How long to hoard stuff?

[RichardCranium]

I have taken the plunge and just thrown away my small stock of 1Mb, 4Mb and 8MB memory strips. I think that was a safe call. I think. I hope.

I have just come across a serial LapLink cable. I cannot bring myself to throw that away. That was frequently really useful in the early 1990s.

I have at least 20 blanking plates - how many is enough?

I have a sandwich bag with hundreds of tiny screws of different sorts, including those old Compaq ones that needed a star drive. I just know I'll need one of those one day - but which one? I'd better keep them all.

It's not that long since I dug out an old hard drive and used it to resurrect my server. Having freed it up again, its capacity was so small I dismantled it and used its platters as decoration and its 'interesting' bits as wargaming scenery. I decided that the much bigger 6Gb drive I also have in an old listing box will take over as the emergency oh-bugger-how-do-I-get-my-data-back drive.

What crud have you got?

Do you have a strategy for chucking stuff out? Or do you keep it forever 'just in case'?

(And do I need to keep these three old keyboards? Sorry, two. I forgot I gave one to my Dad as a replacement.)

[NickFitz]

I've got a BBC Model B and an Epson FX80 9-pin dot matrix printer over in the corner, just in case

[Platypus]

What crud have you got?

Do you have a strategy for chucking stuff out? Or do you keep it forever 'just in case'?

I've stopped keeping crud forever. I've recently chucked a number of low capacity hard-drives, some SCSI CD-ROM drives, old video cards (4Mb versions), numerous floppy-drive and IDE cables, a VGA splitter box, some modem cards (but kept the US Robotics Sportster modem).

Also loads of old manuals, Solaris course materials, a set of Oracle 7 books. The Data General Nova manuals went some while ago (they were 25 years old). But I kept the VMS manuals - couldn't bear to chuck those yet

My Acorn Atom went, my Commodore Pet with twin floppy drives and a Teletype 43 printer (110/300 baud switchable) were sold on eBay last year.

All CRT screens were dumped, as was my last VHS recorder and all video tapes, plus SCSI DLT drives (30 Gb capacity) and tapes. Oh, and my last 5.25" floppy drive and all diskettes.

Still have a Sun Sparcstation but it hasn't been switched on for 4 years. But it makes a useful base stand for my PC tower!

[Zippy]

Have still got some floppy disks , a couple of motherboards and a huge box of cables

[Platypus]

I've got a BBC Model B

You might find my name in the hidden part of the PROM

[RichardCranium]

Have still got some floppy disks

I have plenty of those because of my digital camera.

I have also just found a boxed copy of "Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder in 14 Days"

I wonder why the ++ is so small?

And I wonder why I never did anything with it, and should I do so now while I'm on the bench?

Edit: BTW it is version 1.0 for Windows 95.

[Zippy]

I have plenty of those because of my digital camera.

I have also just found a boxed copy of "Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder in 14 Days"

I wonder why the ++ is so small?

And I wonder why I never did anything with it, and should I do so now while I'm on the bench?

Edit: BTW it is version 1.0 for Windows 95.

Cobble together all the old bits of kit, build an old PC, install win 95 and have a go. You won't regret it

Small ++ - small compiler.

[scooterscot]

Do you have a strategy for chucking stuff out? Or do you keep it forever 'just in case'?

I moved in with my wife, then GF, she helped with the clearance - more of a ousting now that I think about it...

[xoggoth]

Recently got rid of a load of stuff. Fortunately we know a geeky sort who collects old computers so he had the A500 and the QLs.

[BolshieBastard]

Bin stuff after 6 months then you dont hang on to it 'just in case.'

The draw back with this is that a month or two later you say to yourself, 'why did I chuck that out;!