The Fourth E-Waste Haul

Well hello! I can't believe it's been nearly a month... I do apologize for that. When they said this was peak season at the new job, they weren't lying... Between that and scrambling to get the house in order for the holidays (sooo many projects), there hasn't been much time for relaxing activities. Also haven't been in the greatest of spirits here lately, though luckily I'm just about over that.

However, the need to go pick up the latest e-waste haul presented itself rather urgently. While I would have preferred to wait until after the holiday season, the recycler was out of space and needed it gone. Even worse: It turns out that my go-to rental cargo vans are unavailable throughout the entire southeastern US. This apparently happens due to package carriers needing extra capacity this time of year. These vans become unobtanium from October to early January... So I was stuck with renting a trailer, and a truck to pull it... This somehow worked out to being less expensive than a single box truck, presumably due to them also having constrained supply right now. I ended up getting a 2024 Ram 2500 'Big Horn' diesel. Yes, it's actually branded 'Big Horn'... Nothing short of a marketing master-stroke. This is the minimum truck size which Enterprise will allow towing with. Now, picture this butch-mode bro dozer diesel truck towing a dinky little 5x8ft U-Haul trailer. That's my current situation LOL. It's also my first time towing literally anything. The angle of the thing seems wrong to me. U-Haul people said it's fine, so what do I know? It's loaded now so switching to a drop hitch would be a major pain. Well, I managed to survive the 20-minute drive back to the hotel. Not much trailer swaying going on. Now I only have the 7-hour drive home remaining!

That's enough of the saga, let's talk about the gems in this haul! See that tower with the 3-digit display up top? That's right, it's the very same model made famous by LGR's woodgrain 486. It's also the same model which my dad and I owned back in the '90s. We did so much with that case. Its final configuration was an AMD K6/2 500MHz. I have no idea whatever happened to it in the intervening years. My stupid teenaged self probably turned it into some kind of modern art. If only we knew... I've been hoping to come across another one, and it finally happened... I had to stop myself from yelling upon seeing it. It's exactly the same, down to every last feature! Funny that I remember it being much bigger. Must have been due to me being a smaller human at the time... Needless to say, this one is NOT riding in the trailer! It's interesting that it's badged as a Pionex. They were a small systems builder. I did a video on one of their systems a while back and the brand was recognized by commenters (to my surprise). I guess they were using generic, off-the-shelf cases.

There's also a Leading Edge WinPro 486! Seems to be in decent shape. Not sure if these have Varta batteries, but let's hope not. There's just something about Leading Edge systems that I like. This also goes back to childhood for me. We trash-picked a beige Leading Edge 386sx notebook which I would tinker with, as I was obsessed with anything even remotely resembling a laptop at that age. I can't remember the exact model, but I do recall the battery constituted the entire top-left corner of the notebook. This one is also riding in the truck cab. Curious to see what's on those disks.

There are also quite a few beige Macs in this haul, I think either 4 or 5. Way more than usual. I'd better get cracking on that Mike-Mac compatibility... There's a Macintosh LC which at first glance does not appear to have suffered a death from exploding PRAM battery. I didn't look for more than a few seconds, but it seemed ok. It is also riding in the truck cab.

Got two CRT monitors also. Nothing particularly interesting, and they're pretty beat up. They were free though! Maybe we'll finally get a CRT repair. I've been seriously craving some high-voltage analog work.

There's a lot more here, 52 systems in total. This is also the first haul which is going directly to external storage, because the garage is full! Yup, I finally gave in and rented a storage unit. Long overdue, but worth it. Now all I need is to work on a better way to sell or give these things away when they're done. Maybe this will be the year I finally accomplish that.

I have already started shooting the next video, though didn't get far. Working on the HP Vectra tower. Quite a fascinating system so far, and it does have a hard drive. Though I haven't gotten to the testing part yet.

Thank you all so much for your continued support of this insanity!