They can be had for next to nothing. Pentium 3 stuff is getting slowly more expensive and Core 2 Duo stuff still has value.

That "wave" is getting smaller. I used to have no problem routinely finding equipment in the 15 year old window and anything newer, roughly 7-10 years old, was extremely plentiful to the point of getting most of it free. Now finding stuff over 5 years old is tough. There is an occasional $25 Dell Dimension 4600 at the thrift store, but thats just about it. I actually had to hunt down a Socket 478 motherboard+CPU+RAM when I needed one about a year ago.

Back in the late 90s, I had no problem finding machines from the early 80s despite lower production numbers. Things didn't get bad until around 2004, stuff just vanished after that. The problem isn't just increased recycling (which kills off the really old stuff), but people aren't replacing their hardware as often. 5+ year old machines are in daily use these days in much higher numbers. Back in the 90s, it wasn't uncommon for people to replace a machine after 2 years, and that machine REALLY showed it's age. My own upgrade cycles clearly show this.

1st PC: Dec 93-Oct 95
2nd PC: Oct 95-Dec-98
3rd PC: Dec 98-Apr 08 (bought a Powerbook G4 Nov 03, lasted until last year thanks to Apple's forced obsolesce of PowerPC)
4rd PC: Apr 08-Present

My current laptop is from Mid-2006!

I don't understand these wannabe gold scrappers. Extracting precious metals from computer hardware is tough to do without specialized equipment and not cost effective unless you have a ton (literally) of scrap. Even with gold prices as high as they are, the break even price is too high without the volume and equipment. I remember one of those wannabes grabbing a 386 at the local thrift and was on the phone with someone shortly thereafter asking about how to extract the gold from it. The look on his face when he got the answer wasn't so happy.

sliderider wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

I'm sure you could find plenty of Americans who are convinced the police are going through their trash as well. :p

Why not? The government already monitors our telephone calls and emails. They've even cracked all the internet security protocols so they have access to the passwords to all your online accounts, and it's not just Americans they are monitoring they are monitoring people outside the US, too, including foreign politicians and dignitaries.

Surveillance cameras are coming. They start off installing cameras to monitor speed and people running red lights but then they make them multi-purpose for monitoring people. In the UK, every city or medium to large town has surveillance cameras now and the people have gotten so used to having cameras around after decades of using them for traffic enforcement that they raise no objection to them anymore in spite of the fact that they make no attempt to hide the fact that the cameras are there for the purpose of watching people and not for traffic enforcement. That sort of thing SHOULD be unacceptable anywhere and have people marching through the streets with torches and pitchforks. Sadly for them, torches and pitchforks are all they have left after all the guns were taken away.

My point is that perhaps we could limit ourselves to substantiated reality rather than the musings of anonymous Germans describing people being summoned to court on the basis of food waste in their garbage. Why not tell us more about how our old Pentiums secretly being used to build missile guidance systems instead? NOTE: This is another thing I do not think is really happening.

Better yet, maybe we should just refrain from talking about anything related to politics here ever again.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I think at the moment the low as arrived at the Pentium 4 era machines. They can be had for next to nothing. Pentium 3 stuff is getting slowly more expensive and Core 2 Duo stuff still has value.

You make a great point here and i mostly agree but some platforms were much better than others. I don't think Pentium 4 will have a moment of high like other platforms. It was an horrible platform, ran too hot, sucked too much power and was slower compared to the Athlon64. They had some good chipsets, but that was Athlon64 time.

sliderider wrote:

Surveillance cameras are coming. They start off installing cameras to monitor speed and people running red lights but then they make them multi-purpose for monitoring people.

That's cool because we need to know who these idiots are.

maybe not all CCTV camera are about a conspiracy?

Trust me...when a person or group of people perpetrate a violent crime against you or your family your going to want a CCTV camera watching you.

I think the points made by mr_bigmouth_502, carlostex and Jorpho are right.

Mau1wurf1977 your mate scares me 😀

I can happily say I have a substantial amount of 486 parts I'll be keeping safe and my laptop and main PC are both 4 years old with minor upgrades. Gold scrappers suck 😀

carlostex wrote:

You make a great point here and i mostly agree but some platforms were much better than others. I don't think Pentium 4 will have a moment of high like other platforms. It was an horrible platform, ran too hot, sucked too much power and was slower compared to the Athlon64. They had some good chipsets, but that was Athlon64 time.

The early P4's were a lot worse than the ones that came later, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, I think the key advantage the P3 had over everything that came after is the ISA slots and support for SB PCI legacy emulation, which were both uncommon in P4s.