The things we keep say something about us.

You find the darndest things while cleaning up for a big move. It seems that somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I managed to become a collector of computers new and old:

[A plethora of computers]
Clockwise from top left: Commodore 64, Apple Macintosh (512k), Apple Powerbook 160, Apple Powerbook 520, Apple G4 Powerbook, HP-75C, Apple Newton, Gateway M-400, Palm V, Toshiba T1250.
Not pictured: game consoles, pocket calculators, big ugly Linux servers, walkmen/iPods, etc.

Some of these machines are more mysterious than others. The HP handheld was found in a disused storage room that I cleaned out many years ago while working in Carleton’s computing department; my supervisor called dibs on the Apple ][ we dug up, but this was a neat consolation prize. The 512k Mac may be familiar to some readers as the Retek Tetris server. The C64 is not the one I grew up with (that was a C64-C to be exact, and I think got trashed during one of my parents’ moves), but was picked up at another garage sale for a whole $2.

The best thing about this pile of plastic and silicon is that with the exception of the 512k Mac (which boots up, but has a blown CRT), every one of these machines is in good working order. So I could, conceivably, set up an AppleTalk network between the old PowerBooks, or run WordStar from floppies on the Toshiba, or write BASIC programs on the HP-75 and save them on the weird magnetic strips that it uses for storage.

Or I could get a life, I suppose. But who needs that when you’ve got toys?

August 24, 2004 10:15 PM.
Tags: collections, computers, moving, photos.
Category: living.

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