Mac Goodies at Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market

[bigmessowires]

I think one man's trash is another man's treasure. Mooseman said that it all looked like trash to him. Usually it's a bunch of old oscilloscopes and Pentium IV computers and remote controls for broken DVD players. Typically there isn't much Mac stuff, but this month was an exception. It all depends on who shows up in any given month. If you like pawing through random bits of unsorted and unknown electronics, you'll enjoy it. If you're expecting a showroom with everything nicely labeled and organized, you'll hate it.

 

[mooseman]

Well, I didn't say it *all* looked like trash.  It's more that the trash:treasure ratio was high 

It's definitely hit-or-miss with old Mac stuff.  This time it was hit:  BMOW didn't mention this, but he also got an ImageWriter II for 75 cents.  Last time the only Apple thing we saw was a somewhat tired Apple IIc, which was complete but also priced at $600.  

I risk sounding like an old man, but it definitely used to be cooler and have better stuff fifteen years ago.  That said, it's still definitely one of those things you should go to at least once if you live in Silicon Valley, if only for the experience.  Earlier is better:  I think it opens at some god-awful hour of the morning, so maybe going later is why I tend to see more "trash."

 

[Gorgonops]

I enjoy going to the Electronics Flea Market myself, but I must be getting up too late in the morning because I've yet to walk home with anything particularly interesting in the "vintage computing" category. (I did come home with a couple free TRS-80 keyboards from a guy that scrapped a pile of them and discovered it actually wasn't that easy to sell off the parts. Insert eyeroll emoticon here. I also have a Tandy Model 100 portable that came with all the manuals and a softcover for $20, but I didn't actually spot that, a friend who *was* able to get his butt out of bed at the crack of dawn picked it up for me.)

When it comes to Apple stuff in particular it seems like a lot of the vendors suffer from "I saw one of these at this price listed on eBay so obviously that's what it's worth-itis"; you'll see things like Apple IIe's with missing keys and ripped Disk][ cables priced at $75 and DuoDisks with dirty cracked cases for $50. And if you ask them to dicker you'll find that they're very attached to their wishing prices.

Ironically perhaps I've had a lot more luck finding oddball non-computer related collectables there. For instance, I traded a fiver for a really nice condition November 29th, 1963 issue of Life Magazine. Also found a really neat old electronics learning kit from the early 1960s that uses telephone-style banana jack cables and has an awesome folding steel case for only like $10. The cables and instructions were missing but it's still awesome; we use it as a Halloween mad science prop.

 

[yuhong]

4264 is Micron's model number for 64kx1 DRAMs (why they didn't use the more common 4164 labeling I'm not at all sure off the top of my head) so, yeah, that's 128k right there.

They also used MT1259 for 256kx1 later on for example.

 

[yuhong]

Awesome, thanks. For the original 128K board, I could try to repair it. The Sad Mac code indicates the RAM chip at G8 is bad. But I'm thinking that an all-original 128K logic board is more special than a repaired 128K logic board, even if it doesn't work. What do you guys think - am I crazy?

Yea, I think the early Micron DRAM chips had a high failure rate.

 

[Bunsen]

If you like pawing through random bits of unsorted and unknown electronics

*tries not to salivate too obviously*