But it's like selling your children

I do remember selling a computer once.

An Amstrad 6128.

Other than that I still have all the computers I have bought or built starting from a Sinclair Spectrum from 1984.

As I live on my own there is no-one to nag me about clearing them out and as I haven't moved house in over 30 years that spur to disposal is missing as well.

I do actually use some of the older stuff from time to time. Getting some software to run is a lot easier when everything is of the same vintage i.e. getting stuff from the 1990s going is easier on an AMD K6 with a 3dfx Voodoo 2 card and so on.

So keep hold of that stash, it MAY well come in handy one day.

I wanted to participate

but everything I have is essential. I could not bear to part with my 8 inch floppy disks with CP/M and MS Fortran, my RCA vacuum tube manual, my original copy of "The C Programming Language" by K&R (the one without function prototypes), my complete collection of first year university lecture notes or the wall I made out of BYTE magazines.

retro-computing

Gaius's 4 Beebs and A1200 might fetch a bob or two on the retro-computing market.

Wishing Shed

I have a shed just like that garage, occasionally I need something and think "I've got one of those in the shed".

I open the door, take one look and wish I could find (or even get to if it is visible at the back) what it is I'm looking for.

Then I close the door and find something else to do.

I must get another shed and this one I promise I will keep tidy :)

The problem with garages..

Is what to do with them when they're full.

I have a single garage (and 2 garden sheds) filled with several Volkswagens, in component form, in cardboard boxes - tenuous IT angle, but there is a custom ECU in there somewhere that I built. After several wet summers and less than effective damp-proofing, the boxes are reverting to pulp, and their contents slowly re-arranging themselves.

To combat this I 'acquired' about 60metres of freestanding shelving which, in it's disassembled form filled the remaining free space in the garage. I now have no space to assemble the shelves.

It's stressful to keep that much junk

I had a garage as bad as that, and it was a constant background worry knowing that l'd have to deal with it some day (or my loved ones if I'd perished first). It took several weekends of trips to the local tip before I finally ended up with a single row of boxes at the back of a now useful space. Mainly Christmas decos and some childhood stuff to hang onto for the pleasure of nostalgia, and stuff that really is useful once in a while but not often enough to be worth bringing into the house.

I finally realised that the stuff that 'might be useful one day' hadn't been used for years, and is the kind of stuff that can be bought for peanuts in a poundland. And the stuff that 'might be worth something one day' really won't be. Take a look on eBay for what it's really worth.

It's worth far more to have the space and tidyness, and knowing that if you ever need to move house, it won't be anywhere near as stressful as it would have been. And I'd hate to leave that mess behind for my beloveds to deal with, if I get run over by a bus, virus, mutation, or vein blockage.

Just take photos

Take some pics of the junk you can't bear to part with, because most of the pleasure you get from it is just seeing it and having it remind you of bygone days. These days a 'photo' costs nothing but a MegaByte or two of diskspace, so it's almost free. You don't really need the physical item in your hand half the time. You can still tell the grandchildren "this is what gramps used to use when I was your age" by showing them the photo - as if they'd really care :)

clean house, boring life more like

after spending most of the day in corporate IT, I've got better things to do than spend all my time tidying

No pictures, but...

My stash includes two Electrons I've never used (got a Beeb), an 8" drive that nothing interfaces to, an Apple-branded Miniscribe 20MiB SCSI harddisc that is the slowest thing ever built. Somewhere I have a Umatic tape that I have no idea what to play it on or what's on it (maybe a lost episode of Dr Who?). BBC micro printer cables? Got plenty. There's a big box full of "obsolete stuff" in the corner of the room, with other things scattered around - like a Beeb with half its ICs missing. I can't get rid of the board because the day I do will be the day the 74LS1234 blows up in the main Beeb and this part just won't exist any longer. Or some obscure PAL or ULA will need to be unsoldered and transferred across, so it is useful (even though I've not powered up the actual Beeb in years because it's so much simpler to run an emulator...).

All of this, and can I find a USB lead with the right sort of connection when I need to? Can I heck... <sigh>

Clearly a fellow old-school electronic musician

You can never have too many old Atari STs. You know, just incase.

It may have been a decade since I last felt the need to turn one on and create a vast spider web of midi cables, but one of these days....

I resemble that remark...

In the last two house moves I've taken van loads of collected crap to the tip. Including random power supplies that I had no idea what they powered, an ISDN router - I've never had an ISDN line, at least 6 dead or semi-dead PCs, and ancient graphics and other cards.

I'm down to one crate of random junk now, but I do have a box full of old mobile phones. I keep telling myself they are classics and will be worth money one day...

I have only needed one thing (can't remember what it was now) that I kept "just in case" for years and binned, and I could now do with the KVM switch I threw out. I am finally using the media centre remote control I bought on a whim about 5 years go though.

I can give up any time I want..

Actually things aren't too bad. I'm considering chucking the 5.25 inch drives and stopped buying anything that's old, slow, noisy and power hungry. I was tempted by some Sun Blade systems, but unless you buy a PGX card their graphics card isn't supported by anything useful including later versions of Solaris! The old sparcstation is up in the loft and the O2 boxes might join them if I can't find a way to quiten them down..

emulation is also great, and stops me buying original kit when the performance is good enough

A spreading european problem perhaps?

In San Francisco they are just signed off to start building 20' * 20' (5 meters) "sustainable" (puke/vomit) homes, I see the problem is you don't build big enough homes to hold your property. If all you want is an empty home with flower vase and shaving bowl on the dresser, and a netbook stuffed behind the toilet.

There's nothing wrong with hording this stuff. I have boxes and boxes of MFM, and other vertical rack server sheet after sheet of golden memory chips. I'm not recycling, I'm SELLING them. Especially with the monetary systems so corrupt, you may be LIVING on that stuff, or bartering, soon enough. And look the first picture has a canoe, I have a RAFT! I live in a flood zone, coincidence? There's nothing abnormal here for an inventor, hacker, electronics tech. Sure those keyboards are big but hey you might need an i8048 one day! whip out the propane torch tap tap on the floor and boom instant steaming hot electronics parts delivery.

(note to the young: If your doing more than one board, be sure to ventilate the lead solder and green circuit board to black charred remains smoke, I don't care about safety glasses and hot solder, you need to get some in your eye at least once)

"Give yourself permission to throw things away"

"Kind and resourceful people see potential value in every cracked and crazy thing.

"Throwing it out may be a waste, but if you can't find and use things in the mess, they are already lost to you.

"On top of that is buildings and space you cannot use, clarity and beauty lost, wasted.

"Its already wasted. You are only gaining by letting it go.

[Cecilia Macaulay, "How to create beauty - lessons from a Japanese Farmhouse makeover"]

Same problem here with flat panels

Specifically, keeping them "just in case" the panels can one day be used for something, the lack of a working inverter/controller board being a major headache and most of the time they have serious damage/bad lines/etc.

Make a video wall with them and Raspberry Pi Model A's maybe?

Same with old power supply boards, most of the time the optos can be reused but the capacitors are usually worthless and wound components aren't worth much these days unless you are making voltage converters.

The only exception was the >50 ferrite toroids rescued from a box of wiring which along with the 34063 based phone charger carcass pile are being repurposed into power supplies for bicycle lights.

Update of old joke...

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess and a handsome prince. The prince asked the princess for her hand in marriage, and she said no. So instead of wasting his time on a quest to change her mind, he spent the rest of his life riding motorcycles; dating girls half his age; drinking as much whisky as he liked; [accumulating all the technological junk that he liked]; and generally having a great time --- and he lived happily ever after.

Sisyphus

Nuf sed

Total bugbear of mine - keeping endless piles of crap. Ending up with 99percent of it totally useless, but robbing you of so much space. Is it really worth not having a backbedroom and having a living room that looks like the set of "steptoe and son" so that just ONCE in 20 years you might have that piece of kit you really need in a box somewhere... that you just can't find... so you go out and buy a new one. Then find the old one a week later... When you REALLY don't need it since you now have a newer one, but now you know where it is you keep it as a "spare".... Usually you waste so much time looking for the one you know you've got somewhere (and pray still works!) it would have been quicker just to go out and buy a new one that you KNOW still works!

All that said. Yup. I do it, too.