Squeal!
I just received an eBay shipment that had seemed to be lost (over three weeks in postal limbo), and it was full of very fabulous goodies that would have been very difficult to find on their own. The few things that aren't all that shiny to me will probably pay for the rest of the stuff, so I'm chuffed.
The exciting pieces are a 512KB memory expansion for the Commodore 64 or 128 (which, besides being rare, is incredibly freaking useful to boot, and no way in hell I am selling it), a Commodore printer interface with graphics translator, three Commodore modems, two working Commodore tape units, a Commodore mouse, and an RS-232 adapter for the VIC-20. I realize I'm babbling -- the bottom line is that this stuff goes a long way toward making my C128 into a sweet development system for game programming. If I can find a 1571 or 1581 disk drive out there for a reasonable price, I'll be in total 8-bit dork bliss.
I've been selling stuff on eBay for just about a month now, and I think it's gone pretty well. The guilt issues are resolving themselves to the point that I only occasionally need reassurance from my sweetie that it's not evil to sell things to people when they're deciding exactly how much they're willing to pay for things that they can't possibly need. (The positive feedback ratings have kinda helped that along.)
It was actually kind of startling to realize that selling off the extra stuff has made the electronics-and-old-computer hobby free, and I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around that concept. I'm basically getting paid to rummage through boxes of old computer parts and electronics components, which is what I really enjoy doing anyway... does the universe really allow that?
I guess the lesson is that some of the thirty jigglebytes of obsolete-stuff trivia in my head actually does serve some practical purpose after all: knowing what junk is useful and interesting (and why) and what junk is really just junk that may as well stay in that rummage bin. Most of the really good deals I've gotten on eBay were cases where the person selling the stuff didn't really have any idea what it was, other than that it took up space and used electricity. I'm just not very used to knowing shit actually having a payoff.
Anyway, the current project is getting two development environments: one for the C-64, for game programming; and one for the old 68000-based Mac, for OS development (thanks to d_c_m, whose generous uber-coolness is legendary). And to that I now return, having geekily babbled for quite long enough...
The exciting pieces are a 512KB memory expansion for the Commodore 64 or 128 (which, besides being rare, is incredibly freaking useful to boot, and no way in hell I am selling it), a Commodore printer interface with graphics translator, three Commodore modems, two working Commodore tape units, a Commodore mouse, and an RS-232 adapter for the VIC-20. I realize I'm babbling -- the bottom line is that this stuff goes a long way toward making my C128 into a sweet development system for game programming. If I can find a 1571 or 1581 disk drive out there for a reasonable price, I'll be in total 8-bit dork bliss.
I've been selling stuff on eBay for just about a month now, and I think it's gone pretty well. The guilt issues are resolving themselves to the point that I only occasionally need reassurance from my sweetie that it's not evil to sell things to people when they're deciding exactly how much they're willing to pay for things that they can't possibly need. (The positive feedback ratings have kinda helped that along.)
It was actually kind of startling to realize that selling off the extra stuff has made the electronics-and-old-computer hobby free, and I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around that concept. I'm basically getting paid to rummage through boxes of old computer parts and electronics components, which is what I really enjoy doing anyway... does the universe really allow that?
I guess the lesson is that some of the thirty jigglebytes of obsolete-stuff trivia in my head actually does serve some practical purpose after all: knowing what junk is useful and interesting (and why) and what junk is really just junk that may as well stay in that rummage bin. Most of the really good deals I've gotten on eBay were cases where the person selling the stuff didn't really have any idea what it was, other than that it took up space and used electricity. I'm just not very used to knowing shit actually having a payoff.
Anyway, the current project is getting two development environments: one for the C-64, for game programming; and one for the old 68000-based Mac, for OS development (thanks to d_c_m, whose generous uber-coolness is legendary). And to that I now return, having geekily babbled for quite long enough...