Kids react to old computers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

Life Before Net:
http://qz.com/252456/what-it-feels-l...-the-internet/

Today I found a Brand New USB KB and Mouse dumpster diving. It was in a box, glad I decided to lift the box, it was heavy insides.
So I opened it and got these treasures.

Today I found a DLink router without a power adapter. Will be interesting to see if it still works. One reason not to throw away a power adapter if the device stops working. Atleast must consider giving that power adapter to someone else who might need it.

I found an old BT router which I hoped to pass on to a friend. Obviously I tried it out myself first, figuring that if it worked for my ISP, it would work for hers. It did work locally as a dhcp server but when I tried to get it to connect to the net, it just wouldn't authenticate properly, although I gave it the correct name and password. I suspect that it was set up internally to only connect to a BT server.

I don't have the right kind of adapter for this router, so it powers on and tries to identify all devices plugged in, fails, reboots and then repeats the same cycle. This router doesn't have the wifi antenna. I need to have a windows PC to access the web interface of this router. I was advised by a contact that it was probably thrown for a good reason, all IT devices fail after a while, nothing is for ever and to trash it myself also, not waste time with it. However, I will keep it for a while and reflect about it before throwing it. It doesn't take up too much space.

Now I learned something from this. It is best to not just store but rather test and see immediately if all the used IT stuff one gets works or not. Even if there is a problem, it is good to be aware in advance. I tested the USB KB/Mouse I found and they both work well, I assume the cables all work also as very slight chance they will fail. But still not a biggie to test them either.

Might try to reflash it.

I tried reset, it didn't help.

Reflash. not reset. Download the firmware for it and reflash it then see if that fixes the problems.

Really retro Russia Computer info. here:
http://englishrussia.com/2016/09/03/minsk-vs-ibm/

Coming across printers discarded for recycling locally these days. Came across two HP Deskjet 4630 yesterday and took their power cables. There was no other cables so unable to try them. Later reflected on how to use them and came across this link:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...roken-printer/

Any other creative ideas about using older nonworking printers are welcome.

Tablet PC from Old Laptop:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...ptop/?ALLSTEPS

The motors and gears and such are nice. When I was in college spitters and lasers were new so everyone was throwing out dot matrix. My senior project was a cnc pcb router I made using the printer stepper motors.

I had a sound card installed on my older PC but didn't have screw for it. Recently it came loose during use and will not work on restart. lspci detected it. However, the sound card configure files were corrupt, had to be renamed, PC restarted and sound card configured again for it to work. Took an hour to figure this out but still glad it works. This time, screwed in the PCI card. I am short of such PC screws and will try and see if local used PC stores have a few spare to sell. Good to collect in advance these smaller accessories for PC including IDE cables etc., and keep if they are needed. Lesson Learned.

I had an app for netradio on my older PC but it stopped detecting newer net radio stations, some older stations also stopped working. This was for a few years. I didn't bother with it until recently and decided to look into it. Came across this site that explains how to get the stream link for a net radio station, very helpful read:
https://devices.streamit.eu/static/u...an_online_.htm

The stations stream link can be got from or from station site:
radio.net
and if this doesn't work then also try:
http://laradiofm.com/

Hope this helps someone facing the same issue. Best wishes to all.

My email provider inbox.com recently decided to end their free service. So, I moved to gmx.com and zoho.com. Pleased to inform that these two providers offer FREE POP email also. This works with my older PC however had to setup TLS for the first and accept security certificate for the later inorder to work. These FREE email providers are suggested for those with older PCs.