Flea market non-finds and more

[carlsson]

Today I spent half the day on the supposedly biggest flea market in this part of Sweden. It is hard to estimate how many stands there were, but certainly 200 m^2 outdoor and another 60-100 m^2 indoors. Most of the items were childrens clothes, decorative stuff and other "junk", but there was some computer related stuff too, mostly PC keyboards. Nothing more retro than SNES and N64 cartridges though. I walked by an old parallel port scanner for 75 SEK ($10) but I didn't feel for it, and when I came back it was gone. There was another 100 SEK scanner too, but as far as I saw, it was SCSI only so not interesting.

I ended up buying a cage of used but good cutlery (knives, forks, spoons) for 10 SEK and my mother bought a few small lamps. At the end, I spotted a rather worn JVC turntable which was asked 30 SEK. I learned that the belt was loose and it had got a hit while moving, so I got it for 20 SEK. After closer inspection, I'm unable to figure out how to put the belt back on. The needle also needs to be replaced, and I broke a small piece of plastic. Since I don't own a separate phono amp and I by now realized that only the very newest turntables usually has one included, I think it was 20 SEK ($2,50) down the drain.

On the positive side, last week on an Internet auction I bought a parallel port HP LaserJet 6L for a total of 411 SEK ($55) and it works fine albeit the toner is a little low, so now I can print documents at home, something I've not done since I sold my C= matrix printer MPS-801 many years ago.