Where have all the peripherals gone?



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Author	Where have all the peripherals gone? (Read 23174 times)
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	on: August 04, 2022, 18:35 Knezzen and me just discussed this - it seems that the old peripherals stuff is gone. The "a dozen a dime" type of peripherals. Go look for an analogue headset, a microphone, or speakers on ebay and you get a billion of USB cheap china stuff. But the old peripherals seem gone? Where do you guys get your stuff? Anyone knowing of a good source?

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #1 on: August 04, 2022, 19:19 The stuff is still out there, but few bother to try and sell it online anymore. eBay now requires that sellers grant them access to your bank account for direct deposits and withdrawls - and that spooks Americans even more than it does most Europeans. It certainly stopped me from selling there. On top of that you have the hassle with reclamations, postage, packaging and the dirt cheap competition from Amazon & Co. So I'd advise visiting the local flea market instead - better chances to find what you're looking for there.

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever	Reply #2 on: August 05, 2022, 01:58 Well, I picked up my two beautiful non-Apple branded Triniton VGA displays from the side of the road ( and it happened to rain a little later than day ). I was so amazed as if someone just knew I'd be driving along a not very busy residential road and I'm happily using both with my PPC Macs! But the second-hand store, neighborhood swap meets or flea markets and even neighborhood garage sales ( and possibly Craigslist ) might fetch you some oldies but goodies? ( people with FB say that they also use it as a marketplace as well? ) Most of those type of things I've kept in my closets ( I guess I've been a Mac-tech hoarder of sorts? My little private stash, lol! )

snes1423 256 MB Posts: 458 A Man born of Mechina	Reply #3 on: August 05, 2022, 05:42 I recently picked up a trove of accessories for $20 USA and I got a tiny little thermal printer for my PowerBook 520c that still has a working battery long enough to print out a 8 page paper that I wrote for my up and coming English teacher to show him my ability to write long papers and zone in on it along side a apple cd 300 a Iomega scsi zip and jazz drives and a syquest drive all with a box sealed diskettes for each of them Man am I gonna have fun now that I have the equivalent of 40GB of storage and all of it scsi perfect and ripe for my scsi Macs including my powerbook btw @cballero talk about rain here in the USA especially where I live 90 degrees and yet at 4pm yesterday it looked like the 3 days of darkness might happen as it was extremely dark and stormy and our power through the county cut off for 3 hours kind of ruins a chance to have a nice bbq does it not

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #4 on: August 05, 2022, 12:16 Well, first of all, I think there's much more stuff available within the United States, especially in terms of Macintosh stuff. Quote The stuff is still out there, but few bother to try and sell it online anymore. eBay now requires that sellers grant them access to your bank account for direct deposits and withdrawls - and that spooks Americans even more than it does most Europeans. Went to a local thrift store today to check but nothing. The "oldest" peripheral I could dig up was PS/2 PC keyboard. Everything else was USB mice, USB keyboards, TFT monitors in all shapes and sizes and previously ridiculously expensive home stereo equipment that nobody wants anymore. It seems that the 90's / early 2000's stuff is getting too old for thrift shops even. They probably won't take it anymore and thus the owner will kick it into the trash. A tragedy, really. But what can be done? Waiting for some inventive person to re-create retro compatible gear. At least the platform agnostic stuff.

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #5 on: August 05, 2022, 20:35 A couple years back I picked up a Color Maximite II. It is a small arm based single board computer, made to recreate the "thrill" of old 8 bit computers. Boots up into BASIC. It uses all new peripherals, HDMI video USB for keyboard mouse, and SD card for storage. The BASIC is very compatible with BBC BASIC, Commodore BASIC, and early PC BASIC. I think the processor is 32bit ARM @800MHz with gobs of RAM. Its target is a bit before Classic Mac's time, but it does an outstanding job of modernizing the early 8 bit experience in a fast and capable package and lots of fun to play with. Using the USB as a serial port one can even have fun with BBSes and when conecting to modern Linux host machine one can even have access to the internet. I think that similar device have been created to be very Amiga like, but as far as I know there is nothing that recreates the early Mac experience.

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever	Reply #6 on: August 05, 2022, 20:59 I totally hear you about the BBQ-weather scene!! But to add a little more to this conversation, maybe the idea is to somehow broadcast the interest in and need for these old treasures through social media? The issue becomes many of us are trying to steer clear of that whole scene and focus on simpler platforms, lol, so as those connected share about places like MG, S7T and Cornica online as well as all the other great retro-Mac forums like Emaculation, ppcmla.com, 68kmla.org and many others, people with retro gear can do virtual swap meets. That's when you wish we could all be just a little closer geographically to have real swap meets, but as time moves forward, these things will continue to vanish The only other avenue I can think of is similar to the audio jack-to-Bluetooth solution I posted, it may be time for perhaps similar 'updates' to our Classic Mac gear to be considered and/or asked for. I imagine that a PDF-file-to-new-printer (for non-Postscript programs) or similar Postscript file solution may be able to bridge Classic printing? The wizardry would have to happen at the hand-off stage or maybe how would one take a Mac's physical serial port output and translate that data on the fly to produce a compatible print file for modern printers? It's the mystery that is printing technology that could potentially create a whole new way of reusing our old tech Of course, I'd imagine that similar to those SCSIblue devices, it would be some kind of integrated software and hardware that could pull it off.. an investment for sure, since all such come at a price of course Hmm, maybe we need to ask those smart creators to see what they could jimmy for us for other I/O peripherals?

mac-cellar 128 MB Posts: 176 Gotta love System 7	Reply #7 on: August 06, 2022, 21:48 All of thrift stores near me have basically eliminated any computer equipment over the past 5-10 years. I think there are liability concerns with selling anything containing a hard disk that could potentially retain private information. CRT monitors have disappeared as well. Anything with a tube requires special recycling/disposal here - stores have probably decided it's just not worth it to stock something they may have to pay to get off their shelves later on. Peripherals are a slightly different story though - I've found a few treasures rummaging in thrift stores and on Craigslist, but none recently. eBay is my best bet, but I tend to limit my searches to North America only, so the selection elsewhere is likely different. I'd love to see industrious, skilled makers create things our old Macs need. Sadly, I don't have those skills. Otherwise, it would be wise for us to foster collaboration, swapping, marketplaces, etc that unearth stuff we can all use. It's got to be out there somewhere right?!

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever	Reply #8 on: August 08, 2022, 21:55 I got lucky over the weekend and got a little VGA-equipped TV and some neat computer speakers w/a tiny sub-woofer for $15 at an estate sale, so the owner had plenty of older stuff, but a lot of these types of treasures will eventually end up in dumpsters. I was so fortunate to have come in at the last day fifteen minutes before they closed shop (at 2 o'clock) so got both items at 50 percent off my haggled-prices! And to think I would have ignored the yard sign in my neighborhood had we just not talked about these kinds of treasures!!

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #9 on: August 09, 2022, 07:01 Wow, two saved. Congrats! :-) Glad our thread here made you consider going after them. Now turn it into a business and sell refurbished retro computer peripherals via an online shop ;-)

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #10 on: August 09, 2022, 12:06 A few months ago I tried to spare some of my mum's belongings the way to the garbage can and went to a second hand store downtown with a load of vintage music records in pristine condition. The store was operated by an elderly couple and stuffed over two floors to the roof with blasts from the past: Big ass typewriters, gilded lamps with real light bulbs, broad desk laminators and colorfull books with paper pages. Yet at the sight of me and my records the old woman started screaming and yelling: "Another idiot who thinks we are his garbage dump!" Then she went on cussing at me and her husband, because he wouldn't just kick me out straight away: "Nobody buys this shit from us and we are full of it to the roof!" It was a very unpleasant experience and since then I just put the leftovers of her life out on the street for free or … I ask the garbage can for assistance. Face it folks, in the age of Amazon and $200 furniture "collections" you just can't pay the rent for a store well with that kind of businnes. The few second hand shops left out there are either love affairs of their owners or itching to turn themselves into thrift stores selling cheap plastic crap to the masses so low-quality, not even the Chinese would want that at home.
Last Edit: August 09, 2022, 12:09 by 68040
cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever	Reply #11 on: August 09, 2022, 13:26 Then it will boil down to digital retro-bartering swap meets then: the interested user or member pays for shipping and things move from one enthusiast's location to another. Well, that and eBay: it's the ultimate rummage sale online vendor. And as much as I love the appeal of Craigslist, I shy away from it due to scammers who blatantly exploit and otherwise play games with newcomers. For example, a friend was lured in by too-good-to-be-true appliance prices on a bunch of stoves when hers broke down. The store she ended-up going to was in a seedy part of town and their prices and warranty were both a joke compared to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Another person I know has had success both buying and selling vintage clothing on a phone app? I think that's more of a current-generation trend but it's focus is all on clothing. Even so, could that be the way things could go for old electronic nick-knacks? The thing with clothing is that it's very cheap and easy to mail apparel without the risk of breakage compared to old electronics. In the end, I still think new-retro will likely end up being the niche market, likely selling at top-tier prices to keep those making these new retro toys going for those of us who love old gear like we do

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #12 on: August 09, 2022, 15:29 2nd hand clothing stores are in fashion with young people right now, because they enable them to satisy their cravings for new outfits every couple of months, w/o having to break their bank accounts over it and they can have the feeling of moral superiority on top of that (something every rebellious teenager would othwerwise gladly pay extra for - specially with mom's & dad's credit cards). But like fashion trends go this one won't last long, too, and in any case 98% of retro tech is just used for show and game. Few would allow a real mechanical clock these days to fill their their living room with "tick, tick, tick"' background noise. So they buy a brand new battery operated time piece on Amazon, stuffed in a retro case and made of cheap China plastic. Same goes for vintage computer HW, which is mostly used only for 5 minutes gaming every other month. Fact is we experience the last days of aging Rome: Living above and beyond our means, with next to no sense of history and relying almost entirely on imported goods, people and ideas. We have allowed ourselves to be transformed from pioneers and producers to consumers, accumulating more and more "stuff" we can ill afford to pay for. And punishing anything (and everybody) considered old and not up-to-date with disregard and malcontent. The days were computers were built so sturdy, you could resolder them yourself are long gone and will never come back. Nowadays not even the offical dealerships bother "repairing" components, they just switch them out, reset the whole device to factory settings and let the frustrated user deal with the data loss that incurs. Then they send the replaced component - if nature gets lucly - for smelting to some nasty smelling place in Pakistan or Bangladesh and stiff the locals with the plastic leftovers.
Last Edit: August 09, 2022, 15:35 by 68040
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #13 on: August 15, 2022, 18:04 Today, while riding my bike, I came across a garage sale. A rather rare sight here. Apparently, the seller was an about 50 years old American living here. I figured IF there's any chance of finding Mac stuff or general 90s peripherals locally, than on this yard. But no. Nothing. Old stereo speakers, board games and general household stuff. Only thing remotely interesting was a handful of 200x era PC games in jewel cases. "each just one euro", he told me in his thick American accent. Well, I guess it's indeed to late too find that kind of stuff on garage sales. Going to a retro computing convention in about 3 weeks. Let's see if that will prove more successful.
Last Edit: August 16, 2022, 17:57 by Bolkonskij
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #14 on: August 16, 2022, 15:39 These days I feel like putting myself up for sale on one of those. 😳
Last Edit: August 17, 2022, 21:44 by 68040
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