I have well over 500 graphics cards, 100+ motherboards and thousands of CPUs. I'm forever losing things. Been looking for my SL7QB (S478 P4 3.2GHz Prescott with EM64T support) for months 😀 My collection would fill a medium size van.

Happy Christmas 😀

merry Christmas horun

I finally got organized a few years ago and now never lose anything. Every component, down to individual RAM sticks, has its own written log, which gets updated each time it's moved/removed/cleaned/tested.

Before this, chaos.

I'm pretty sure I had a P60 minitower but no. Radeon 9800 pro, Voodoo 2 and other cards seem to be "somewhere". I sometimes find missing audio and graphics cards on systems I forgot I put them in. I should probably make a spreadsheet for all the stuff.

Many many times. I've mislaid motherboards, cards & especially cables more times than I can remember. I've even found stuff that I didn't even know I had on numerous occasions.

I keep meaning to make a record of everything I have and it's location in storage, but I never get around to it. About the only things that don't ever get lost are the fully built systems - a bit hard to hide those. 🤣

I make sure to sell systems and hardware when bored with them, even rehome connectors and cables, when I lose interest in a generation. Constant hoard pruning such that it never becomes a hoard. And yes, this does mean I have regrets and have “damn, so now I do need a ***** cable?” moments.

In the past, I totally would struggle to find things. Now that I have everything for all computers in two smallish plastic storage boxes it’s impossible. Of course, maybe I’ll tire of the XT and decide I want a 386 or 486... or gasp... a desktop, and lack the restraint to say NO! And then I’ll spill into another box, or more likely just spill parts everywhere, and I’ll be back to where I started. Ick.

Welll.....the original 4MB MEmory card for the Versa 40EC disappeared somewhere.....I'm guessing it's hiding somewhere at the bottom of my card/hardware box I have. Not like I really need it, my 40EC has a 16MB card in it.

Thank you everyone. And a Merry Christmas/Happy holidays to you too !
Was afraid I was the only one misplacing things 😀

Lost the ring-bound manual for my EISA Mylex caching disk controller, along with all the original disks. It's quite an old pcb / bios version and all the online stuff is really for later versions which had numerous changes.

Yeah. I lose something almost every day 😉 I'm 61 so I forgive myself...

Many years ago, I spent a long time underappreciated at a work place. One of the few perks was getting to 'dispose of' (i.e. take home) each generation's computer hardware for about 10 people. Over the years I did indeed (literally) dispose of quite a bit of it sadly, not being aware of how much it would eventually be worth, in both financial and nostalgia/re-use value.

To my point. One of the items I kept aside for about 10 years was a fairly nice Tualatin system. Over time, it got parts-ed up, repurposing the case, PSU and expansion cards - but always, the mainboard+CPU+RAM combo was kept "around", moving from pile to pile across the years. Always kept in the back of my mind - 'one day I'll use that'.

Come 2020. The perfect time to revisit old hardware and systems, and I did indeed build a few. But do you think that Tualatin base system is findable, in any way shape or form? Oh hell no. Oh hell no. I've been idly and not-so-idly looking for months now, and come to the vague conclusion that it's either in a pocket dimension perhaps only accessible by tapping the correct bathroom tile to the rhythm of West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys, or it's grown wings and IDSPISPOPD'd itself the hell out of my house.

Bonus conclusion: store computer parts better + tidier. A work-in-progress.

I was so proud of keeping my Sierra games and boxes from the 90s, moving them from home to home in pristine condition... This year I finally opened the boxes, only to find that all the floppies were missing out of each box! I must have had them in some other floppy storage caddy or something that got tossed ages ago without carefully checking them first.

Oh! Additional dumbass points go to me for packing all my QIC-80 tapes with all my unshielded speakers/car audio equipment.

Errius wrote on 2020-12-23, 06:50:

I finally got organized a few years ago and now never lose anything. Every component, down to individual RAM sticks, has its own written log, which gets updated each time it's moved/removed/cleaned/tested.

Before this, chaos.

I'm very impressed. That requires huge amounts of said discipline!

I had moved out of my parents house in the early/mid 90's and, maybe around the mid 2000's I asked my mom if I could pick up my old PCs. She told me she tossed them in the trash years prior... Those were 3 Olivetti machines. An M24, PCS 286 and an M290S (if I remember correctly). So, yeah...

Relatives threw out my classic computer collection while I was at work, so I stopped (actively) collecting old computers and started collecting firearms. Even with my new job, I can't justify spending today's crackhead prices on what I lost. An Apple iii, complete A500 and an A1000, Tandy 1000 RLX, a complete Apple iigs, a couple Apple ][ systems and drives, a bunch of AT&T branded desktops, and much more.
As far as mis-locating stuff? What's left is either in one of several boxes in my basement, or on the desk near my air conditioner, in a "just in case I need it" stack.

Lost more than enough. Currently trying to find an old 8b SCSI card that I'd sort of given up on 2 years ago, as someone wants the contents of its ROM (and might be able to supply an init program afterwards). Well, it's not in my box of I/O controllers, not in the 'untested' box, nor in the 'tested, not working, fixing to-do' box...

Most of my "lost" stuff are things my dad threw out or "lost" himself while I was away. Like my Nashua disk pack. Or (oddly) my mouse for my actual computer. I could understand some weird stuff getting tossed aside like the film reels, but my mouse?

Recently while I was running my actual system on a Trio64 (2MB) after my graphics card burned up, I searched in vain for the several 4MB Virges or Trios I know I had. In fact, I had an odd amount of memory chips left over, leaving one card with only 3/4 sockets filled. I have that card. The others? Who the hell knows. There must have been more, but I couldn't find it in the conditions I was working in. Like hot damn, I know I had a pile of ISA graphics cards and now I only have whatever is installed in systems. Seemingly there was another box of cards, the "good stuff" and that one vanished.

Pretty sure LGR has an army of winged monkeys, which flies around taking this stuff from our houses. It's what he opens during his "Opening a big pile of retro tech you, ahem, sent in" videos.

"Mmm, oh look at this!, it's a pristine Tualatin base system sent in by, let's see, Shreddoc, oh hey many many thanks Shreddoc!"
YOU WHAT?!?!

"And up next, we have hwh, who appears to have very generously sent in aa box of ISA video cards, this is just greaat! I look forward to using these hwh! Thank you! And thanks to the Winged Monkeys!"
HEY!

😉

I think the only thing I lost is this computer.. it was my old Windows Home Server v1 file server, which I later put a Athlon XP 3200+ build in with an AGP Nvidia 6800 Ultra into when I started to revisit XP gaming years ago. Checked my entire house, my parent's house, and my brother's house. Not sure if I sold it, or gave it to a friend. I did find the external DVD-RW drive sitting on top, but not the computer.