How do you protect your classic computers?

[carlsson]

Ray Carlsen claims the shaft can be glued together with super glue. He uses a paper clip to pull out the broken stub from the plunger and the other half from the keycap. When I tried this, the stubs that I extracted were beyond salvation of super glue. He also recommends reinforcing the plastic detail with a bit of wood from a toothpick or similar.

[PaulQ]

People are dumping beautiful 21" Trinitron tube monitors for LCD's which, ...... how else could I score such a great monitor for such a cheap price?

CRT is indeed much better then LCD (and so far I don't care). I could get one for free for my kids but just the sheer thought of having to carry such a heavy beast two stairs up prevented me to accept one.

I do confess, it was the heaviest monitor I've ever handled; if it wasn't for my size, strength, and excitement, I probably would not have bothered. Even for me, carrying it from the car into the house was quite a challenge! At least nobody will bother to try to steal it.

[carlsson]

Did it weigh more than 35 kg? I think the heaviest CRTs I have handled were some IBM branded (but probably Sony tube) that had a warning sticker that it weighs over 35 kg. I was even stupid enough to lift them above my head and push onto a shelf in the storage room. I don't want to think what may have happened if I had dropped the monitor. My arms hurt the day after anyway, after have shuffled around some 5-10 monitors of that size myself. And I'm far from being a muscle guy. But what do you do when the room is crowded with old (but still useable) CRTs and noone else wants to help you clean it up?

[PaulQ]

The specs say they're 33.6kg, though at the time, I didn't even think about the weight. Instead, I was thinking, "Wow, a 21" Trinitron tube based monitor in great shape for only $30!" Yes, my arms were hurting, but I forgot all about them because I was so happy that it actually worked very well.

But what do you do when the room is crowded with old (but still useable) CRTs and noone else wants to help you clean it up?

A hammer can break things down into smaller, easier to manage pieces...and also gets the point across.

[Alan]

I had a 32" VGA monitor in my office a few weeks ago. Far and away the biggest monitor I've seen. Pretty good display too, though it can only do 800x600 max.

[carlsson]

32" CRT that only can do 800x600? When was that manufactured, and who were the potential customers?

[Alan]

It was part of a 'multimedia' PC package that Gateway tried to sell about ten years ago. I forget the name of the line now, and I gave the monitor to one of my employees.

[Jeff-20]

I bought s 21 inch VGA monitor at Best Buy just before they stopped selling them. I took it out of the plastic case and put it inside my pacman arcade. It's now a sort of mame arcade. Very nice image.

[C2N]

Back to the case in point, looking after one's collection! I find nowadays that I don't display my collection en masse anymore but only unpack the machines that I'm using at the moment. At the moment it's VIC (of course!), SNES and Gamecube with Game Boy Player. Other than these, I keep them all in a huge cupboard and arrange all the boxes like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The ones that are in their original packaging (perhaps 70%) I cling wrap completely to preserve them better. All components inside the boxes are either bagged or cling wrapped also.
And its bloody true about people and their attitudes to retro computing. When I was trying to find someone to fix my sick VIC, most shops either thought I was mad and one even literally laughed! Eventually I DID find a bloke who had worked on VICs before who took on the job but it took a lot of searching. Also, girlfriends REALLY don't understand our hobby. When I come home from the trash and treasure market on Sundays, she says "not MORE junk!".
I've decided that I'm sort of Amish but instead of living my life as if technology stopped in the mid-nineteenth century, I like to live my life as if technology stopped in 1990. It IS very liberating not to have to keep up with the latest gadgets! I'd much rather spend my cash on a further addition to my collection than a brand new iPod or latest generation mobile phone!
Thanks for listening, mates!
C2N.
PS: Next time someone tells you that your collection is obsolete junk, try and work out how much all of it would be worth on eBay, individually. Even someone with a modest collection would probably have a few hundred dollars worth!

[carlsson]

Yep, I idly mentioned the approximate value of my very small collection to my parents, and my mother almost wondered why I didn't sell off a bit of it.

[C2N]

G'day,
This morning there was a loud knock on my door and there to greet me was an Australia Post worker with parcel in hand. My excitement mounting, I tore off the packaging and there before me was one of the finest pieces of literature ever to asail my senses! EVERYONE must buy a copy of the Encyclopedia of Game Machines by Winnie Forster. At 224 glossy, colour pages with exquisite photographs of HUNDREDS of computers and consoles with TONS of info this is a MUST for any serious collector! Perhaps the only downside of the book is that it makes you insanely envious of all those machines that you don't have. The photography is by a former Playboy photographer so you KNOW it's good! All the machines look brand new (unlike some similar books whose machines look pretty awful and not well looked after). No, I am NOT affiliated with the author or publisher, I just give this plug because YOU MUST DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND BUY THIS BOOK!
Thanks, mates,
C2N.

[orion70]

The photography is by a former Playboy photographer so you KNOW it's good!

Ummm... naked game machines?

[Jeff-20]

The photography is by a former Playboy photographer so you KNOW it's good!

They probably airbrushed out all the scratches and "imperfections"...

[carlsson]

Is it a step up or down in career to go from taking pictures of naked women to taking pictures of video games?

[ral-clan]

The photography is by a former Playboy photographer so you KNOW it's good!

Ummm... naked game machines?

Playboy photographers have a reputation of being fairly tasteful. If the photographs were by a former Hustler magazine photographer then we'd get lots of shots of each machine's gameports.