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Other The 'Random Crap I'm Too Nostalgic To Throw Away' Thread

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by boiled_elephant, 9 Mar 2021.

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  1. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    Come on, fess up.

    This is mine:

    HIS_X1900XT_512M.jpg

    I don't think it even works any more, but the nostalgia associated with first buying it (off a seller here on the forums, in fact) back in 2007 and being able to actually run Oblivion for the first time is so intense that I just can't let go. It's been sat pointlessly on a shelf for 10 years now.

    edit - I accidentally left the serial number in shot, don't none of you go stealing my HIS warranty.
     
    boiled_elephant, 9 Mar 2021
    #1
    LennyRhys and kim like this.
  2. Midlight

    Midlight Minimodder

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    I have a 3 1/2" floppy drive in a box in the garage.

    Or there might be 2.
     
    Midlight, 9 Mar 2021
    #2
  3. Xlog

    Xlog Minimodder

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    '86 VAZ-2106, older than me and have been in the family since beginning.
    Photo collection - paper (including inherited ones, spanning since pre-ww2 era). Got around at scanning most of them some time ago, so now i'm stuck with boxes of photos, terabyte of Tiff's and unwillingness to throw it away...

    Compute wise - side panels from the fist case I modded, DIY RGB light bars from ~2006 - the first and last time I put RGB (or any kind of lighting) into a PC.
     
    Xlog, 9 Mar 2021
    #3
  4. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

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    My bicycle, which I bought for 25 euros. A set of decent tyres was more expensive than it. It's heavy and thus slow but so solid. Even replaced the dynamo for the lights. I plan on getting a better bike eventually, but I don't think I'll ever rid myself of this one.
     
    yuusou, 9 Mar 2021
    #4
  5. Gunsmith

    Gunsmith Maximum Win

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    I have a 4mb Orchid Righteous 3DFX gpu on the shelf behind me, first ever GPU I ever bought with pocket money as well, sod playing tombraider on a playstation like the other kids, I was running Quake II at 640x480 in Glide!
     
    Gunsmith, 9 Mar 2021
    #5
  6. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    Byron C, 10 Mar 2021
    #6
  7. IanW

    IanW Grumpy Old Git

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    There's an Acorn RiscPC with StrongARM upgrade in my spare room. I think it still runs.
     
    IanW, 10 Mar 2021
    #7
  8. Omnislip

    Omnislip Minimodder

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    Omnislip, 10 Mar 2021
    #8
    Byron C and boiled_elephant like this.
  9. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Snap: got a Risc PC to my left as I type this. There's a PC card with a TI 486 in there, too, so it doubles as a DOS/Windows machine too.

    The thing I'm least likely to use is probably this:

    upload_2021-3-10_9-22-40.png

    A modified CueCat. Never heard of the CueCat? Sit down, you're in for a treat.

    The year was 2000. The dot-com boom - nobody had admitted it was a bubble then - had been going on for a good five years, and venture capital thought the good times would never end. Didn't matter how daft your business idea was, all you had to do was slap "online" on the end and you'd get cash. (Hello, Webvan!)

    Enter CueCat. It's... a barcode scanner. Shaped like a cat. LED based. USB connected. Nothing clever, nothing new - well, apart from the cat shape. But inventor J. Hutton Pulitzer pulled in $185 million for it. How? "Online."

    You see, the CueCat was designed to scan barcodes - jauntily angled, as a means of getting around a patent without paying - and take users to a URL. It was The Next Big Thing: connected content! How confident were investors in the project's success? Belo Corporation shoved $37.5 million at it and... encouraged its newspapers to adopt the technology. Others followed: you could find CueCat barcodes in Wired, Forbes, Parade, AdWeek, RadioShack catalogues...

    But how to encourage users to scan the barcodes, and provide all that lovely engagement data? How about giving away the CueCat hardware for free. Oh, and making sure each one had a unique ID which tied to the customer's personal details, so you knew exactly who'd scanned your code. Forbes and Wired both shipped CueCats to all their subscribers, representing over a million devices in the project's first year.

    Turns out nobody really wanted to read their newspapers or magazines while sat in front of a PC waving a cat-shaped barcode scanner, even if the scanner was free. Whoops.

    There was a silver lining: at the low, low cost of "free" CueCats were by far and away the cheapest USB barcode scanners on the market. Even after the freebies dried up, they were cheap: when CueCat folded the liquidators started selling a warehouse full of the hardware as low as 30¢ a unit - albeit if you agreed to buying 500,000 at a time.

    The catch: the CueCat used a form of encryption which ensured that it could only read CueCat barcodes, and that it spat out gibberish only the CueCat software could understand. A neat way to ensure that if advertisers wanted to use CueCat tech, they had to pay for the privilege.

    It took a very short time for the first software decoders to appear. It took only a little while longer for hackers to figure out a hardware modification which removed the encryption completely, known as "declawing," having the device spit out plain text - and unlocking its ability to scan standard barcodes too.

    This particular CueCat isn't one of the original batch, but from the liquidation sale. (No, I didn't buy 500,000 of them.) It's been declawed, and I used it to enter books into a database until the advent of smartphones with cameras and barcode-scanning software rendered it obsolete. I don't want to get rid of it, though, because it's a piece of history - and a precursor to the more modern QR Code craze.

    Here endeth the history lesson!
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 10 Mar 2021
    #9
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  10. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    That thing is utterly ridiculous.

    And yet, here we are where QR codes are commonplace in instructions..

    Looking at all your old crap, I don't actually have any old crap computer stuff I'm nostalgic about to the point of holding onto it for years.

    I do have 'kevin the floating eye', but that's not computer crap. Just a head-sized one of those toys with a thing filled with a red liquid and wrapped in a clear flexible thing so you can squeeze it and it "bleeds".
     
    liratheal, 10 Mar 2021
    #10
  11. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    That Cuecat is a ****ing trip.

    You reminded me that I still have this, too -

    p182_side_1.jpg

    The front of my first build, a p182, complete with stickers - including the briefly extant, now extinct, Bit-Tech logo sticker. Such hubris, to think that anyone would buy one! Except for some reason, I bought one.
     
    boiled_elephant, 10 Mar 2021
    #11
  12. VictorianBloke

    VictorianBloke Man in a box

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    A Yamaha RD125LC MK1 at my parents.

    First proper bike I had, that I bought in bits when I was 16 for a couple of hundred quid and put together with my dad.

    Turns out they're now going up in value. Guess there's not many left.
     
    VictorianBloke, 10 Mar 2021
    #12
  13. Ending Credits

    Ending Credits Bunned

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    7950GX2, thinking of framing it. It was actually still working last time I used it although it has started to artefact a bit.

    I chucked a bunch of old parts recently though, including an old DFI motherboard and original 1st gen Phenom.
     
    Ending Credits, 11 Mar 2021
    #13
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  14. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    I have a couple of external USB floppy drives. I don't think I've ever used them, but it was always a case of I'll hang on to that because it'll come in handy one day. The second one? Well, you gotta have a backup for vital pieces of kit, right?

    GPU block for the original Nvidia Titan/780 series cards. No, I don't know why either.
     
    David, 11 Mar 2021
    #14
  15. xaser04

    xaser04 Ba Ba Ba BANANA!

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    Got two of those beauties sitting on my "retro" shelf alongside a few others (main one of note is the Asus (pre ROG but still ROG branded) Dual HD3850X2). Sadly one of the 7950GX2's doesn't work but I *think* its down to a missing capacitor as that is the only visible difference between both cards.

    My "retro" shelf:

    [​IMG]

    Just the GPU's during a mid dusting:

    [​IMG]

    Typing this post on the following machine:

    [​IMG]

    :)

    Oh and I can't forget my X850XT PE and 6800 Ultra under my main monitor. Both work perfectly and I am sorely tempted to do some form of retrospective on them.

    Not saying I want it, but, I want it. :p
     
    xaser04, 17 Mar 2021
    #15
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  16. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    Next time I venture into the darkest recesses of the garage, I'll try and fish it out for you.
     
    David, 17 Mar 2021
    #16
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  17. wolfticket

    wolfticket Downwind from the bloodhounds

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    s-l300.jpg
     
    wolfticket, 17 Mar 2021
    #17
  18. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    I binned/scrapped loads of stuff recently, both here and stuff I had at my brother's house. I get to a point sometimes when the house feels clostraphobic and I get brutal with the cull. Besides what's in my Mrs rig (c2q and gtx480), the oldest thing I now own is a 970 had for a 970 I no longer own. That only avoided the cull by being in a box of important documents I sorted through later once we got a filing cabinet
     
    The_Crapman, 17 Mar 2021
    #18
  19. jinq-sea

    jinq-sea 'write that down in your copy book' Super Moderator

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    I feel as though I ought to show my face here. Where do we start? I've boxes of Amiga floppy disks, SCART leads, RF cables, all sorts of things that I am too nostalgic to throw away. I've also got lots of things that I am too nostalgic to sell, but I still use! In fact, I might go and play Desert Strike :)
     
    jinq-sea, 17 Mar 2021
    #19
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  20. BeauchN

    BeauchN Multimodder

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    I loved Desert Strike at the time! I may have to see if my PS1 still works and can get Soviet Strike and Nuclear Strike running :)
     
    BeauchN, 17 Mar 2021
    #20
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