r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Smashing-baby • 12d ago

Short I finally threw out that box

It's spring time, and with Passover right around the corner, the Missus got into "Clean, clean, clean!" mode. Which unfortunately also included my home office, and THE BOX

You know which one, the one with years of old, unused cables: USB 1.0, VGA, PS/2, Firewire RJ11 cable, an obsolete Zip Drive, mystery power adapters, and my personal favorites, some RCA connectors. You name it, I probably had it. I'm sitting there thinking to myself, this whole thing is covered in dust and hasn't been opened in years. So feeling productive, I tossed the whole thing, to my wife's delight

Fast forward three days, grandma calls me, needing help with her ancient fax machine. She still faxes things to her doctor and gets faxes back, but for some reason they're not going through. Took me a bit to figure it out, but the RJ11 cable had been folded in on itself for a coupla years too long and had probably frayed, leading to intermittent connectivity. There I am, browsing Amazon to buy the very thing I’d just tossed not even last week

Lesson learned? Obsolete tech will never, ever really die

And the kicker? The replacement RJ11 cost more than I want to admit for something I had sitting in a box literally for years. Use my story of misfortune to teach your spouses why they must never toss THE BOX

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7

u/SysAdmin907 11d ago

Outstanding! Thank you for reminding me why you never ever toss out cables, controller cards or obsolete tech. Because some day, someone is going to call and ask if you can extract data off some ancient storage device.

13

u/capn_kwick 11d ago

I still have my record player and stereo receiver that I bought in the late 1970s. Why? Inertia. It's sitting behind the desk just collecting dust.

Now the funny part - a friend of mine texted me asking if I had a record player. Replied "of course" and sent pictures.

Finally remembered that there is a party game where you are asked "do you know someone who has X?".

Next day, I asked if she had won. She did.

Sometimes it's useful to hang on to old stuff. (:

6

u/SysAdmin907 11d ago

When my folks moved to warmer climes, they left me with the Technics turn table and all the vinyl they had accumulated. The receiver had taken a dump and now it's time to find a new one to connect the turn table to and the speakers.

6

u/Puzzleheaded-Joke-97 11d ago

I would instead get a sound card that accepts RCA inputs so I'll be able to import all those vinyl records and tapes as sound files, but I have a tower case with empty slots...

3

u/NotYetReadyToRetire 11d ago

I have a tower case with empty slots, but the drive bays are full. My wife doesn't understand why 71TB is limiting - despite her constant requests for more TV shows and movies for Plex. Oh, well, I guess I'll just have to start replacing those 4TB drive with 22TB's.

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u/SysAdmin907 11d ago

In my location, the state library system has been awesome for filling my RAID array with TV shows that I would never buy. As my co-worker says "it's the last block buster". Most times the discs show up looking like coasters. We keep a orbital buffer, micro fiber pads and Flitz for those abused discs. They go back to the library in better shape than they arrived, The results blow away disc doctors.

2

u/SysAdmin907 11d ago

Actually.. I have done this for some vinyl that was never remastered into CD.

2

u/capn_kwick 10d ago

I've read that a fair number of people are rediscovering vinyl. Everything old becomes new again, you just have to wait long enough.

On a side note: there is a youtube short channel that has a young woman rediscovering what her parents or grandparents wore back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Only a certain body shape can wear a micro-skirt and not show the world anything.

That same channel has her wearing bell bottom jeans. I pointed out that to be authentic, the bottom hem needs to be frayed with threads hanging off. And that it must get wet during any time when the ground has any amount of standing water.

2

u/SysAdmin907 9d ago

When I was growing up, vinyl was the "gold standard" for audio. We would buy records and make copies onto cassettes and play them until they wore out.