6 posts tagged “electronics”
I decided to go through the Box today. The Box is actually 4 distinct boxes and a duffel bag. The box has been accumulating bits of electronic gear for the better part of a decade, and it was time for a come-to-jesus.
Treasures found in the Box:
- A/V cables. All of them. I could wire the Fillmore with the metric shit ton of wires the Box produced. You name it, I got it. RCA, TOSlink, quarter-inch, stereo, mono, 1/8th inch, sub-1/8th inch, component, RGB, RCA to 1/8th inch, RCA to 1/4 inch, splitters, elbow joints, pink & green computer audio cables, adapters.
- 22 power cords, including 2 vintage Apple power cords from the Bondi-blue era.
- Misc power bricks, feat. The hulking UK 220v Nokia adapter and his pal the Canon Ixus/Elph AC adapter circa 2001.
- 4 mobile phones, with devices from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and some off-brand T-Mobile shit making an appearance.
- Misc adapters, car-chargers, headset cables for aforementioned phones.
- VGA cables, and one DVI cable. One baker’s dozen.
- SCSI cables: 50-pin to 50-pin, 25-pin to 50-pin and 25-pin to 25-pin.
- A bunch of 100MB ZIP disks, with various files and software, mostly Mac OS 8 era.
- 1 vintage Apple Adjustable Keyboard, complete with original Marathon sticker circa 1994.
- Marathon 1 CD-ROM. Accelerated for Power Macintosh!
- Ethernet cables. Lots.
- A set of really-short ethernet cables (5-inch, 1-foot, etc).
- 1 USB/VGA/audio 4-port KVM switch. Trick!
- All cables for said KVM switch, neatly zip-tied.
- Caller-ID box from Bell Atlantic.
- USB cables, of every flavor. Mostly still shrink-wrapped.
- Coax (cable) cables. In all lengths, shapes and sizes.
- Adapter cables for Bang & Olufsen gear. Now I can connect this vintage piece of
artto my iPod! - 1 Pentium II CPU (OEM).
Rarer were the devices:
- 1 Bondi-blue G3 tower.
- 1 Newton.
- 1 Apple prototype tablet Mac.
- 1 Game Boy Advance, with original batteries (I think it actually got less play time than my PSP).
- 1 PSP.
- 1 last-generation ADB Wacom tablet, with 2 styluses.
- 1 Apple-branded external SCSI hard drive. 850 MB, yeah!
- 1 Iomega ZIP drive, including AC adapter and SCSI cable.
In the non-electronic category:
- 1 pair chopsticks
- My first California driver’s license from January 2000. I want to smack that look off my face too.
- 1 golf ball.
- Old photos, business cards and greeting cards.
- Mix tapes!
So the lot will be going to Goodwill next week. If anyone wants a KVM, an Apple prototype or really really loves SCSI, make an offer.
Finally. At 200 duckets, it ain't cheap--and there's no Mac version--but at least someone realized there's a market for one of these things that doesn't including buying the whole hulking HTPC along with it.
Someone once told me that if you bother repeating something to 3 or more people, you might as well blog about it. Well, OK.
The coming format war between industry heavyweights (electronics or movie) over whose next-generation DVD will own the living room is already over. It will be a very expensive, but ultimately pointless pissing match honored for its place in history as the last gasp of physical media.
Why? Dead prez and Tubes.
The medium for delivery of HD movies is already here--the Internet. The same millions of people who'd otherwise spend the $600 on an HD-DVD player can already download the equivalent amount of data in less time than a trip to Blockbuster.
Some brilliant person at Sony's movie division is going to figure out that instead of wasting the time & money chasing half a bifurcated market they can sell HD movies Right Now sans physical duplication, packaging and distribution costs. Therein lies the trick.
Yeah, yeah. Waterproof flash memory for your, erm, digital camera.
