What have you found on the "side of the road"?

[Astral]

Here in Australia we have roadside cleanups where you place "rubbish" out the front of your house, and it is removed for you free of charge. It's amazing what you find in these piles sometimes! I for one love having a squizz and seeing what gems people are getting rid of! Call me a scab, that's ok

Amongst recent finds, things that I have kept have been - an 80mb SCSI drive from a MacLCII (now in my A1000 Phoenix), an external SCSI drive, 2 x 80gig hard drives, a 40gig hard drive, DVD drives, RAM sticks and so on. Notably, because it is Amiga related , I also found 4 floppy drives recently, and testing them with my A1200 revealed three were just standard PC drives, but the fourth was a direct Amiga compatible drive, an FB354! That is now amongst my spares

So, I ask, what Amiga gems have others found "in the rubbish"?

[mikeymike]

If it doesn't necessarily have to be Amiga-related, here are my finds:

* Star Wars trilogy VHS (bear in mind this was about 1998) - the odd thing was, I was borrowing someone else's copy at the time, and so I very quickly checked that the borrowed copy was still where it should be!
* £40 (two 20UKP notes, that was only about a month ago actually)

[dougal]

I once found 2 A500's next to a skip. 1 of them was broken including the case but had a good floppy drive and the other worked perfectly after a good cleaning. Even the 512Mb expansions in both of them still worked

I also found a 486DX40 last week. The battery leaked and so the keyboard port no longer worked, but it had a good floppy drive and a quantum bigfoot 1gb hd and a 200 watt AT psu (perfect for my a4000T)

[Tension]

* £40 (two 20UKP notes, that was only about a month ago actually)

I wondered what i'd done with those!!

[golem]

An old shoe. A pair of sh1tted pants.

[JimS]

I can't say I ever found anything directly Amiga related on trash day.... But I did find a PIII machine that's still my main pc. Found a dead P4 that yielded up an 80GB HD and some RAM. While garage saleing this summer, just randomly following signs, I found a guy with a couple of baker's racks on the lawn and a sign "Free Stuff". Got a nice HP scanner with document feeder, and a wireless G router.
The city used to have an e-waste dropoff at the recycling center... they closed it I think because too many people were scavenging it and taking all the good stuff first. ;-) I know I got a Pentium laptop down there.

[trilobyte]

I found an Amiga 1000 (working) and 1080 monitor (in box!) in a neighbor's garbage once...!

[save2600]

Wish I could find Amiga stuff on the side of the road! But I can't complain as this year netted me a real nice vintage 19" Quasar tele with remote control, a 13" in brand new shape and an Atwater Kent floor standing radio from the 20's in excellent shape. Quite a few years back, someone had their vintage IBM PC with keyboard (you know, the ones built like a tank that "click") laying on the ground, next to their garbage. A friend and I happened to be walking about town, went to grab a bite to eat so snagged this for the walk home. Needless to say, that old computer stuff is HEAVY!  lol

[Colani1200]

Over the years, I found:

- 3x Commodore 64
- Several 1541
- Commodore C-16
- 2x Wico Command Control
- 128D Keyboard
- Mac LC II
- Mac Performa 5300
- All sorts of PC stuff + misc electronics, tape decks, hifi systems etc.

[Matt_H]

Found a nice 1084S that a school was throwing away - currently attached to my Toaster system

[Sandman]

Last summer I saw some Amiga stuff locally advertised.  Ended up picking up a WarpEngine 040 and X-Surf II and some other stuff for 40 bucks.  

I asked the guy if he had any other Amiga stuff and he told me he just tossed an A4000 in the back of his truck for a run to the dump....snagged that for free!  It was complete and the case was in near mint shape... lucky day!

[recidivist]

In my locale  the tash "service"furnishes ,as part of the monthly fee, oversized plastic  bins with lids  and the commercial accounts get big steel bins,some with LOCKS!
Dumpster diving is  strongly discouraged and may even lead to criminal charges!
About the only way is if someone actually places the item out curbside with a free notice or one happens to  get permission  from one's workplace(and that isn't easy ,what with "corporate ethics" policies ansd security policies that suggest anyone wanting discarded items is of questionable character and intent!)
I did get a nice stereo amp that needed only a fuse,but that was 20 years ago.
Better luck finding the odd bit at thrift store of yard sale.Once got 8 64s for 50cents each.A friend found an Amiga 1200  for $12 at Goodwill!
It is a sin and a crime against the poor how much usuable stuff goes to landfill,not just Amigas.

[recidivist]

I got the software and books for an Amiga whose owner told me she had taken the computer itself to the city recycling center weeks before"and it had a lot of cards in it,but it was OLD".
WAAAAAHHHH!

[marcfrick2112]

Ah, well nothing Amiga-related, but:

Quite a bit of stereo/hifi gear... my 'favorite' is a FM/Cassette/turntable console with a built-in cheesy light show... (can you say '1970's' lol)

I found a PC literally in the road one day, I replaced the dead CD drive with a burner, and gave it to my dad....

[mingle]

Mine isn't an Amiga item, but it was a nice find...

About 18 months ago I saw a Compaq EVO 510 SFF desktop out on the nature strip, so I dragged it home, assuming it would be a basket-case.

I was delighted to find it was fully working with a P4 2.8GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB hard disk and a Dual-layer DVD Multiburner!

I'm currently using it as my WinXP backup system and also use Ubuntu 9.04 on it...

Cheers,

Mike.