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shit_game 4 days ago [-]
I love seeing art like this. Using things that are forgotten, obscure, unused, insignificant, or otherwise inconsequential is an ethos unto its own. Obsolete technologies are becoming exponentially rare; I unfortunately passed up an auction for an Osbourne 1 just this week and I'm regretting it more every second since.
I desperatey search thrift stores for anything I can find that isn't the generic consumer garbage that plagues the US; smart tvs, ISP-issued modem/routers, terrible dvd players, "media centers", other smart garbage. Really, any kind of digital circuit that isnt a dumb interface to media is sacrilige in my search. This has become all but a moot point because things like CRTs and other obscure electronics are all picked off at the donation point and then sold online because they've been indentified as valuable or "retro", or outright thrown away because theyre considered too old for anyone to ever give a shit about.
There is a disturbing situation regarding old technology right now where only a very, very specific subset of technologies are considered valuable to a very small, specific subset of consumers; this means that things like CRTs are shipped off to warehouses to be catalogued and sold on online auctions, and their accompanying hardware is being thrown into dumpsters because theres no immediately correlated market for this hardware. For the first time in about 10 years I saw two VCRs at a thrift store (a Quasar VHQ-40M and some lesser generic garbage). This was the first time I had seen a VCR for sale IRL since going to a pawn shop that has since been demolished; the man running the store said I could keep it for free because the person who pawned it was a crackhead and he didn't even know if it worked, but if it did, he wanted me to come back and pay him $10 for it. Lo and behold it worked perfectly, so I went back and did.
I've noticed just this week that both of the thrift store companies I frequent have stopped stocking VHS tapes; I don't know if this is because they have decided they're to be thrown out, sold online, or refused as donations. The last VHS tapes I've bought were Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Austin Powers in Goldmember.
myself248 4 days ago [-]
Thrift stores throw out things THEY don't think are valuable. Skip that bottleneck, go straight to the estate sales.
Every Thursday around lunch, I open up Estatesales.net and browse the sales for the upcoming weekend. There's typically a dozen or two. I open each one in a new tab, and scroll down through what's typically 100-300 photos per sale. Very quick skim, stopping if I see anything interesting.
I then paste links to specific photos into item-specific category threads in a local makerspace chat: Sewing machines/other fabric stuff, Typewriters/addingmachines/cashregisters/calculators, CRT TVs/VCRs/related, Computers/videogames/peripherals, Tools, Cameras/film/telescopes/projectors/optics, Radio/stereo/DJ/vinyl records, Landline phones. So basically I've done the horizontal browse and sorted it into vertical categories, and anyone who follows those threads for stuff they're interested in, can go to the sale and nab the stuff.
But crucially, estate sales have _everything_, and if the sale folks have reorganized the house, badger them into telling you where the accessories went. If they already threw out valuable cables or something, give 'em hell for it and refuse the purchase, and they'll be more mindful next time.
If you're looking for something specific, show up on the first day. But personally, I just want to keep it from being landfilled, so I show up near the end of the last day. Offer fifty bucks for all the VHS tapes in the house, they'll take it. I got about 3500 floppy disks this way -- other shoppers ended up helping bucket-brigade them to my car as the clerk was closing up shop.
Theodores 4 days ago [-]
I get it, but, for every estate sale, there are people that have lost a parent, a grandparent, a friend, a neighbour.
There will be people, the executors of the will, that need to clear the house, however, much which is just $$$ to you will be heirloom grade stuff to them, with memories of happier times attached. Yet still, they need to realise the assets from the estate, maybe there are grandchildren with inheritances in that mountain of cruft left over after a long life.
Sure, there are things that just need to go, that the executors of the will would consider paying to get cleared.
As for getting things like the cables and power bricks that go with electrical items, chances are that the deceased was not doing a good job of keeping everything in order, they might even have a bit of hoarding going on. It is no easy job to repatriate cables with electrical items, that might have gone to the tip already, as e-waste.
There is also a tendency for men to put value on what most women will just see as e-waste. Similarly, with clothes, men see the whole lot as jumble sale trash, whereas women are more likely to see value in these items. I say this not to court sexist allegations, it is just that, if a woman clears the house, there is a slimmer likelihood of getting that lead for that obsolete electronic kit that somehow is considered valuable.
Sometimes the estate is too much work for the relatives, so the solicitor might get the keys to the house and instructions to get it all cleared. These are a minority of cases, usually, the relatives do pick through everything and put stuff in charity shops, charity shops that deal with big items of furniture, up to half a dozen 'skips' (British English term) and so on. I would say there isn't going to be a estate sale in these situations, really you are relying on the minority of sales where the solicitor gets the key, if you are going the estate sales route.
myself248 4 days ago [-]
Oh, all the estate sales I go to are run (and posted) by third parties, who do it as a business, for a percentage of the sales. The heirs are nowhere to be found -- they got a first pass through the house a few days prior to grab anything sentimental, and they'll show up a few days later when the business has been transacted. But the folks running the sale are professionals.
Which means they should know better. And some of them do -- I have a few local favorite companies, where I know they'll keep things together, they're good about finding manuals in file cabinets and putting them with their respective items, etc. I'm usually happy to pay their asking price, because they're interested in seeing the items go to good homes and get reused, and take care accordingly.
But, likewise I have some "un-favorites", one who was notorious for sticking price-tags on screens. I might've finally trained them out of this when I told them I'd only pay their asking price for a particular piece of test equipment if they could remove the sticker without damage. They removed it, the already-degrading plastic screen was obviously fucked by the adhesive, they exchanged awkward glances with each other, and I walked away. Maybe they'll keep that in mind on the next sale they run.
Theodores 4 days ago [-]
Meh. Maybe it is a cultural difference, we have different manners outside the USA. Your business is rather vulgar in the UK context, that of a parasite or a greedy gannet. There would be no honour in selling the estate items to your sort, setting light to everything or giving it to sensible charities would be far preferable.
As exemplified by what is going on in the Middle East, the USA has different values to the rest of the world, so don't take this criticism as a slight, just don't come here and expect to be liked for what you are doing.
loco5niner 57 minutes ago [-]
This is the completely wrong take. Yes, perhaps GP may have gone a bit far in his comments, but so have you. I also don't see the point in bringing up the current US situation when the UK has had similar issues in the past. The pot calling the kettle black.
I have also been frustrated in the past with organizations putting stickers haphazardly over screens etc, and it's worth reminding them.
ehnto 4 days ago [-]
I'm not sure I follow, maybe I misunderstand what the original commenter is doing, but it sounds like they are helping their community find and re-use old equipment which doesn't sound like a bad thing. Not many charities would take on that kind of stuff, and it would end up in the tip.
I'm from Aus if that helps, I would rather see that kind of stuff flow on to enthusiasts than get tossed.
I am however not a big fan of scalping or opportunistic/speculative profiteering. That does happen a lot with these kinds of second hand markets. But I am not seeing that being what the original commenter is doing, maybe I missed it though.
myself248 4 days ago [-]
How do you view thrift stores, then? Genuinely curious. All the same items, one or two steps further removed from the family.
marky1991 4 days ago [-]
I don't get it , he's buying stuff at estate sales. That's literally what they're for. I didn't understand what part of his behavior you consider uncouth.
As he already said, they're almost always run as a very detached thing, run by professionals with no connection to the family, other than the transaction.
ragall 4 days ago [-]
Well said.
ghaff 4 days ago [-]
Meanwhile some of us just want to simplify, accessories and cables have probably been scattered, etc. it’s not worth it to me to find a home for a lot of this stuff or just live with the clutter until probably someone else needs to deal with it.
bombcar 4 days ago [-]
It's almost certainly that they refuse the donations or throw them out when they find them.
Some of the more rural thrift stores still have VHS, one still has cassettes, and I know of a place where there's a stash of 8-track.
Thrift stores are businesses; they stock what sells - but they also have the reality of often having to pay to dispose of electronic waste that was donated - they're not allowed to just dumpster it as in days of yore.
Of course the national thrift store chain machines (Goodwill) have policies for all this stuff - you gotta hit up and get to know the smaller independent stores if you want them to hold stuff for you - which they'll often do.
A VCR and some tapes are great for the kid's playroom - teach them rewind patience on equipment you won't cry much if they destroy.
anthk 4 days ago [-]
In my case I'm planing to get one of these portable game consoles mimicking a Game Boy with 4 buttons which have some embeeded Linux OS with a GP2X GUI (the handheldGUI from the old GP2X consoles, now being universal) and OFC video players like Mplayer can be adapted/ported there (and ScummVM and a lot more). Then I will just grab a cheap pair of $5 headphones and call it a day. Video player, retroconsole and maybe a pocket computer with a USB host cable and a mini keyboard, a geeks heaven.
As current smartphones as ditching own the auio cable this is great: I can listen to music/watch some niche scifi series at lowish res (PSP like) from an SD and I can also have nice matches with some old retro JRPGs and plataformers for almost nothing. Tons of homebrew ROMs are perfectly legal to share, too. I own a 100% legal collection which can be shared over Bittorrent and give a lot of fun for both kids and adults, from XRick to Cave Story ports for Genesis/MD to Supertux Advance, this one being a 100% libre game. As a plus, the phone battery will last for longer.
Oh, and with a mini keyboard I might be able to code in EForth whil seating down on a bus as they often have some foldable tray to place laptops and the like. I can just use a book to rest the console and with a keyboard I'm done :)
Oh, and podcasts, too.
It wasn't the original purpose, but this is libre software. If an $20/$30 can do the same as an $100 netbook, better for everyone.
As current devices will get a much higher price because of RAM and storage shortages, repurposing devices as computers (and with the right software) can create drastic changes.
Cockbrand 4 days ago [-]
I can't believe nobody had nitpicked the obvious mistake yet: there never was an iBook Duo. The 68k Apple notebooks and the early PPC ones were called PowerBooks, so the correct naming is "PowerBook Duo 230".
Cockbrand 4 days ago [-]
Each time I get super anal about a piece nerd knowledge, I make some mistake myself - all the Apple PPC laptops were in fact called PowerBook. The MacBook name started with the Intel based devices.
I was looking for typewriter sounds and several of them are "artistic renderings" that are completely useless as a form of documentation.
kleiba 4 days ago [-]
"Each sound in the project is recomposed and reimagined by artists"
Completely agree! I would have much preferred original sounds, or - if anything - sounds taken from original recordings but restored to compensate for the bad recording equipment at the time of recording.
steinwinde 4 days ago [-]
You can listen to each of the original recordings. Just make sure you click on the first play button after you've chosen the sound, not the second (which often seems to be the default).
tgv 4 days ago [-]
There's e.g. this one: http://www.mrgory.info/sm/ (path may look odd, but it probably means sound machine/museum/memory or something).
elaus 4 days ago [-]
Quite a lot of sample sound strange. Some even have echo or other weird artifacts. I hope it's not AI generated.
klik99 4 days ago [-]
Yes, I came to say the same thing, not just typewriter - it's a great idea but I wish they had the original recordings by themselves and not overlayed with ambient music.
NoSalt 4 days ago [-]
Aaaahhh ... the IBM Selectric. Fond memories.
lemoncucumber 4 days ago [-]
I thought this was going to be about phonemes that used to be part of English but aren't anymore (e.g. all of the vestigal "gh"es in our spellings that used to represent the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative but are now either silent or pronounced as another phoneme).
binaryturtle 5 days ago [-]
Needs a recording of an Amiga reading in a floppy disk... and the floppy drive just waiting to be feed. Those were the sounds! :)
(The interface on the website is a bit confusing to use, IMHO)
bee_rider 4 days ago [-]
It is weird to think, computers are almost completely devoid of whirring nowadays. Other than the fan, and fans have gotten quite quiet. Floppies, CDs, hard drives. Tapes even (although I’m not that old).
It’s just kind of funny, I guess, the upcoming generation will never have the surprising “wow, my computer is silent” moment. I guess that was a one-time thing.
Loughla 4 days ago [-]
I tried to describe to my kid the sound of a 5.25" floppy disc the other day. MMWA MWA mmmmmm MWAMWA mmmmmmm.
He has seen 3.5" discs, but never the large floppies. His mind almost exploded when I talked about games needing 7 or 8 discs and hitting certain points where the game would pause while you put a new disc in.
PlunderBunny 4 days ago [-]
I remember when the hard drive on my PowerMac 7200/90 started to fail (I was told that some of the ball bearings the platter rotated on were broken [0]). When the drive detected a 'wobble' on the platter, the entire computer would just power down with no warning at all - it was like the sound of a vacuum cleaner powering off. Silence and a blank screen that looked like a power cut, followed by that "oh sh!t" moment.
0. Note sure how true this was!
chriswarbo 4 days ago [-]
I love that Amiga emulators (FS/E/Win)UAE have an option to emulate the floppy drive sound. Very nostalgic, but also useful as an indication that something's happening!
antalis 4 days ago [-]
Yes, there are two players, and often the bottom one plays and it's a different song than the one we selected, which is loaded in the top one.
adolph 4 days ago [-]
I'd like to track down this sound for my sisters and me: Old Library Card Punch Machine. Finding the old library smell too would be a plus.
This is great, but why is there an echo? It's prominent and it didn't let me enjoy the nostalgia as much as hearing the actual sound would have.
burnt-resistor 4 days ago [-]
I was hoping for fax machine, 56K modem, 300 baud modem, US public pay phone ringing and coin deposit, princess phone ring and dial, rotary phone dialing, 9-pin printer, and 24-pin color printer.
ljlolel 4 days ago [-]
I just made a new audio format that makes sharing sounds easier on mobile https://hxtube.com
buildsjets 4 days ago [-]
When I was a kid, I could hear the sound the of the flyback transformer on the CRT TV from anywhere in the house. None of the adults could. 15.7 kHz. Now obsolete both due to the lack of CRTs, and degradation of my hearing from heavy metal concerts and jet engine exposure.
brycewray 4 days ago [-]
Same here about the TV's flyback transformer. My parents always wondered how I could hear from down the hall (out of sight from the TV) when the horizontal hold or vertical hold went awry. :-)
Pxtl 4 days ago [-]
My personal "obsolete sound": The sound of an old C64 floppy drive failing a read.
It took me a few clicks to figure out what played those sounds. The background images of the play buttons aren't helpful in visually clarifying their function. Otherwise: Good idea, keep it up!
aledevv 5 days ago [-]
Ahh... what memories... the legendary Pac-Man of the 80s (video games category). I was a kid, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
jonplackett 4 days ago [-]
The Philips Coffee grinder is quite intense with Airpods on. Feels like my head is the grinder.
Hnrobert42 4 days ago [-]
I wonder if it should include the sound of insects. Sigh.
nhecker 4 days ago [-]
Or songbirds.
ragall 4 days ago [-]
The Zenit-E film wind and shutter click gave me the chills.
aa-jv 4 days ago [-]
10 PING:ZAP:SHOOT:EXPLODE
20 GOTO 10
roryirvine 3 days ago [-]
Ah, the Oric-1! (And maybe the Atmos, too?)
aa-jv 11 hours ago [-]
No maybe, definitely! :)
BugsJustFindMe 4 days ago [-]
Toilet flush as obsolete sound is an interesting future.
wolandomny 4 days ago [-]
The sounds sort of lack, but the idea is beautiful
naikrovek 4 days ago [-]
> a brand new form of listening
bro go away from me with that crap. nothing has been invented, here.
I desperatey search thrift stores for anything I can find that isn't the generic consumer garbage that plagues the US; smart tvs, ISP-issued modem/routers, terrible dvd players, "media centers", other smart garbage. Really, any kind of digital circuit that isnt a dumb interface to media is sacrilige in my search. This has become all but a moot point because things like CRTs and other obscure electronics are all picked off at the donation point and then sold online because they've been indentified as valuable or "retro", or outright thrown away because theyre considered too old for anyone to ever give a shit about.
There is a disturbing situation regarding old technology right now where only a very, very specific subset of technologies are considered valuable to a very small, specific subset of consumers; this means that things like CRTs are shipped off to warehouses to be catalogued and sold on online auctions, and their accompanying hardware is being thrown into dumpsters because theres no immediately correlated market for this hardware. For the first time in about 10 years I saw two VCRs at a thrift store (a Quasar VHQ-40M and some lesser generic garbage). This was the first time I had seen a VCR for sale IRL since going to a pawn shop that has since been demolished; the man running the store said I could keep it for free because the person who pawned it was a crackhead and he didn't even know if it worked, but if it did, he wanted me to come back and pay him $10 for it. Lo and behold it worked perfectly, so I went back and did.
I've noticed just this week that both of the thrift store companies I frequent have stopped stocking VHS tapes; I don't know if this is because they have decided they're to be thrown out, sold online, or refused as donations. The last VHS tapes I've bought were Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Austin Powers in Goldmember.
Every Thursday around lunch, I open up Estatesales.net and browse the sales for the upcoming weekend. There's typically a dozen or two. I open each one in a new tab, and scroll down through what's typically 100-300 photos per sale. Very quick skim, stopping if I see anything interesting.
I then paste links to specific photos into item-specific category threads in a local makerspace chat: Sewing machines/other fabric stuff, Typewriters/addingmachines/cashregisters/calculators, CRT TVs/VCRs/related, Computers/videogames/peripherals, Tools, Cameras/film/telescopes/projectors/optics, Radio/stereo/DJ/vinyl records, Landline phones. So basically I've done the horizontal browse and sorted it into vertical categories, and anyone who follows those threads for stuff they're interested in, can go to the sale and nab the stuff.
But crucially, estate sales have _everything_, and if the sale folks have reorganized the house, badger them into telling you where the accessories went. If they already threw out valuable cables or something, give 'em hell for it and refuse the purchase, and they'll be more mindful next time.
If you're looking for something specific, show up on the first day. But personally, I just want to keep it from being landfilled, so I show up near the end of the last day. Offer fifty bucks for all the VHS tapes in the house, they'll take it. I got about 3500 floppy disks this way -- other shoppers ended up helping bucket-brigade them to my car as the clerk was closing up shop.
There will be people, the executors of the will, that need to clear the house, however, much which is just $$$ to you will be heirloom grade stuff to them, with memories of happier times attached. Yet still, they need to realise the assets from the estate, maybe there are grandchildren with inheritances in that mountain of cruft left over after a long life.
Sure, there are things that just need to go, that the executors of the will would consider paying to get cleared.
As for getting things like the cables and power bricks that go with electrical items, chances are that the deceased was not doing a good job of keeping everything in order, they might even have a bit of hoarding going on. It is no easy job to repatriate cables with electrical items, that might have gone to the tip already, as e-waste.
There is also a tendency for men to put value on what most women will just see as e-waste. Similarly, with clothes, men see the whole lot as jumble sale trash, whereas women are more likely to see value in these items. I say this not to court sexist allegations, it is just that, if a woman clears the house, there is a slimmer likelihood of getting that lead for that obsolete electronic kit that somehow is considered valuable.
Sometimes the estate is too much work for the relatives, so the solicitor might get the keys to the house and instructions to get it all cleared. These are a minority of cases, usually, the relatives do pick through everything and put stuff in charity shops, charity shops that deal with big items of furniture, up to half a dozen 'skips' (British English term) and so on. I would say there isn't going to be a estate sale in these situations, really you are relying on the minority of sales where the solicitor gets the key, if you are going the estate sales route.
Which means they should know better. And some of them do -- I have a few local favorite companies, where I know they'll keep things together, they're good about finding manuals in file cabinets and putting them with their respective items, etc. I'm usually happy to pay their asking price, because they're interested in seeing the items go to good homes and get reused, and take care accordingly.
But, likewise I have some "un-favorites", one who was notorious for sticking price-tags on screens. I might've finally trained them out of this when I told them I'd only pay their asking price for a particular piece of test equipment if they could remove the sticker without damage. They removed it, the already-degrading plastic screen was obviously fucked by the adhesive, they exchanged awkward glances with each other, and I walked away. Maybe they'll keep that in mind on the next sale they run.
As exemplified by what is going on in the Middle East, the USA has different values to the rest of the world, so don't take this criticism as a slight, just don't come here and expect to be liked for what you are doing.
I have also been frustrated in the past with organizations putting stickers haphazardly over screens etc, and it's worth reminding them.
I'm from Aus if that helps, I would rather see that kind of stuff flow on to enthusiasts than get tossed.
I am however not a big fan of scalping or opportunistic/speculative profiteering. That does happen a lot with these kinds of second hand markets. But I am not seeing that being what the original commenter is doing, maybe I missed it though.
As he already said, they're almost always run as a very detached thing, run by professionals with no connection to the family, other than the transaction.
Some of the more rural thrift stores still have VHS, one still has cassettes, and I know of a place where there's a stash of 8-track.
Thrift stores are businesses; they stock what sells - but they also have the reality of often having to pay to dispose of electronic waste that was donated - they're not allowed to just dumpster it as in days of yore.
Of course the national thrift store chain machines (Goodwill) have policies for all this stuff - you gotta hit up and get to know the smaller independent stores if you want them to hold stuff for you - which they'll often do.
A VCR and some tapes are great for the kid's playroom - teach them rewind patience on equipment you won't cry much if they destroy.
As current smartphones as ditching own the auio cable this is great: I can listen to music/watch some niche scifi series at lowish res (PSP like) from an SD and I can also have nice matches with some old retro JRPGs and plataformers for almost nothing. Tons of homebrew ROMs are perfectly legal to share, too. I own a 100% legal collection which can be shared over Bittorrent and give a lot of fun for both kids and adults, from XRick to Cave Story ports for Genesis/MD to Supertux Advance, this one being a 100% libre game. As a plus, the phone battery will last for longer.
Oh, and with a mini keyboard I might be able to code in EForth whil seating down on a bus as they often have some foldable tray to place laptops and the like. I can just use a book to rest the console and with a keyboard I'm done :)
Oh, and podcasts, too. It wasn't the original purpose, but this is libre software. If an $20/$30 can do the same as an $100 netbook, better for everyone.
As current devices will get a much higher price because of RAM and storage shortages, repurposing devices as computers (and with the right software) can create drastic changes.
Completely agree! I would have much preferred original sounds, or - if anything - sounds taken from original recordings but restored to compensate for the bad recording equipment at the time of recording.
(The interface on the website is a bit confusing to use, IMHO)
It’s just kind of funny, I guess, the upcoming generation will never have the surprising “wow, my computer is silent” moment. I guess that was a one-time thing.
He has seen 3.5" discs, but never the large floppies. His mind almost exploded when I talked about games needing 7 or 8 discs and hitting certain points where the game would pause while you put a new disc in.
0. Note sure how true this was!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Library/comments/unek0c/old_library...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JroA0Ap7zGU
bro go away from me with that crap. nothing has been invented, here.