After spending this morning down the carboot sale I went down to the local dump. More and more things turn up there of a nerdy nature, which is great for me being a technological womble. I found a Apple IIc, with two disk drives. It still works as well, which makes it pretty tough surviving 20 years of work! I’m going to mess around with it and see what I can do!
My main piece of photography software I use is F-Spot. It organizes and keeps my files in tact. It has basic support to upload to Flickr, but not as good as Postr (Flickr Uploader). So, I’ve written my own plugin for F-Spot which sends files to Postr! Less work, and does the job better than F-Spot! The source code is in a zip attached to this post. Download it via here!
An Apple II and a C# Plugin. Oh the fun I’ve had!
Just came back from the dump. I’ve not found much done there, just a server, laptop, ZX81, blah blah blah.
So I was searching in a box of old software, and came across a boxed copy of Red Hat Linux 7.2! Just what I need to run on that laptop. It has GNOME 1.4, Xfree86 and RPM. It even came with the original stickers. 
Grand Total: £2
More photos on my Flickr.
Today is a holy day for all scavengers! Its Easter Monday. On this day, people go into there lofts and cupboards and find on rubbish. They take it down to the local dump and leave it there. Forgetting all about it. Then, along come scavengers and buy it from the dump. One mans rubbish is another mans jewel.
So I headed down to the local dump to see what things people had thrown out. As I stepped out the car I found something really nice. A ZX 81. A computer from the 1980’s. Ok, so it won’t run Vista, but it will sure as hell be a nice thing to look at and take apart. It just makes me happy to find something small like that.
So my dad was dropping off some stones, he came back and said “Did you see that laptop?”. No! “Oh, its over here.”. He walked me over and there was a laptop. It was even turned on, smiling with Windows ME. I checked it over. A HP OmniBook XE3. It’s battery worked, It’s keyboard worked, even its Mic Port works. I grabbed it and went to pay.
Grand total for both of them? £9.50! Thats all. Its amazing what some people throw out. 
Ok, so yesterday I went down to my local dump with my dad to get rid of garderning waste. Its an ok sized dump, with mutiple sections. I look in the electronics section and its full of old TVs and Radios (just like Currys!) I see a small green box, with a bag next to it. In the box is a black CD player. It turns out to be Sega Megadrive. In the box there is also the Mega CD attachment, 8 games, 2 controllers, 1 Joystiq and all the powerleads. In the bag there is a second Megadrive. Excitedly I take it home, grab a few wetwipes, and clean it all up. All works ok, nice find.
So what to do now. I have decided to sell it. So I placed an add in the local paper and hopefully I’ll get £25 - 30 towards the fund.
[Update] It turns out the CD is Mega CD 1.0. The origanel BIOS, cool!
Every Sunday in Winchester, there is a small carboot sale. People come, sell and buy. Now, this would be the first time i have gone down this year, and often i find nothing. I once found a copy of Mario Kart 64, and a computer monitor (when it was needed). So i was just looking around, and all of a sunden, something catchs my eye. It was small, and had a keyboard. Low and beholed, it was a ZX Spectrum from Sinclair!
In the 80’s, this was the iMac. It was lightwieght, cheap, fast reliable and populer. It was sort of like an iPod. It has a basic BIOS that allows you to load stuff, and was also programable, via BASIC. Games where its main source of fun. They had classics like Manic Miner, Saber Wulf and Jet Pac (the 2nd and 3rd where made by RARE) These where addictive. Just plug it in, and run. And what was the media format that data was stored on? Tape. Audio tape. So cheap that games where even sold at Boots!
So I buy it, £9, and I think that all i am getting is the system. Wrong, i got the system, power surply, manuels, three games and “How To Program Your Spectrum”. What a buy! It was a bit mucky, but i cleaned it up, gave it a plug, and now, it works!. What to do now. Keep it, take it apart or perhaps sell it?
Want better pictures? See my Flickr
