One major black hole for time came in the form of a huge haul of computer hardware from a friend's workplace. The business he works for was moving premises and a whole bunch of outdated but still great gear was on offer.
Of course, being a scavenger at heart, I couldn't resist! I ended up with a huge pile of Lenovo desktops, a couple Lenovo laptops and shit load of cables, PCI cards and odd accessories. Pretty soon I was asking myself "why did I say yes to this?"
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| Big mess! |
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| A boot load of PC cases en route to the recycle center |
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| VGA cables for the next 10 years |
I gutted the generic PCs and dumped the cases. They were all pretty battered and were also ugly to start with. The nice thing about Clifton Hill was the electronics recycling center just down the road. In my early SCART hunting days I had to pay $25 a pop to dump stuff! Crazy! If I'd known there was free option I would have driven across town from Brighton to make the drop. The cost of getting rid of a CRT was always a deterrent from grabbing that next unit. I really have to find a recycle center here in Berlin if I want to make the most of my new SCART hunting ground...
In the end, I guess mission paid off in the form of a couple fully working laptops and, most importantly, a bunch of quad core, small form factor machines for MAME use. The ThinkCenters are a neat size for installing inside an arcade cab or sitting under a TV (just like a old VCR or game console).
It'll be a while before I get home to all the cool stuff that I scored... but it's nice to know that when I get back from Germany there's a sweet retrogaming rig awaiting me.
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