Home Page Forums MAME MAME Cleaning out storage (free stuff for emulation?)

So here's the deal, I've got a ton of vintage computer and console stuff that I amassed back in the day, and I've passed it from storage unit to storage unit for the past 15+ years. The majority of it, I haven't touched in 8-9 years easily. However, it's time for me to stop falling prey to suck cost fallacy, to clinging to projects that might be, imaginary eBay dollars, and just holding onto collections for the sake of having cared about them a lot more when I was younger, and be a lot more aggressive about getting rid of stuff I'm tired of moving around or paying to keep somewhere.

Anyway! Rather than just dump them off at goodwill or into the trash bin, I keep talking about getting them into the hands of people who will do something with them, preferably towards emulation (even if I'm not gung-ho about collecting the stuff, I've still followed MAME all this time and enjoy the efforts everyone has put into it, and would like to help). I talked about this probably a couple years ago now on MW but I've reached a point where it's get rid of it either way so here we are.

While I would prefer to put it into the hands of people I recognize as being MAME/MESS contributors, especially if it's towards a specific need, in the end any use is better than none, I'd just prefer to weed out random people who just want free goodies. If you're interested, comment or send me a PM, I'll let you know what the costs to ship it to you are and then it's all yours. I'm putting a deadline on myself that if there's been no interest within a week, it's gone, and I'm trying to get a few boxes worth of stuff each week. We'll see how this goes.

I only get a chance to get there once, maybe twice a week, sometimes not every week and am just going to pull stuff out in batches so I'll post when I do.
I glanced quickly at these earlier but if anyone is interested I can provide more info or pictures if needed.


So the first batch of stuff, let's see how this goes:

* a box of late 80s/90s-era mac software, most Apple branded, boxed, with manuals and original disks. I saw french system 7.5, Data Access Toolkit, Apple Media Tool, Hypercard, DOS Companion, and SNAps 3270, but I also saw 3rd party stuff like SoftPC and SoftWindows disks as well as Ofoto, Omnis 3 and MacFortran. Probably ~15-20 packages total.
Darkstar has first dibs on this, if not it's free game.

* Apple II Science Toolkit (3-4 boxes). as seen here https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/1231827
I think RB wanted these and I couldn't find them when I gave him a bunch of other stuff, but if not, whoever wants it.

* Asante Ethernet NICs (probably nubus but they were boxed)

* 2 DataFrame 20 external hard drives. They are a strange beast with a weird controller and that was the only reason I hung onto them this long. They both worked, spun up, and mounted in 2004. But condition is unknown and I don't have anything to hook them up to.

* AppleWorks II (Claris branded, boxed, with manuals). I own both II and IIgs versions, I'm not sure which this one is (or where the other one is atm) but I can take a look if it matters.

* And sorta unrelatedly, a big box of circa 1998-2000ish Sprint cell phones. CDMA 1G/2G, about half of them are early smartphones (2-3 are Palm-based, others are custom PDA-type OS, I know there was a NeoPoint and LG/Denso phones). The rest are just typical phones for the era by Samsung, Sony, Qualcomm, etc.
I don't think?? there's any use toward emulation but you never know, the smartphones were kind of innovative for the time, they're too old for places to take as donation and I'd rather not send them to the dump to be e-waste. I should have a sheet somewhere with all of the MSL (master lock codes) if anyone is interested in them, that increases their usefulness greatly.

There might be a few other things I'm forgetting, I'll update later if so. Now to eat dinner.

It would be interesting to see MAME move in the direction of emulating old cellphones/smartphones (iPods too for that matter).
Hope someone takes you up on that lot.

Hey,

the DataFrame harddisks are probably interesting to Al Kossow (he might have the means to dump them). They are not MFM/RLL I guess? Google is not very helpful with finding any info on them.

I would give RB dibs on the Mac stuff, but if he doesn't want them, I'd be interested in getting and dumping them. Where were you located again? It'd be nice to get some idea of the shipping costs first before making a final decision

That's a very good point, I can't seem to edit it back into my post, but shipping would be from 23220, VA, USA

Mac *software* I'd just as soon Darkstar gets it since he's better set up to dump it in terms of Kryoflux and whatnot.

I'll take the Apple II Science Toolkit.

Asante NuBus and LC PDS NICs are emulated in working condition and thus not interesting. I recently recycled half a dozen of these from the big pile Sharkpuncher originally dropped off at my house. Other PDS connectors or PCI for Mac or SCSI/Ethernet I might bite on.

The DataFrame drives are for Mac, I assume, with an IWM type interface or something? Al Kossow / Computer History Museum is probably the best home for those.

AppleWorks II the interesting part would arguably be scanning the manuals. Mike Maginnis (@6502lane on Twitter) / apple2scans.net would probably be interested.

I would love to see someone get and dump those phones but I don't have the room.

They are MFM disks with an "OMTI SMS SCSI to MFM controller" and totally unusable on macs past, I think, system 7.x due to a required INIT/cdev combo that screamed "made for system 6 or earlier". There may have even been a desk accessory involved, to complete the beige mac software circle. I don't know that there's anything inherently special about them other than the semi-unique niche they occupied during the early days of hard drives for macs (it seemed like every other hard drive had something bizarre about it, whether it was plugging into the floppy port or requiring a song and dance with software and disks to get it to become available to the computer), but I also thought they might shed some light on something somewhere else in another driver.

I'll take some pictures of the software this weekend, it's less cold and I don't mind lugging it up to the house.

I'll set them aside, and see if I have any other cards laying around, I feel like I came across some the other day apart from all this.
Hopefully let you know this weekend.

Any interest in G4/G5 era stuff? like G4 Radeon 9700 Pro (AGP) or a G5 Radeon 9600...The 9700 was the overpriced BTO option for the last MDD, the 9600 was pretty much standard on the first G5s. I feel like I came across them the other day. I don't have a ton of modern PCI/AGP cards (not that circa 2003-2005 is modern, but MORE modern lol) but I've saved a few here and there, wasn't sure if any of that helped in the grand scheme of GPU emulation.

Alright that was an overly long pause, but I had a lot of stuff come up including an abrupt layoff an entire department at work (including my boss) and things were a pretty weird for a while, honestly I'm not sure that they're done being odd...but I'm a little less busy for the moment AND I had to consolidate storage units over the past few weeks so I have a slightly better handle on the stuff I have, and a larger desire to get rid of it with a sunburn and aching back to remind me.

Just bumping this for now, I'll post more in it in a few days since I have to go out of town, but I haven't forgotten. I'll try and post stuff up in batches, with pictures, as time allows, as I mentioned before.

If there's stuff that no one wants except certain chips, etc....that's fine. I might be able to dump stuff myself (since I have a topmax), but I'm not sure on the timeframe of that and also just ready to get most of it out of here, it's heavy, dusty, and I've decided to stop embracing the sunk cost fallacy when it comes to stuff I haven't touched in decades.

I'm bumping this AGAIN, my life went to hell not long after my last post and I eventually spent ~6mo unemployed but things are back on a routine with a new job, and I'm not, you know, broke and depressed and all that.

So I'll reread back over all of this because I forgot about everything in here since it was over a year ago, but I thought of you guys when I had to clear out a bunch of stuff last month. And then try to resume my "plan" I laid out last time, re: old stuff

RB et al,

Here are (some) of the CDs I mentioned in the shoutbox the other day, some APDA, some Service-related (software restore libraries, etc) and then some random other bits.

OpenDoc Release 4
OpenDoc Release 5 w/ Cyberdog (2CD)
OpenDoc Revised 6 Sept 1996
MacOS Developer Macintosh Technology Seed Oct 96
MacOS Developer Macintosh Technology Seed Nov 96
ARPLE March 96 Provider Edition
ARPLE April 96 Provider Edition
ARPLE June 96 Provider Edition
Developer System Software July 1996
Developer System Software October 1996
Developer Mac OS SDK October 1996 (2CD)
Developer Tool Chest November 1996
Developer Reference Library December 1996
Developer Special Edition December 1996 • System Software
Apple Guide Authoring Kit
QuickTime 1.0 for Developers
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 1, May 1995
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 2, November 1995
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 3, May 1995
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 4, November 1995
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 4, August 1996
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 5, March 1997 (x2)
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 6, March 1997 (x2)
Apple Restoration CD System Software Disk 6 rev 1.1, June 1997
Service Source Companion February 1997 (TechInfo Library, Information Alley, ASU, etc)
Service Source Companion April 1997 "
Apple ASP May 97 (CDR) \
Apple ASL July 95 (CDR) / --these two were part of some enterprise support program and have almost every Apple product (from OS to things like various apple drivers and retail products like SNA*ps, MacX and PowerTalk) available at the time, for reinstall, but they were burned in System 7.x era as either "Mac volume" or ISO9660 with mac extensions (don't recall, but something that deprecated fairly quickly), and have had issues being read on anything post OS 8.x, -files with resource forks (or maybe it's both a resource and a data fork) kick either an i/o error or unexpected EOF most of the time. It will read properly on an old machine/OS however. Unfortunately, I got rid of all my beige macs years and years ago.

Apple Internet Server Solutions Intranet Companion (not sure what this is, it looks cheesy AF and still shrinkwrapped)
A/UX 1.1.1
Macintosh Application Environment (Solaris) 2.0

I should, in theory, have another box of retail discs of Apple SW, CD and 3.5", maybe some dev stuff on 3.5"....not sure where those are, though.

Oh and randomly, a HP 9000 series 700, HP-UX Release 9.03 CD circa January 1994. Not Apple but I hung onto it because...Unix, I guess. I think I have a for more *ix flavors around in various places.

I don't have tons of time so I'm hoping to just hand these off to someone reliable as opposed to imaging them, but I could in theory image them...eventually. Really, I just want to clear some junk out once and for all, lol.