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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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".
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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!
I was looking for typewriter sounds and several of them are "artistic renderings" that are completely useless as a form of documentation.
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).
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.
I just made a new audio format that makes sharing sounds easier on mobile https://hxtube.com
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Library/comments/unek0c/old_library...
Love projects like this – we obsess over preserving images and video, but soundscapes vanish almost unnoticed.
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.
I wonder if it should include the sound of insects. Sigh.
My personal "obsolete sound": The sound of an old C64 floppy drive failing a read.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JroA0Ap7zGU
> a brand new form of listening
bro go away from me with that crap. nothing has been invented, here.