bestemor wrote:

In my country there are people that actively hunt for 'scraps', at the local recycling stations or the dumps... :lol: (and the […]
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In my country there are people that actively hunt for 'scraps', at the local recycling stations or the dumps... 🤣
(and these are not poor people or anything, many are probably potential Vogons members)

Here's a link to a discussion about the topic:
http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?s=1ed707183 … howtopic=515540

While most of you cannot read it, at least notice the number of replies/pages in that thread (7453/373!), heh...
(views: 627503!!)

Thought our rich neighbours didn't have to dumpster dive with all your oil/gas resources 😉

Over here you must be very lucky to find anything since it all goes straight to recycling in a jiffy

I know in The Netherlands you have a fairly good chance of obtaining stuff going dumpsterdiving, but the best way is to simply ask people you know if they still have an old rig collecting dust at home. People here tend to keep an old system around for years without using it and won't mind giving it away to someone they know a bit and if you ask nicely 😉.

Many people prefer to give old stuff to someone they presume has a better use for it then to throw it in the garbage, which is a good thing!

Just a month+ ago I was at someone's home, he was giving away LOTS of old stuff. I ended up with 2 large shopping bags full of parts, old routers, MEMORY, couple harddisks and more for absolutely free!
Including rdram (which I owned nothing previously).

Well Tetrium, did you find someone to give away an old garage for free?

ux-3 wrote:

Well Tetrium, did you find someone to give away an old garage for free?

Lol no!

But once in a blue moon I visit someone telling me he/she has "a bit" of stuff and end up getting WAY more then I expected!
But nowdays I tend to only take stuff I really want. If I get a nice computer case, I'll throw away the crappiest one in return.
My house isn't exactly huge, but I have plenty of room, considering I'm living on my own in a house where 2 or 3 could live 😀
Got a living room, 3 small bedrooms, a small shed and an attic. Actually, I'm barely even using the 2 smaller bedrooms.
Alas, no garage 🤣!

Edit: At least I think I'm not taking in everything I find anymore. I've become a LOT more picky these days.

Read my sig!

ux-3 wrote:

Read my sig!

I've thought about it (what it sais in your sig) years ago. At first I just basically took everything in my house (well I only had 1 room back then) that was somekind of computer and, as time passed, continuously got more selective in what I bring in.
I've moved 2 times since then. In my 1st house it was 1 big mess. I had computer parts lying all through my house as if someone had driven a truck filled with PC parts through my house with the back end open. It was everywhere!
When I moved the last time, I decided I needed to organize (and not only because of computer stuff) and now my house is my house again.
I only have 3 places where there are visible computers, in my living room (duh!), in my bedroom (for music etc) and in my attic (which is kinda like a shop/workplace private kingdom thingy).
When I'm done with computers, I'll get down from the attic, fold on the ladder and shut the hatch and that huge mess is out of sight and out of mind 😉.

Organizing it doesn't really bother me, since I like to organize things in such a way anyway.

It comes and goes like waves. For a while (couple months or weeks) I'll spend a LOT of time in the attic, building, testing. whatever I want basically. And sometimes I kinda get tired of it a bit (usually when I have other things on my mind) and it may be months before I actually open up a case to insert a NIC or something!

The thing is, I purposefully decided to keep computers as a hobby, since it's something that is there.
I used to be addicted to MMORPG's for a while, but at some point I figured "Ok, so now I got +++ gold, the 1337est items etc etc blah blah blah...so what if they shut down the servers tomorrow...all I've done, all the efford and time, everything will be gone! So whats the point?".
With computers, I have something solid, I can touch it and it's real.

Also I like to think about it. For me, it's not only to experience retro computing, it's also to collect what I think is special in some way.
Ofcourse, it might end up owning you, but for me, if I quit retro computing and toss all of it out, I know this urge of mine will simply find something else for me to do, possibly getting addicted in the process.
So I might as well stay with something that's actually useful to me in life.
If one of my LAN pc's breaks, I can simply quickly substitute it for another and worry about repairs after the lan-party is over.
If I need some cheap part, I'll usually have something already, something I've bought for cheap or was handed down.

It's way more practical then having a lvl 2000000 superorc wizard slavemaster in some game.

Also building computers was somehow therapeutic to me, I've become a lot more patient because of it, and I like finding out whats wrong by troubleshooting, because often it might've been something I did wrong or overlooked.

And last but not least, if I ever decide I'm done with all of it, I'll have enough to sell on Ebay for some extra cash 😉

The attic is good, I can just shut the hatch and I got a 'normal' house again!
I open it up and enter, I'm in hardware heaven 😁
And it's only like 10 seconds away.
Actually, even though my best friends know I got a lot of stuff, even they don't realize how much I have 😉
Nobody does and nobody is bothered when I tell them, as it's not visible and isn't affecting my daily life much.

I think most of us (apart from alien RG100) satisfy our Retro addiction in waves. For me it's a huge fest of nostalgica and quite intense for a few months, but then I overdose and get a hangover 😜

The good thing is, time stands still in the Retro world. So you can take a break for a year or two and when you come back nothing has changed!

Not going to do much this year, going back to uni as an old dog and I kinda played with and accumulated most of the things I wanted anyway. When I return I will likely just stick with DOSBox and actually play some games for a change!

I am extricating myself from an even older hobby that I haven't really touched much in 20 years, and just like to warn you, that even "selling on Ebay" may become a chore of its own. Even when selling, the stuff owns you, cause you have to spend your time managing all the sales.
With more valuable stuff, it owns you even more in not allowing you to just drive it to the dump.

Yes, but I don't mind doing some trading either. In fact, when playing MMORPG's I was hardly doing anything BUT trading! 😜

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

The good thing is, time stands still in the Retro world. So you can take a break for a year or two and when you come back nothing has changed!

Oh, but it does change - more older stuff gets thrown away and harder to come across in condition.

That's the theory, anyway. In practice there are probably enough people compulsively hoarding the useful bits that indeed you probably could take a break for a year or two. 😉

Tetrium wrote:

when playing MMORPG's I was hardly doing anything BUT trading! 😜

OWNED! 😁

ux-3 wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

when playing MMORPG's I was hardly doing anything BUT trading! 😜

OWNED! 😁

it was fun!

...a little bit too much fun 😜