Retro Finds of the Week! (vol. 6)
An old server, a typewriter, a TI calculator, and more!
It’s been quite a while since we’ve done a Retro Finds article so I figured let’s get back into those!
Dell PowerEdge 840 Server
The first one comes from a message I got offering me an old server. Its previous owner had recently passed away and had been using it for her business and her son was offering it to me. It's a Dell PowerEdge 840 from 2006. Looking further into these machines it looks like they came pretty standard with 8 GB of DDR2 ECC memory an Intel Xeon 3000 or X3200 dual-core CPU. I really wanted this machine to use as a home server as my Mac Pro has been pretty weird lately, but ultimately declined the offer as my house is getting too cluttered with my computer collection and needs to get thinned out a bit.
Movies, Games, and Music
A little later I stopped by the local Goodwill and they had some pretty cool old stuff on the sales floor for once — this particular store is very hit or miss and lately hasn’t had anything particularly interesting.
They recently moved their movie section to a couple of tables near the front door so I stopped there first. In addition to the VHS tapes and DVDs there, they will also sometimes have video games interspersed. Of note on this trip were the film Thirteen Days — the 2000 drama about the Cuban Missile Crisis — which I picked up, and a Sony PSP game, World Championship Poker 2.
They also had a copy of the 1998 album, Stunt, by Barenaked Ladies — you know, the popular one with One Week on it. I would have grabbed this one too, but I already own it. What was a bit more interesting, however was finding Nintendo DS game in with the CDs since they don’t usually have DS games. It was one I’d heard good things about called Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I was pretty excited to grab this one, but having been burned by buying games and movies from Goodwill before, I always check to make sure the disk or cart is in the case. Alas, it was not…
Typing Things
Next I went back to the “technology” corner — I term that should be taken very lightly in this store — but this time they actually had some pretty cool stuff from the early-to-mid 2000s. First up, keyboards!
They had a couple generic Dell and Logitech keyboards out that I had recently donated and were asking $5.00 for each. I obviously didn’t want them, but I hope they found a good home with someone who could use them. The other keyboard that caught my eye was a Logitech K350 wave keyboard. These aren’t my favorite ergonomic keyboards, but they aren’t bad either. They were asking $10 for it, and I would have probably grabbed it, but it was missing the USB dongle and was, thus, useless.
Looking down below, I saw a greyish-black box looking thing that caught my eye. Having an electric typewriter of my own at home, I thought it might be something of the sort, and it was! It was a Smith Corona DeVille 80. I couldn't find any information on when it came out, but I’d assume it was sometime in the 1980s. It was bigger than my Canon word processor and looked much more like something you’d find in a nondescript office building of the time. Like my Canon, it had a nice mechanically tactile feel to the keyboard and had nice key travel. Surprisingly they were only asking $11 for this thing as these things will usually go for anywhere from $25-$60 USD online these days. If I’d known that at the time I would have picked it up and tried to flip it, but it was a missed opportunity.
Calculators and Stereos
In a basket next to the typewriter was a TI-83 calculator. I’m not sure if it was a new one or an old one, but these things were ubiquitous in school back in the day… maybe they still are? It was only $2, but the battery compartment was super corroded and in rough shape. It wasn’t a project I wanted to undertake.
Around the corner I found three stereos that appeared to be from around the turn of the millennium. A 6 disc changer from Emerson, a 5 disc changer from Panasonic, and single disc setup from Sony. They all had a tape deck for cassettes which dates them pretty well, but unfortunately none had speakers with them.
Random Other Stuff
Wrapping up the trip, I spotted a couple of other things that caught my eye. First off, they had a couple of those iHome iPod dock speakers that were EVERYWHERE in the late 2000s. I have a small boombox with an iPod dock built in that works fine, but I am in the market for a better setup. What I really want is one of those Apple Hi-Fi units, but one of those tall dock speakers would be acceptable as well. But not these…
Nearby they also had one of those electric putter games that you used to see corporate executives playing in their offices in the movies back in the day.
Overall, it was a pretty successful trip to the Goodwill. While I only left with one item (the movie), it was nice to find so many gems hidden in with the junk they normally put out at this store.