Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I also have tons of little AC adapters for various gadgets. I really wish that manufacturers would settle on a standard plug for everything.

AC adapters are designed to output a specific voltage and amperage for the device it will power. (Unless you're a Colecovision and your AC adapter sends out THREE different voltages in one cord...) So the large variety of them is to keep people from mixing them up and accidentally sending the wrong voltage/amperage/polarity to another device.

As for sorting my retro stuff, I don't really have enough that I need to do any epic sorting of them. A have two shelves downstairs dedicated to video games and movies, a CD-rack upstairs in the office for Windows 9x games, my portables I keep on a shelf in my bedroom, though I also have carrying cases for my Gameboy and Game Gear, and I have a box with broken controllers (mostly Sega brand and PS2), a box with working controllers, a box with a whole bunch of wires and such, and a bag filled with parts for working on computers.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

So I'm moving soon and I'm sorting everything out so it's easier for the moving company.

Ditto. And that goes for everything else that you mentioned, too! I've got a bad system. That's genuienly bad, not bad-ass. I've stuffed all of my component cards in to boxes, without any kind of protection. This seems OK, but I now have a major problem with this method, because these boxes may need to be transported hundreds of miles. That's going to make all of the components "jiggle about" all over the place, and almost certainly cause damage - either ESD or just plain physical damage.

I wonder if I could tip in a load of "packing bits" in to my boxes, to fill in all of the gaps between components, so that the components have no room in which to jiggle about. I'll need something tiny, which will settle down in to all of the gaps in the boxes, and that doesn't have any static properties. Any ideas please people?

BTW, sorry I can't answer your questions, and that I've just asked some myself. 😦

The individual components like video cards, sound-cards and so on will just get wrapped in newspaper. You should really do bubble wrap, but at my pace it would take me a week 😀 It will simply have to do...

Shipping companies used to have these "foam thingies, like little triangles or stars", but I guess it wasn't very friendly to the environment, because I haven't come across them for ages.

I also have heaps of anti-static bags (basically I collected them when I got an item from eBay) and will use them on the more valuable items.

I reckon bubble wrap is the best way, but takes an effort and if you play with all your bits you will have to unpack all of it again.

Just make sure the individual parts go in the smaller moving boxes. Things like cables can be chucked into the large box without any issues.

For many things I have kept the original boxes though. For example it's good practice to remove heavy video cards (like my GTX460) as they might slip out of the slot and cause damage to the system. For one PC I have the original Box which gives awesome protection, but I don't have any box for my main desktop, my 486 and my SS7 machine...

The Roland gear is sturdy enough. Most I have bubble wrapped and they shouldn't have any issues stacked inside a large box.

I also have to giggle that I worry so much about my computer parts, but couldn't care less about the fridge or washing machine 😊

I can't really remember how I moved my stuff 🤣, not sure if I want to remember 😜
But later I organized things. Instead of having the computer parts literally littering my entire home, I stuffed everything in the attic, got loads of those metal closets (still don't know what they are called in English 😜) and got loads of kiwi boxes that stack well (Think 3D mate, 3D! 😁 ).

Yea I'm thinking of getting metal or wood shelves and large storage boxes or something like that...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea I'm thinking of getting metal or wood shelves and large storage boxes or something like that...

And another advice: Label your boxes! 😉

If you want some reference, you can have a look at the pics I made of my attic. I put everything in similar kiwi boxes and labeled everything.
And the labels you use are best labels you yourself understand, they don't have to be understandable for anyone else.
Example:
I have 5 of those kiwi boxes with AGP cards (not all of them full) and labelled them like this:
AGP 1
AGP 2
AGP 3
AGP 4
AGP MX

The AGP 1 box has the best AGP cards I have (Like Radeon 9800XL, X800 and such). The AGP 2 box has all the second best AGP graphics cards (like GF3 and GF2).
AGP MX is obviously for Geforce MX cards, of which I got a lot! 😜
AGP 3 has cards that are, say, TNT2-ish
AGP 4 has al the really crappy AGP cards like VirgeGX2

This wouldn't make much sense to others, but to me this makes perfect sense as I know exactly where to look when I'm looking for any particular card.

PCI graphics cards I labeled according to their manufacturer.
All Renditions in 1 box, all Voodoo 1's and 2's in a single box, all S3 in a box etc etc.

I have 1 box for 80p ATA cables + SATA cables, several boxes of ordinary 40p ATA cables, one box of 40p ATA cables which only have 2 connectors instead of 3. Same goes for floppy cables, I put all the floppy cables which have the 5 1/4 connectors in a separate box.

I could go on 🤣. Heck, I even have a box for spare cmos batteries! 😜

I keep everything in its own boxes. I try to keep motherboards inside cases, or their proper boxes. My spares go end up in a wooden box. Same thing with all my cards. I try to keep video with video but they do get mixed.

All my ide cables are wound up and bound with rubber bands. all other cables are coiled and tossed in a box.

After all that, my area still looks like flea market after a hurricane. 😜

Yea I've seen your attic Tetrium. You have heaps more stuff and labelling is definitely something I will need to do.

For cards I thought that these pre-padded envelopes might work quite well. They offer padding and you can label them quite clearly. They also make moving things easy.

For the cables I think I'll just get these table ties (the ones that you find when you buy a new PSU or AC adapter). That way I'll avoid that huge spaghetti ball always get.

Tetrium has so much stuff, he could hire a curator/ storekeeper or something 🤣

I know what he could do!

Put up an add for an IT intern or work experience kid 😀

There's your "curator" 🤣

He'll have his hands full identifying and cataloging everything. But will also learn heaps.

All my CPUs fit in a little box. Tetrium has a whole chest of drawers devoted to CPUs 😵

Lmao you guys!! 😁

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I know what he could do! […]
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I know what he could do!

Put up an add for an IT intern or work experience kid 😀

There's your "curator" 🤣

He'll have his hands full identifying and cataloging everything. But will also learn heaps.

All my CPUs fit in a little box. Tetrium has a whole chest of drawers devoted to CPUs 😵

That, and 2 kiwiboxes filled with CPU trays 😵
I think I went a little bit overboard when buying CPU's 🤣.

But anyway, back on topic, the bubble stuff you want to use seem like a good idea when moving stuff.

I moved myself over 3 years ago and was also worried about damage due to poor packaging.
Had little money, little time so I had to be creative (and cheap 😜 )

Of course I had way to few packaging material and I didn't want stuff to get damaged due to scratching when moving.

One example what I did:
I had 1 (not so big) box full of non-creative ISA soundcards and no packaging material left, so I decided to put the soundcards in vertically (instead of them laying on top of eachother, now they were 'sitting' side by side) and put a piece of cardboard (made from leftover cardboard boxes) between each soundcard. That way they wouldn't scratch eachother while shipping 😉
Antistatic bags also help in preventing PCB's from scratching eachother provided the PCB's aren't too heavy (if too heavy, use cardboard).

For motherboards I crammed 2 motherboards in a single motherboard box and again put a piece of cardboard in between them. Another handy material (if you have some) is the foam you sometimes find in motherboard boxes.

Bubble wrap is also a good way to "divide" your PCB's with, you can get loads of the stuff in the garbage of stores that sell hammers, wood planks and tools like that. They might give you a couple square meters for free which you can cut into smaller pieces 😉.

Envelopes I didn't consider, but seem like the kind of idea I like (cheap, easy to use and it works).

I'll go post some pics later in the evening of how I packed up some stuff, pics are better then a thousand words!

I made a few quick pics, unfortunately I already threw out the boxes with the cardboard between the PCB's when I bought 'some' anti-static bags from ebay.
First 2 pics are overviews of how I organize my stuff, first being the PCI graphics cards and the second pic being the motherboards (remember almost every motherboard box contains 2 motherboards to help save space).
If you place 2 motherboards in a single motherboard box, the bottom one is placed there normally and the top one is placed with the "empty" side of the PCB showing up. That way you can kinda clamshell the 2 motherboards and (often) it will fit. Put a piece of foam/bubblewrap/cardboard in between the 2 motherboards when shipping/moving them.

Second lot of pics is an example of how to cram, in this instance it's slot 1 CPU's and some more motherboards put in a large cardboard box.
I crammed as many slot 1 CPU's in a small box as I could and put a piece of sturdy foam in a corner so they can't move about.

Another thing I did to save space was to fill up all my computer cases with expansion boards. Every board I put into a (non-functioning) computer is a board that can be shipped safely and doesn't have to be packed elsewhere 😉

When I moved I also used these large sturdy shopping bags, those made moving real easy and the bags are quite cheap as well.
When applicable, label the shipping boxes with "This side up" or similar.
And use a BIG marker pen, not one of those ballpoints which make things hard to read when you're in a hurry!

Edit:Oh, and I got all my cardboard boxes from the local supermarket. You can buy movingboxes but I prefer to keep things cheap 🤣

That's really well organised! Stacking them vertically is a great idea...

I'll get some bubble wrap envelopes tomorrow. They aren't THAT cheap, even if you buy 100 of them. But I only have a few cards, so it shouldn't be an issue really. And you can get them at the post office, which are everywhere over here...

I wrote out this nice post on my phone, before I realized that you dont live in the US.

I was going to mention that if you goto USPS.com you can order like 100 padded shipping envelopes for FREE. In a pinch, I've used them to pack other boxes... 😅

Getting there:

They didn't have enough smaller envelopes, so I'll grab some more this afternoon.

But yea, I already feel way more organised 😀

And it will be so easy for the removal guys. Just drop them in a large box and off they go.

At my new place I will get larger storage boxes and stack the envelopes vertically.

If I took a photo of how my retro gear is stored, there'd be call on this forum for me to be flogged. It's all carelessly tossed into a box in the bottom of my messy closet. The few items I particularly care about but have no computer to stick them in at the moment and are smaller size adorn one of my two desks or other surfaces around here as decoration. I also have literally an entire drawer in my bedroom desk crammed full of various SoundBlasters. Two things I'll never run low on are SoundBlaster ISA cards and socket 7 Pentium chips.

All bagged and tagged 😵

Well done Maulwurf!
Even I could find back stuff the way you organized things! 😁
You can put them in large cardboard boxes (or any type of box actually 😁 ) or the large shopping bags and off you go!
Have you packed your small stuff already? Like CPU's and such?

Yea I have two shopping bags (woolworths) with cables and AC adapters. CPUs, coolers and RAM only take up two small boxes,I really don't have that many.

Here some more pics.

My two Retro PCs (Acer 486 and Time-machine / hybrid-retro Super Socket 7 machine), Two Acer netbooks and the Roland MIDI tower (MT-100 not in the shot):

Other stuff:

These will be organised once I arrive. Not sure how, but likely using larger plastic container boxes.