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It struck me recently that a large portion of the tech that I get a lot of use out of is not what most would consider a typical current mainstream consumer device. I'm a tech geek but I am also very frugal. There are a few exceptions but generally I don't spend much in terms of money on the tech I play with relative to the utility I get out of it. Some of it is downright dirt cheap in absolute terms as well.
Not everything is second hand but I use the term scavenge to include not only used devices but also closeouts, liquidated out of production products and the like as well. I'm quite proud of how much use I put all this stuff to that many would consider obsolete or worthless. Here's a rundown of the stuff I use regularly and some details about how much it cost, where it came from and what I use it for.
We'll start with what I'm typing this gemlog post on. A black and white Palm PDA, released in 2001 plus a small and surprisingly nice folding keyboard that you can dock it in. I paid $40 for it along with a charge/sync dock a couple years ago and $12 for the keyboard and used it a lot for about a year. I don't use it quite as much now but still use it regularly for certain things that it is well suited for. It is also quite easy to keep using it sporadically due to the offline and self-contained nature of the device. No updates to keep up with, insanely long battery life, simple mature software etc. Main things I still use it for are writing, managing grocery shopping lists, playing games and just generally fiddling around becuase its fun and reliable and the display looks really nice in bright outdoor light with no backlight. Really the killer feature for me that means I won't be getting rid of it any time soon if ever is the combo of the sunlight readable display, amazing battery life and nice portable folding keyboard. I really love putting it in that keyboard and sitting out on the porch to write gemlog posts on a nice day.
Palm m500 sitting on a patio table next to a Pinephone and a beer
I never had any minidisc stuff at the time it was popular for financial reasons but I always really wanted it. Maybe there is a little bit of nostalgia associated with this but that's not all it is for me. I genuinely like listening to music with physical media. The tactile nature of picking and playing the album you want to listen to whether its a minidisc or a vinyl record is just really fun and satisfying to me. Minidisc in particular is great because it takes some of those traits and melds them with some of the benefits of digital audio formats. Rad looking little discs with fun colors and designs that are durable, can be easily recorded to yourself, the quality doesn't degrade over time, and the players all have physical buttons too. I have four devices that play minidiscs. Two Sony MZ-NE410 portable units that were $30 and $40 respectively. One Sony MZ-NH600D that was generously gifted to me by a friend. The last one is a home stereo minidisc deck that I ordered from Japan, an Onkyo MD-105AX that was $89. I use these a lot for listening to music in the car and with headphones around the house and what not.
Acoustic Research speaker with a minidisc player
These were kind of an impulse purchase. I was buying something from a website, PartsExpress I think it was, and took a gander in the clearance section to see if there was anything worth adding on to the order. I found these discontinued AR indoor/outdoor speakers marked down to around $30. I ended up buying 3 of them, one I gifted to my father and the other two I kept for myself. I have one setup on top of our fridge in the back of the house for music and the other setup on our front porch for music. They get pretty constant use and I really like them. They sound quite good, have an aux input or can play audio over Bluetooth. They are powered by the included AC adapter or you could make them portable with D cell batteries, though I have never tried that. They are mono speakers but you can even pair two of them to each other to play music out of both in stereo. Great purchase!
Acoustic Research speaker with a CHIP sitting atop
Ok, so this one I did buy a couple of when they were new but I also picked a couple up cheap and free after they became "oboslete". They were only $9 when new anyways so very cheap and I've gotten a lot of use from them. Their main job has been acting as snapcast clients, connected to those AR speakers mentioned above and a couple other speakers to play music synchronized throughout the whole house.
A while back there was this network security product that failed (deservedly so IMO) called a Recon Sentinel. It was essentially just a Pine64 Rock64 computer board inside a custom enclosure with a little 16x2 lcd module. After the product flopped they had a bunch of these to get rid of and they were being liquidated super cheaply on various websites. I bought 3 at $16 a piece and that included the Rock64, enclosure, 16x2 lcd, micro SD card and AC adapter. Quite a good deal considering the Rock64 normally, even today, costs $25 minimum for just the board itself without AC adapter or anything else. For a while I hosted this very capsule on one of these and had visitor stats displaying on the little lcd. I've since migrated my capsule to my main server for simplicity sake. Now I have one of these Rock64s as the music server brains of the whole house music setup and another recently took up duty as our media center on the main TV when the Nvidia Shield TV died. I have one other in reserve for a future project.
Rock64 media player in a cool wooden enclosure sitting on top of a minidisc deck
Recon Sentinel and an 8 inch USB powered monitor
This was another accidental discovery when ordering something else from a website. I found these on clearance for $35 each and bought 5. I attached a Pi Zero W to the back of one of these to make a little digital photo frame for family and use another as small monitor for various tinkering and system administration where the small size makes things easier. They are also super power efficient, needing only 5v and around 500ma from a standard USB port to work.
This one is a little vague but I also scavenge parts and components from some devices that are non-functional that can be used in other devices or projects. In a previous job I dealt with lots of printers and we would accumulate a lot of broken ones over time that would get sent off to a computer recycler. I have a bag of JST connectors that I use to solder to battery packs for use with my CHIPs and other little projects. I have scavenged LEDs, speakers, and 18650 battery cells from various computers and devices that were broken but still had usable components. The 18650 battery cells I use in power banks that are sold as an empty case that you put your own batteries in and I have soldered those JST connectors to 18650 battery holders for small electronics projects. On ebay I purchased a supposedly non-working Palm m500 for $4 because it included a case that I wanted. It turned out that the m500 works just fine other than a dead battery. So now I have a backup PDA that will be perfectly functional for a total of under $20. Another time I purchased a bricked Sony PSP that I was able to unbrick. An excellent handheld game console that is easily hackable and has a great game library for under $20.
Ok, that's all of the tech scavenging things I can think of for now. I'm sure there's more that I'm just blanking on at the moment. My laptop and desktop computers I decided to leave out for this post but my main laptop is an "old" second-hand Thinkpad and the desktop is a NUC that was given to me by a friend that no longer had a use for it.
All of this is to say, it's fun, inexpensive and beneficial in other ways to buy old tech, fix old tech, scavenge parts, shop the obsolete clearance and closeouts and put it all to use and tinker.
We've been at a point in computing for a while now that feels like a plateau. Hardware is advancing more slowly and that advancement enables very little actual new and worthwhile capabilities. A whole lot of what is considered old technology still has plenty of use and life left and in many cases old tech even has benefits over the new stuff. It is very cheap, it is fun to play with, it keeps perfectly good devices out of a landfill. I'm down with all of those things. Hopefully I've inspired or at least piqued your curiosity. Now go forth and scavenge. If you want to.
