Apple 5.25" and 3.5" disk drives

I could have also titled this entry 'Sackful of Disappointment,' but I'll get to that in a minute.

There was a time, ten or so years ago, when I was excited by computers, rather than just ambivalent like I do now. Part of that excitement was just the sheer novelty of the personal computer. My generation is the last one to not grow up with home computers from a very early age. Yes, a lot of kids back then had access to computers, but many more didn't; computers were not nearly as ubiquitous as they started to become in the early to mid Nineties. So when I started 5th grade at a school with a computer class, it was my first real experience with them. The computers they had were Apple IIe models, which even at the time were getting close to obsolescence, but they were good enough for middle-schoolers to learn on.

The point is that I cut my computer-using teeth on those old Apples. So when I saw these diskdrives in a pile of junked computer parts, there was a bit of nostalgia mixed with the regular joy of finding something new to take apart. I grabbed one drive on my way back to the apartment, then found a sturdy shopping bag and headed back to get the other ones. I know from experience that disk drives aren't the most fun disassemblies ever, or have the best parts, but they're usually decent. I figured I could get a couple of blog entries out of this haul. Then I tried to take them apart.

I started with the 5.25" drives. They had dirt on them as well as in them. The little droplets on them are from where I cleaned them up a little.

Dig the retro Apple logo on the circuit board. That's as far as I went on the first one, and didn't even bother with the second one. It was a combination of screws that wouldn't come off and nothing worth saving out of it. But all was not lost: I still had the two 3.5" drives. Surely those would hav some good pieces.

Here they are. Just as dirty on the outside, but not so much on the inside.

And that's as I could go on these. Those metal housings didn't want to come off. So that's the end of that.

I did keep the plastic cases for the 3.5" drives, and that's it. The official reason I kept them is that they could be useful as project boxes. Off the record...I kept them out of spite.

Epson Stylus Photo 820 printer

Ah, heavy trash day. That special time of the month where people can throw away those big items that the regular garbage collectors would just leave on the curb. And more importantly, it's a time where the poor and/or frugal among us can nab some free goodies. I'm not ashamed to say I've partially furnished several apartments with furniture and repaired several bicycles with parts intercepted on their way to the landfill. And so, around every heavy trash day, I cruise the area and take mental notes of what's in the junkpiles. I have a standing 'want list,' including metal shelving, a better desk, bike parts, and, of course, dead electronics. Sometimes, I get lucky and I find several items worth scavenging (and small enough that I can take them back to the apartment). Other times, the pickings are slimmer.

This was one of those months. The printer in this entry was the only thing I found that was worth grabbing. Well, there was this other giant printer/fax, but I couldn't get it back to my place. However, I'll save any 'one that got away' rants for another day.

This was a dirty printer. You can see the filth covering it in the picture, but it doesn't really convey the full experience. That's not just dirt or dust on there, it's dirt held on by something sticky. It's like whoever owned this dunked it in soda, then didn't really make much of an effort to wash it off afterward. That may be a bad analogy since this was a different, more subtle stickiness. Whatever it was, I made damned sure to wash my hands thoroughly after I was done dissecting it.

The inside of the printer was much cleaner, though not really any more photogenic (though it would have helped if I had kept the camera steady). Standard inkjet innards.

And here are those innards, all layed out on the floor. Not bad on average, but I usually get more parts out of a printer.

Eureka Boss Pro vacuum cleaner

This is one of the rare upright vacuums that I ocassionally grab. Most of them are either too heavy, or lack an adequate handle to carry by bike back to the apartment. This one was light and had a folding handle, so I took it. Though, had there been something better, I wouldn't have bothered with the Eureka.

This seems like a fairly sturdy vacuum cleaner, though for some reason the all-silver color scheme sort of makes it look cheap. I took one of these apart not long before I began documenting my junk, so I knew what to expect from it, which wasn't really that much, partswise.

Not a lot of complicated mechanisms here. That motor is really small, compared to some I've seen. I would have kept it had I thought I could get it out without messing it up. Not that I have any idea what I'd use it for.

The upright part, with even less parts.

Most of what I saved, I'd classify as 'plastic stock,' or basic flat or curved shapes I can cut down for other purposes. Also, I now have two of those handle pieces, which might be nice if I can think of what to do with them.

Panasonic VCR

I found this on a bench outside a restaurant, of all places. It was the night before trash pickup, and I was on my way to Wal-Mart when I saw it and a small TV just sitting there. Were these items actually garbage? Did the restaurant owners set them there, but forgot to move them to the curb on the other side of the sidewalk? I made a mental note, then continued on to Wal-Mart. On the way back, they were still there and I stopped and deliberated for a couple of minutes. They looked like trash (i.e. old and a little beat up), but I don't want to grab something that isn't actually being thrown away. Since I'm doing a write-up about it, I assume you can figure out my final decision. I did leave the TV, but more because I don't mess with TVs anyway.

This looks to be a basic low-end model, sort of like the JVC a few entries back. My guess is that the restaurant had it and the TV mounted up on the wall, though playing videos instead of jsut having the TV running in the background seems sort of unusual.

The front panel was sort of a letdown. The buttons were asymmetrical and did not mirror each other, so they weren't worth me saving from a design standpoint. On the plus side, those little black switches popped out easily, and might make nice little detail pieces.

The chassis, removed from the circuit board. Most of the little gears came out.

The trophy pile, which I somehow managed to photograph with simlutaneously too much shadow and too much light. That little group of black things in the lower right corner are the button switches I mentioned earlier.

Brother 1034D overlocking machine

I'm doing two sewing machine entries in a row, despite having a few other things to write about. I picked this one up at the same time as the Speedy Lock int he last entry, so I have the two associated in my mind as a set, not unlike the Juki overlocking machines I wrote about last year. However, these two were different enough, and had enough salvagable parts to justify two entries.

Also, like the previous overlocking machine, this one is clearly marked as 'trash.' This just adds to my lumping it and the Speedy Lock together. The design of the case (and lack of yellowing of the plastic) makes me think this machine is probably no older than mid-nineties, which is pretty new compared to most of the others that get thrown out. I don't know if that says anything about the quality of Brother sewing machines or not. Incidentally, I didn't know Brother made sewing machines; I thought they just made typewriters and labeling machines.

It looks pretty scrawny outside of its plastic shell, sort of like how a bird looks without its feathers. Like many sewing machines, I can't dissect out most of the internal parts. I'm half tempted to not even mention that anymore since it's so common, and only focus on the times I can remove some of the mechanisms.

The thread control knobs were a nice surprise. While I couldn't think of what to do with most of the parts, I like the fact that each one had its own submechanism that I could take apart.

A decent parts haul for an overlocking machine.