Re: Found an Apple II Plus in the trash...

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:

>On Wed, 28 Jul 2010, Mitchell Spector wrote:
>
>>    Thought I'd share this. I was walking home tonight when I spotted
>> something in a trash pile that looked familiar, to the point I thought I
>> was imagining things. Low and behold, sitting in a cardboard box filled
>> with newspapers and empty food containers was, of all things, an
>> original Apple II Plus with a Disk ][ drive!
>>
>I can't remember when I found the Duodisk, but the only other time I found
>Apple II equipment in the garbage was late August of 1992

    Oddly enough, that was roughly the last time I found an Apple II in the
trash. Or rather my friend did, when he was in downtown Montreal and 
spotted an Apple IIe with DuoDisk and ProFile in the trash. He passed
along the machine but *destroyed* the ProFile hardisk for entertainment!
I kept the IIe all these years but mostly used it for spare parts. Actually
I'd like to give it away along with a spare Monitor ///. To this day I still
will not throw out an Apple II, no matter what condition it's in.

>the day of the Concordia shooting.  I was walking up Park Avenue with 
>a friend, and we noticed piles of junk in an alley, it looked like some place 

    Not to get too off topic, but I was actually working in one of
Concordia's labs that summer, on the very day of the shooting. In fact,
I was sitting just a few feet away from one woman who had been
targetted but Fabrikant never made it that far. I seem to remember
being on my lunch break, telnetting into the Vax to read articles on
comp.sys.apple2 (used to be heavy traffic here in the early 90's).
I don't think I'll ever forget that day...

>I can't remember when I last saw an Apple II at a garage or rummage sale, 
>but I suspect at least a decade.  So yes, it is odd to find one in the
>garbage at this point.

    Same here more less. Only exception was an Apple IIc a laptop store 
had in a give away pile with 286 and 386 notebooks, and another Apple 
IIc I found earlier this year in the recycling. I did spot a DuoDisk 5.25 and
Kraft IBM/Apple joystick a thrift shop about a year ago too, though let 
them both go. Aside from that, it's been a good decade or more.

>I'm finding a much more recent level of "electronic junk" these days.
>
>I found a 17" LCD monitor, that works, at the end of April when the McGill 
>students moved out.  Around July 1st Moving Day, I found a 60gig iPod 
>(it's not charging, so I'm hoping the only problem is the battery),
>a spare 56K modem, a somewhat older digital camera, a Playstation,
>various portable CD players, and I can't remember what else.

    Much the same story here, I wonder if it's just Montreal or everywhere?
I found a 20" wide-screen LCD in the box, a Playstation 2, several 
DVD players that support DivX (needing repair mind you), a Pentium D
system with 250 GB SATA drive, DVD burner and 1 GB RAM (although
the motherboard has faulty capacitors, so I understand why it was 
thrown out). The absolutely best find was on moving day, I was 
walking back from the JazzFest, and found a Sony PSP in the trash!
In pieces mind you, and needing a little bit of repair, but I should
have it up and running any day now (just bought a battery and memory
stick for it). As a matter of fact, I believe there's an Apple II emulator
for the PSP, so guess what's going on there first! :)

>I did find a Mac Plus complete inside one of those padded carrying
>cases, but I had no use for it.

    I constantly see 68K and early PPC Macintoshes in the trash here.
I've completely lost track. Years ago I would have grabbed them up,
but these days I'm trying to limit my vintage computer collecting to a
bare minimum.

>I get the feeling less electronic stuff is being tossed out, people
>now feeling they should take it to an electronic recycling centre.
>WHen they do the toxic pickup around where I live, they also take
>in "electronic waste" and that seems to be quite popular.  What I fear
>is that there is "good stuff" being tossed out and the recyclers
>won't know, since they are looking for things useful now, rather than
>collectible things.

    I get the feeling that is the case. I spotted an Amiga 2000 and a
TRS-80 Model I (manufactured around 1978) at a recycling center 
in Laval a year ago, when I was dropping off things. They were 
disassembled and looked pretty banged up, too bad you can't go 
picking through their stuff.

    I'm worried that a lot of vintage computers and electronics that
end up at thrift shops also suffer the same fate. They either end
up throwing them up, or sending them off for recycling figuring 
their too old to have any value.

    Back on the subject of my Apple II Plus, are those gold colored
powersupplies easy to repair? In the past I would just find a new
powersupply, but spare parts for the Apple II are getting difficult to
come across these days. I'll have to open it up and have a look
when I get a chance.

Mitchell Spector