Denial

A BBS needs more disk space than memory; often, the disk access exceeded the baud rate.

Indeed. And to this end he did have a SCSI hard drive connected to the Atari and mounted in a horribly ugly plywood box. He gets top marks for imagination. He had all sort of modern (for the time, ca 1993) peripherals connected to his then obsolete XL as well as an operating system similar to DOS. Gotta admire his dedication.

I was hoping to do similar things with my VIC. Alas, such a task remains beyond my abilities at present.

There is an annual garage sale here in Lincoln that is held
in a *huge* indoor arena. This year it was today. The last 4 years
or so my wife buys a booth there and sells the clothes the
children have outgrown. This year was the biggest yet, over
200 booths, and the line stretched around the parking lot
twice to get in when the doors opened! Luckily I had a 'vendor' pass,
so I could bypass all that. I say 'garage' sale, as that was the
intent when the promoters started this, but since has morphed into
about 50% people like us selling unwanted items and 50%
'professional' sellers selling antiques and vitamin supplements, etc.
So really it like a flea market now (I liked it better as just a
garage sale).

My role is really just to cart in our wares, and load them back out.
Pack mule. But that gives me lots of time to look for, umm,
bargains.

Every year I keep hoping to find a table with the following sign:
"Wife says all vintage computer equipment must go!!"
Sadly, that never happens.

This year the pickings were really bad. A few loose NES and SEGA
carts, a boxed NES for $99. No thanks. I did find some
3.5" disk cases that I needed to organize my Amiga disks, so I guess
it wasn't a total loss.

Next year I bet that guy shows up with all his vintage equipment.

-Brian

PS: Do you suppose the apparent success of this years event
has anything to do with the high price of fuel, and people trying
to stretch their dollar further?

yoyodyne wrote: PS: Do you suppose the apparent success of this years event
has anything to do with the high price of fuel, and people trying
to stretch their dollar further?

Nah. Vintage is "In" these days. Flea markets rule, anyway. The real ones, that is; not the commercialized versions.

I've been keeping an eye out for:

1) A rotary phone; wall mount would be nice.

2) A vintage push button phone; the kind that looked like the rotary phones, but with the dial directly replaced by push buttons. Would like a beige desktop model.

3) A genuine original IBM Model M keyboard. In very good shape. I don't mind if it needs a cleaning, since the keycaps are removable in the Model M line.

4. A wind-up wristwatch. I have sourced one of these already brand new, but am concerned about the quality of the movement, so I still keep an eye out for solid American made models (from when America made such things).

5. Vintage wind-up alarm clocks. I admit, I'm hooked on wind-up stuff.

DigitalQuirk wrote:I've been keeping an eye out for:

1) A rotary phone; wall mount would be nice.

I'll sell you this one:

2) A vintage push button phone; the kind that looked like the rotary phones, but with the dial directly replaced by push buttons. Would like a beige desktop model.

I've got a black rotary and a black push button but I'm keeping those because without them, I wouldn't be able to use my acoustic modems.

3) A genuine original IBM Model M keyboard. In very good shape. I don't mind if it needs a cleaning, since the keycaps are removable in the Model M line.

I'll look in my storage space. I know I have a half dozen or so.

4. A wind-up wristwatch. I have sourced one of these already brand new, but am concerned about the quality of the movement, so I still keep an eye out for solid American made models (from when America made such things).

Get an automatic (aka perpetual aka self-winding). They use the motion of your arm to wind themselves. As for the movement, get something with a 21 jewel ETA 2893-2. You'll thank me later.

5. Vintage wind-up alarm clocks. I admit, I'm hooked on wind-up stuff.

Can't help you there. I have a friend that collects clocks (I collect watches so I can't cast aspersions) and I gave him all my family's wind up alarm clocks years ago. He has more than 100 Westclox 'Big Ben' clocks in his collection. Admittedly, they're neat.

Flea markets rule, anyway. The real ones, that is; not the commercialized versions.

What is a non-commercial flea market? It sounds like a contradiction in terms.

Most of the flea markets I've been to nowadays are almost all booths selling cheap NEW crap from China (similar to the stuff sold in dollar stores). The booth owners rent the booth space for years. So really it's like a permanent store selling new stuff in order to earn their wage, rather than a car-park full of people selling stuff cleared out during spring cleaning just to get rid of it.

I think this is what DQ meant by "commercial flea markets".

I think I have a wall mount black rotary set in a box somewhere as well as beige desk top push button phone.

I also have 3 or 4 wind up Westclox clocks stored away.

I'll have a look and send PM when I locate these.

By "Commercialized," I mean exactly what ral-clan said; they're nothing more than a big store that sells cheap new crap dumped by the Chinese market.

By a "Real" flea market, I mean a variety of vendors selling both new and used things. Lots of junk with a few treasures to be found. Sort of like a big yard sale/rummage sale, but with booths where people specializing in certain areas (ie; LP records, DVD/VHS videos, videogames, computers, etc.)

You guys are going to take the fun out of the hunt!

Actually, I want the beige vintage push button phone to set up next to my Amiga/Commodore 128. The Commodore rotary phone is better suited for a Vic 20/Commodore 64 system. I had a black rotary phone in the kitchen years ago, which I think was sold at a yard sale. I figure if my wife doesn't want one in the kitchen, I have a place for it in my garage/workshop.

I like the model M keyboards best; lately, I've been using a Lexmark variant of this type, but it's not as good as the real Model M's I used to use in College. I don't like the modern keyboards at all; they feel cheap and mushy. I like crisp and tactile.

As for the watch thing, a 21 jewel ETA 2893-2 would be great, but I need this watch for work. That means it's going to get banged, bumped, scratched, scraped, and damaged, so I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars on it. Normally, I wear a decent Quartz that costs no more than $50. They've been working great and take the abuse well, but now I think it'd be neat to see how an inexpensive mechanical watch would stand up. Thanks for the advice, Golan; that will be something I will consider for a milestone anniversary present from my wife.

As for the wind-up clocks, they're not something I'm actively searching for; they're just something I like to check out when I'm there that I might buy if I think it's interesting.

DigitalQuirk wrote:As for the watch thing, a 21 jewel ETA 2893-2 would be great, but I need this watch for work. That means it's going to get banged, bumped, scratched, scraped, and damaged, so I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars on it.

Another one of my watches would probably appeal to you. It's a G-Shock GW-5600J and its claim to fame besides being far closer to indestructible than the human wearing it is that it charges itself with solar power and sets itself automatically using the radio signals broadcast from various atomic clocks around the world. They eliminated the two things people complained about most; changing batteries and setting the time/date. Is nice!

Alright, I see what you mean by "real" flea markets as opposed to the "commercial" ones. Yeah, there's probably not much point going to the latter kind when looking for some VIC stuff.

In three weeks, there will be a really large flea market here in town, perhaps thrice the size of the permanent one. I have low hopes to catch anything vintage computer related though, since we're at least 5-6 guys in the same city looking for the same goods, rarely finding anything.

The past weekend, the item closest to vintage computing I found was a $3 small tape recorder of the kind you can connect to many home computers (except Commodore, Atari etc which require custom recorders). I haven't tested it yet, but hope it will work fine so I have two units.

gklinger wrote: Another one of my watches would probably appeal to you.

I've considered the G-Shock, but I typically come up against three things:

1. The price. It's a digital watch. Non-G-Shock digital watches by Casio with similar features are typically less than half the price of the equivalent G-Shock, which would seem to be seperated from the non-G-Shock Casios by having a lot more resin as a "Bumper" guard.

2. The size. All that extra resin to make it indestructible adds a lot of bulk to the watch; to the point that it needs to be shock resistant because it keeps getting banged into things! I experienced this with a similarly sized shock resistant Timex Ironman.

3. Resin rot. A google search on Casio G-shock resin rot shows that G-shocks aren't indestructible after all. One cause of resin rot is UV light; but this watch is solar powered. This would be acceptable to me if the G-shocks were priced in line with other similarly capable digital watches.

Still, I understand the broad appeal of these watches.

DigitalQuirk wrote:1. The price. It's a digital watch. Non-G-Shock digital watches by Casio with similar features are typically less than half the price of the equivalent G-Shock, which would seem to be seperated from the non-G-Shock Casios by having a lot more resin as a "Bumper" guard.

There's a lot more to a G-Shock than the resin covering. They do carry a premium price though and judging by their enduring success, a lot of people see value in that price. I have eight G-Shocks and the oldest turned 25 this year. Never had a problem with any of them and when I amortize the cost, they've proven to be pretty affordable.

2. The size.

Some of them are quite large. The ones I prefer are somewhere in the middle size-wise. You should check out the G-Shock website as there are now a few models which are quite a bit smaller (thinner). There's also the Baby-G series which are marketed towards those who prefer not to wear a wall clock on their wrist. I just bought one of these because I fell in love with the dot matrix style display. Unfortunately none of the Baby-G models are atomic and/or solar.

3. Resin rot.

I've never experienced any discolouration or degradation of the resin and after years participating in various watch forums, I've only heard this complaint a couple of times.

This would be acceptable to me if the G-shocks were priced in line with other similarly capable digital watches.

You get what you pay for.

Clearly I'm a fanboy so I'll lock it up now.

gklinger wrote: Clearly I'm a fanboy so I'll lock it up now.

You stickied it instead. No big deal; I have nothing against G-Shocks, and may consider one in the future.

DigitalQuirk wrote:You stickied it instead.

Uh, no.

Jeff-20 wrote:This is a great title for a thread. I'm going to sticky it, so whenever there's an item in any thrift store in the world (with a denial member present), we can have a shot at getting it.