Massive Vintage Apple Haul in Idaho
- Thread starter PotatoFi
- Start date
Hey everyone, quick update! I'm still here, and still have the collection. Summer has just proven to be extremely busy with a job change, a couple business trips, a sibling's wedding, and a robotics competition with my daughter (side note: she's learning C at 11 years old!). At this point, 90 percent of the batteries are out, most of the machines are catalogued and tested. I have a few machines to catalog, as well as all of the accessories (like parts, mice, keyboards, and cables).
As soon as I am done with the cataloguing, I'll post a list and open things up to anyone who can do local pickup. Shortly after that, I'll open it up for shipping. Stay tuned, and thank you very much for your patience!
Side note: The PowerBook 540 is fixed! It was the barrel connector.
As soon as I am done with the cataloguing, I'll post a list and open things up to anyone who can do local pickup. Shortly after that, I'll open it up for shipping. Stay tuned, and thank you very much for your patience!
Side note: The PowerBook 540 is fixed! It was the barrel connector.
Oh, hi! I'm finally back with another update. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to get out to the garage every day to do a bit more organizing, testing, and cataloging. "The pile" (as we've come to call it) is more compact than it used to be, thanks to some cleaning and organization. The fisheye lens also makes it look a lot smaller than it really is - it still consumes the entire 3rd bay of the garage!
One of the major tasks I got done was organizing and cataloguing the keyboards. Some of the Apple Design Keyboard feet had turned into black goo that ran all over some of the other keyboards, and the only way to fix that was with Isopropyl Alcohol and lots of careful cleaning! But the mess is all cleaned up now, the keyboards are sorted, and they're all stacked up together. Here are all of the Apple Keyboard II's and Apple Design Keyboards, but there are a few USB keyboards, a handful of Apple Extended Keyboards and AEKII's, and a few others like the Apple ADB Keyboard (I'm keeping one of those!).
Today, I counted up the mice! There are 30 round ADB mice, and just a couple of square "wedge" ADB mice. I was hoping for more wedges, but oh well!
There are also a few serial mice (including one classic Microsoft mouse that I'm going to keep), a handful of PS/2 mice, and even an interesting pair of matching ADB and USB mice. They clearly have the same enclosure.
I've also found some Mac II-era and ISA cards! I don't think there is anything super special here, but it's still neat.
Finally, I found this neat ADB Gravis Gamepad. Pretty cool!
Now, if you're wondering if I have a list of everything, the answer is yes, and I am going to share it now! First, a few points:
1. You'll notice that some of the items on the list have been claimed or delivered. These are either close friends who encouraged me to go through with this haul (including sending money to seal the deal), or people who live nearby and could do local pickup. I hope this isn't disappointing - they're trying to not be greedy!
2. The list is very far from complete. Large items like computers, displays, printers, and keyboards are all listed. There are still a bunch of smaller items (like cards, hard drive brackets, and other bits and bobs) that I haven't catalogued yet. This will be an ongoing project for the better part of the year.
3. For non-local buyers, I am NOT ready to accept requests for items! I simply don't have the packing materials for most of these items yet, so once again, please refrain from asking for items. The opportunity to do this will come very soon.
4. For buyers who can pick up, I am accepting requests! Please send me a DM with the item ID(s) that you are interested in. This will be on a strict first come, first serve basis. I am located in the Boise, Idaho metropolitan area.
5. I haven't figured out a pricing model yet. Keep in mind that I'd like to make my money back, but want to keep this super affordable. On the other hand, I need to purchase at least $500 worth of shipping supplies - probably $750 or more will be required for the larger items and machines. Roughly, I think I'm going to price the hard-to-ship items as extremely cheap, and the easy-to-ship items a bit more depending on their value. I absolutely will not be charging eBay pricing though, I want you to walk away from this feeling like you got a great deal!
Once again, I am NOT ready to accept requests for non-pickup buyers! Please refrain from making non-pickup requests at this time, but keep a very close eye on this thread for announcements about shipping availability. And now, without further ado, here is the complete list:
Idaho Vintage Apple Inventory
What I would love to hear: discussion about what you think, what you think of my pricing model suggestion, suggestions about where to get lots of packing materials, and anything else related to The Pile!
One of the major tasks I got done was organizing and cataloguing the keyboards. Some of the Apple Design Keyboard feet had turned into black goo that ran all over some of the other keyboards, and the only way to fix that was with Isopropyl Alcohol and lots of careful cleaning! But the mess is all cleaned up now, the keyboards are sorted, and they're all stacked up together. Here are all of the Apple Keyboard II's and Apple Design Keyboards, but there are a few USB keyboards, a handful of Apple Extended Keyboards and AEKII's, and a few others like the Apple ADB Keyboard (I'm keeping one of those!).
Today, I counted up the mice! There are 30 round ADB mice, and just a couple of square "wedge" ADB mice. I was hoping for more wedges, but oh well!
There are also a few serial mice (including one classic Microsoft mouse that I'm going to keep), a handful of PS/2 mice, and even an interesting pair of matching ADB and USB mice. They clearly have the same enclosure.
I've also found some Mac II-era and ISA cards! I don't think there is anything super special here, but it's still neat.
Finally, I found this neat ADB Gravis Gamepad. Pretty cool!
Now, if you're wondering if I have a list of everything, the answer is yes, and I am going to share it now! First, a few points:
1. You'll notice that some of the items on the list have been claimed or delivered. These are either close friends who encouraged me to go through with this haul (including sending money to seal the deal), or people who live nearby and could do local pickup. I hope this isn't disappointing - they're trying to not be greedy!
2. The list is very far from complete. Large items like computers, displays, printers, and keyboards are all listed. There are still a bunch of smaller items (like cards, hard drive brackets, and other bits and bobs) that I haven't catalogued yet. This will be an ongoing project for the better part of the year.
3. For non-local buyers, I am NOT ready to accept requests for items! I simply don't have the packing materials for most of these items yet, so once again, please refrain from asking for items. The opportunity to do this will come very soon.
4. For buyers who can pick up, I am accepting requests! Please send me a DM with the item ID(s) that you are interested in. This will be on a strict first come, first serve basis. I am located in the Boise, Idaho metropolitan area.
5. I haven't figured out a pricing model yet. Keep in mind that I'd like to make my money back, but want to keep this super affordable. On the other hand, I need to purchase at least $500 worth of shipping supplies - probably $750 or more will be required for the larger items and machines. Roughly, I think I'm going to price the hard-to-ship items as extremely cheap, and the easy-to-ship items a bit more depending on their value. I absolutely will not be charging eBay pricing though, I want you to walk away from this feeling like you got a great deal!
Once again, I am NOT ready to accept requests for non-pickup buyers! Please refrain from making non-pickup requests at this time, but keep a very close eye on this thread for announcements about shipping availability. And now, without further ado, here is the complete list:
Idaho Vintage Apple Inventory
What I would love to hear: discussion about what you think, what you think of my pricing model suggestion, suggestions about where to get lots of packing materials, and anything else related to The Pile!
Hey everyone! I have a solid update. In this post, we'll cover:
Keeping in mind that the goal of this is to distribute the collection, I've tried to price things at either very cheap or free. That said, there's packaging and shipping costs to consider. Because of that, bulky and hard-to-ship items are often free to make it realistic for you to get at a good total price.
The main thing that will fund the operation will be keyboards.
Shipping
I am going to attempt to ship most items with USPS. I also won't be shipping quickly, in fact, I don't have bulk shipping supplies yet, so larger items won't ship immediately. Smaller items will ship more quickly, depending on what packaging materials I have available.
For large items (especially with CRT's), I will always ship them CRT-down, tightly packed, preferably double-boxed, and with at least 4 inches of padding on all sides. Despite precautions, something will most likely get destroyed, but we will do our best.
I'm going to ask you to pay for shipping costs and materials, but I'll try to keep these as cheap as possible. International shipping will not be available at this time.
Getting Details About Items
Want to know a bit more about an item, or see photos of it? DM me, and I will post the details about the item in this thread for everyone to see.
Requesting Items
Here's how to claim an item! Please follow this process exactly to keep things running smoothly. If you don't follow the process, you probably won't get the item(s) that you want.
1. In the list spreadsheet, leave a comment in the ID Number cell, indicating that you're interested.
2. On the TinkerDifferent forum, send me a DM with your real name as the title (not your screen name). Note: Forum DM's only please! Replies to this thread or messages on other platforms will be ignored.
3. In the message, send me your address, and the ID Number(s) that you're interested in.
3. I will calculate a total price (item + shipping + shipping supplies), and send it to you. Note: You'll have 24 hours to decide before I release the hold on the items that you are interested in.
4. If you accept the price and pay via PayPal, I'll put you in the (potentially very long) queue for shipping.
5. I'll let you know when your item has shipped with a tracking number.
The List!
Note: Before requesting items, please review the process above! If you deviate from the process or make things difficult for me in general, I will probably ignore your request. Sorry to be salty about this, it's just a REALLY big project and I need everyone's help!
You can find the complete list here!
For now, all keyboards that don't have a permanently-attached ADB cable will include an ADB cable. I plan to steadily post more items, but I'll update this thread whenever I do, so just keep watching the thread.
Hard Drives
One thing that you won't yet find on the list are hard drives, hard drive brackets, and hard drive sleds. There are probably 120 or more "loose" hard drives in the pile. A bunch of them are attached to Macintosh LC-style brackets:
And a bunch more are attached to hard drive sleds:
...and that's just a few of them, there are two more crates jam-packed with drives!
I've had requests to model and 3D print both LC brackets and sleds, which makes me think that there is demand for these. The hard drives, I am unsure about, especially considering that the fantastic BlueSCSI is available for about $25! Further, shipping a small bracket and screws will be very cheap, but a heavy hard drive will add cost.
On the other hand, I know that it is best practice to check old storage media for lost or missing software that has not been archived. Collectively, we could probably do that, but I cannot take on that task. Divesting the pile is already turning out to be a huge job.
And then, there's the tricky part: I don't know what is on these drives, and I don't want to be liable for what could be on them. I don't want to be paranoid, but I also want to be smart. If you have experience with situations like this, I'd love to hear your advice about how to handle all of these hard drives.
Are they worth shipping? Should I be concerned about what is on them, and potentially and inadvertently distributing either private or illegal material? Should I be concerned about the archival of what is on them? Please discuss in this dedicated thread.
A Unicorn
As I've been digging through the pile, I've been looking for a unicorn. There have been a couple of great finds already, such as a Quadra 840AV that boots and works, and the PowerBook 540 with a greyscale display and rare RAM expansion! But there hasn't been that truly "unicorn-like" find in here that I could get super excited about until this week (although the Quadra 840AV came pretty close, once I found out what it was).
In the bottom of the red milk crate were a few hard drives with a bunch of cards on top of them. I all but dumped the cards out on the floor! There were some good ones, some NuBus Ethernet Cards and a nice IIci cache card...
But then, one card (literally underneath a couple of other cards on the floor) caught my eye. Could it be?!
NO WAY! An Apple IIe card!
This is one of those cards that I've always wanted, but resigned to never buying, because I could never spend eBay prices on one. But now, one has fallen into my lap! I hope everyone is okay with this, but I've decided to keep this one, at least for now. Maybe someday, I'll find a Color Classic to put it in.
I just couldn't keep from telling you!
- Announcement of availability of items!
- Details about requesting items
- Where to find the list
- A "unicorn" that I found in the pile!
- Some questions that I have about handling all of the hard drives
Keeping in mind that the goal of this is to distribute the collection, I've tried to price things at either very cheap or free. That said, there's packaging and shipping costs to consider. Because of that, bulky and hard-to-ship items are often free to make it realistic for you to get at a good total price.
The main thing that will fund the operation will be keyboards.
Shipping
I am going to attempt to ship most items with USPS. I also won't be shipping quickly, in fact, I don't have bulk shipping supplies yet, so larger items won't ship immediately. Smaller items will ship more quickly, depending on what packaging materials I have available.
For large items (especially with CRT's), I will always ship them CRT-down, tightly packed, preferably double-boxed, and with at least 4 inches of padding on all sides. Despite precautions, something will most likely get destroyed, but we will do our best.
I'm going to ask you to pay for shipping costs and materials, but I'll try to keep these as cheap as possible. International shipping will not be available at this time.
Getting Details About Items
Want to know a bit more about an item, or see photos of it? DM me, and I will post the details about the item in this thread for everyone to see.
Requesting Items
Here's how to claim an item! Please follow this process exactly to keep things running smoothly. If you don't follow the process, you probably won't get the item(s) that you want.
1. In the list spreadsheet, leave a comment in the ID Number cell, indicating that you're interested.
2. On the TinkerDifferent forum, send me a DM with your real name as the title (not your screen name). Note: Forum DM's only please! Replies to this thread or messages on other platforms will be ignored.
3. In the message, send me your address, and the ID Number(s) that you're interested in.
3. I will calculate a total price (item + shipping + shipping supplies), and send it to you. Note: You'll have 24 hours to decide before I release the hold on the items that you are interested in.
4. If you accept the price and pay via PayPal, I'll put you in the (potentially very long) queue for shipping.
5. I'll let you know when your item has shipped with a tracking number.
The List!
Note: Before requesting items, please review the process above! If you deviate from the process or make things difficult for me in general, I will probably ignore your request. Sorry to be salty about this, it's just a REALLY big project and I need everyone's help!
You can find the complete list here!
For now, all keyboards that don't have a permanently-attached ADB cable will include an ADB cable. I plan to steadily post more items, but I'll update this thread whenever I do, so just keep watching the thread.
Hard Drives
One thing that you won't yet find on the list are hard drives, hard drive brackets, and hard drive sleds. There are probably 120 or more "loose" hard drives in the pile. A bunch of them are attached to Macintosh LC-style brackets:
And a bunch more are attached to hard drive sleds:
...and that's just a few of them, there are two more crates jam-packed with drives!
I've had requests to model and 3D print both LC brackets and sleds, which makes me think that there is demand for these. The hard drives, I am unsure about, especially considering that the fantastic BlueSCSI is available for about $25! Further, shipping a small bracket and screws will be very cheap, but a heavy hard drive will add cost.
On the other hand, I know that it is best practice to check old storage media for lost or missing software that has not been archived. Collectively, we could probably do that, but I cannot take on that task. Divesting the pile is already turning out to be a huge job.
And then, there's the tricky part: I don't know what is on these drives, and I don't want to be liable for what could be on them. I don't want to be paranoid, but I also want to be smart. If you have experience with situations like this, I'd love to hear your advice about how to handle all of these hard drives.
Are they worth shipping? Should I be concerned about what is on them, and potentially and inadvertently distributing either private or illegal material? Should I be concerned about the archival of what is on them? Please discuss in this dedicated thread.
A Unicorn
As I've been digging through the pile, I've been looking for a unicorn. There have been a couple of great finds already, such as a Quadra 840AV that boots and works, and the PowerBook 540 with a greyscale display and rare RAM expansion! But there hasn't been that truly "unicorn-like" find in here that I could get super excited about until this week (although the Quadra 840AV came pretty close, once I found out what it was).
In the bottom of the red milk crate were a few hard drives with a bunch of cards on top of them. I all but dumped the cards out on the floor! There were some good ones, some NuBus Ethernet Cards and a nice IIci cache card...
But then, one card (literally underneath a couple of other cards on the floor) caught my eye. Could it be?!
NO WAY! An Apple IIe card!
This is one of those cards that I've always wanted, but resigned to never buying, because I could never spend eBay prices on one. But now, one has fallen into my lap! I hope everyone is okay with this, but I've decided to keep this one, at least for now. Maybe someday, I'll find a Color Classic to put it in.
I just couldn't keep from telling you!
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I am very happy to report that the 840AV is going to a close friend of mine, the kind of friend who sends you a new-in-box SE/30 Ethernet card just because. I will say that a nice bottle of whiskey was also exchanged.
I couldn't be happier about how it turned out.
Don't marry yourself to USPS. The rate changes as of late have made them expensive for larger boxes. As Pirate Ship does both USPS and UPS its easy to cost compare. Also if a UPS store isn't close to you CVS is often times a UPS drop point.
For the CRTs it may be worth looking at the instapack expanding foam bags that American Bubble Boy sells.
Good luck.
For the CRTs it may be worth looking at the instapack expanding foam bags that American Bubble Boy sells.
Good luck.
You may just get your garage back someday!
FWIW you can also put it in a LC! (pretty much any version...) easier to find those computers and easier to get into and add the card.
they are sooo cool to play with. even if you don't have that y cable thing to plug in a disk and joystick.
Pretty sure we put an Apple IIE card specific BlueSCSI image up on the GITHUB page, It's the A2Arcade build. Plug a controller in and your off to the races playing Chopper!Yep! This will go into my LCIII for now.
I designed breakout boards if you need one? wasn't able to resolve the usage of actual FDDs but the joystick port works a treat.