I'm hopeless at throwing things away.
In silicon, my oldest is a Radio Shack Pocket Computer 1. I don't even think of it as old.
Going back before that is a rather extensive 8 track collection of tapes and a few players.
I've developed some expertise at fixing them and like the contrarian atmosphere in which I've got a viable working tech that everybody else considers not only obsolete, but ill conceived in the first place.
Then there is the Radiac set (geiger counter) that used to belong to the US Navy during the early cold war 'duck and cover' period. It now contains (as far as I remember) seventy two 9 volt batteries to make up the couple hundred volts needed to run vacuum tube innards. I had to build them up because the dry-cells originally called for haven't been in production for decades.
But my prize possessions are the prototype read/write heads from the very first digital magnetic storage devices: ca 1948. Part of projects to supply the NSA (before it was the NSA) with their very first digital computer, the ERA 1101.
In silicon, my oldest is a Radio Shack Pocket Computer 1. I don't even think of it as old.
Going back before that is a rather extensive 8 track collection of tapes and a few players.
I've developed some expertise at fixing them and like the contrarian atmosphere in which I've got a viable working tech that everybody else considers not only obsolete, but ill conceived in the first place.
Then there is the Radiac set (geiger counter) that used to belong to the US Navy during the early cold war 'duck and cover' period. It now contains (as far as I remember) seventy two 9 volt batteries to make up the couple hundred volts needed to run vacuum tube innards. I had to build them up because the dry-cells originally called for haven't been in production for decades.
But my prize possessions are the prototype read/write heads from the very first digital magnetic storage devices: ca 1948. Part of projects to supply the NSA (before it was the NSA) with their very first digital computer, the ERA 1101.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? 
