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

[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.

[save2600]

Ah, well nothing Amiga-related, but:
my 'favorite' is a FM/Cassette/turntable console with a built-in cheesy light show... (can you say '1970's' lol)

LOL!  I was at Marc's place a couple of weeks ago and saw that beauty. Funny thing is... I had the same exact model when I was young!! lmao  

Marc... forgot to ask: do both sides of the lighting work? Pretty neat lightshow. There's supposed to be different colored bulbs in case yours does not. That little stereo did sound good and I even upgraded mine with better speakers back in the day. Sadly, I remember somehow the lighting grate got broken on mine and who knows where it's at today  

I'd like to get an Atari Video Music machine someday if anyone happens to have one they'd be willing to part with..

[stefcep2]

Boxed A500, with manuals, OS, composite box, I meg ram expansion, the A500 itself is in MINT condition, the box got rained on.

[Cammy]

An old shoe. A pair of sh1tted pants.

Did you keep them?

[pwermonger]

I didnt find it directly, but a fiend who works where a basketball team has its practises found an Amiga 4000, the Video Toaster 4000 version, in the garbage and grabbed it knowing I was into Amigas. I got it home and opened it up. Video Toaster and the A/B Roll system were installed. Two hard drives. an 030 Amiga. The power supply fan had failed and the machine overheated so they threw it out. Only damage was the power connectors on the hard drives were ruined. I held them on the drives with my finger while I copied all the data to a new drive, fixed the fan, and it's been fine ever since.
 
I know it was the basketball teams because there were images of them practising saved on the drive from the framestore.

[Rebel-CD32]

Ah, my favourite time of the year, throw all your old junk in a pile outside and a big truck will pick it up. I've always taken advantage of these cleanups, and scored some pretty good stuff over the years. Never got an Amiga though, unfortunately. I've found:

A working Commodore 128D without keyboard (plays games fine)
A working Compaq iPaq (with a busted VGA connector though)
A Scart-S-Video/AV adapter, a couple of days after I just paid $15 for the exact same thing
8MB Apple RAM SIMM which works in my A1200 RAM card and accelerator
The base/wheels for an office chair to replace the broken base on my own chair
A working 51cm TV for the spare room
Some extra weights for my girlfriend so she can stay fit
A large plastic hemp plant, perfect for a prop in a short film (one of my hobbies is video)
Plenty of game cartridges for Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Sega Master System, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64
Assorted game controllers, including a perfect condition CD32 pad!?!
A box of clothes for my girlfriend to wear
A lamp on a pole that blew the fuse in my house when I switched it on
A DVD remote for a PS2 Slim, which my little cousin needed and uses now
A box of ancient slides of Egypt, the pyramids and the Sphinx
A few sets of stickers from Guitar Hero boxes to put on my own guitar controllers
Some exercise equipment for my sister, they look more like rides but she reckons she feels the burn

I've found a bunch more over the years that I just can't pick off the top of my head. I've been pretty successful dumpster diving too, bringing home heaps of brand new stuff like solar powered garden lights, CD players, camping equipment, toys, ocky straps, stereo systems and other working stuff that didn't need to be thrown away in the dumpster. I believe in recycling, and I can't stand seeing all this stuff sent to the landfill when it could be used!

[dreamcast270mhz]

No amigas, but an apple 2 gs system floppy, os/2 1.2 and win3.0, mac floppy, brand new bike

[amigadave]

Did you keep them?

Cammy, you make me :roflmao:


Edit: not on the side of the street, but just today I and a couple of friends helped gdanko clean out his garage and scored big time.  Thanks again Gary for all the great gear.  I will try to make sure it all finds a good home (if it ever leaves mine).

[Colani1200]

SGI Indigo 2.

[Astral]

Update: About two weeks ago I was driving past a roadside cleanup and the unmistakeable blocky shape of a Commodore monitor caught my eye - I was thinking 1081. I was late for work so later on went back. As I was approaching I couldn't see the pile anymore and I was thinking all kinds of "expletives deleted"

But, chucked a "U-e" and saw it still sitting there. Someone had taken the cord (for scrap copper I'd say) and it was actually a 1084, not a 1081. But, next to it, was sitting a dusty A500. Bare, no power supply or anything. I picked it all up (do I really need to tell you that? ).

Cleaned the A500 and it's quite a clean unit. Tested it and surprise, it works fine! Happy with that little find! Still looking for an A4000 ;-)

[yoodoo]

The wife.

[Ral-Clan]

- a VIC-20
- a TRS-80 CoCo2
- a Vectrex
- about a dozen PCs of various configurations
- a non working Commodore 1702 monitor (didn't keep it after trying to repair it).
- an Amiga 500 in the box that someone was going to throw out (but wasn't quite in the dumpster).

In general I really like these new e-waste recycling programs.  They get rid of the piles of old PCs that no-one wants anyway.  However, they really suck for people who collect old retro-computers (like Commodores).  In the pre-e-waste days, people might have actually donated them to Goodwill or tried to sell them at a garage sale - where it might have ended up in the hands of a responsible collector/restorer.

Now, they just haul down that vintage Amiga or PET computer to the e-waste and gladly hand it over along with the four year old PC to be mascerated and salvaged for the gold, etc.

[JimS]

What galls me is that people can get so paranoid about security that they remove the hard drives, when it's easy enough to do a wipe. Couple weeks ago, I bought a 2.1gHz Athlon XP system at a garage sale for 5 bucks... but no HD. It's getting harder to find PATA drives these days, at least the cheap ones.
Couple winters ago, I found a dead P4 at the side of the road... that goof thought that cutting the power leads to the HD was good enough. ;-) Pulled it out & got an 80GB drive with all his data on it. (Which I wiped before reading) Now it's filled with music in my sister's computer.

[gertsy]

Nothing Amiga. Once found a portable stereo radio/cd player in amoungst a bunch of crud which included a box of various sex toys.  Obviously a rental property.

No I didn't touch them.  But the cd player still works today after I fixed the door spring.

Gertsy.

[whabang]

A Commodore Plus/4.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Mostly roadkill. Some wood with rusty nails in it and a bazillion CRT tv's.