I could have saved it...
Posted by marshall Sun, 04 May 2003 18:00:00 GMT
Lara and I went to drop off some stuff at the Goodwill location in Peters today. As we arrived, I noticed a box marked "Macintosh" sitting on the ground in the middle of the donated items. Not any specific model ("iMac", "Performa", "Mac Plus", etc.) but rather one with the 1984 Picasso-style artwork on it. I walked up and took a closer look at it. Inside was an original 128K Macintosh -- one of the first ever produced. An icon of personal computing history (no pun intended), sitting there with its cables in its box. I remarked to the attendant that there were probably collectors out there who would pay quite a bit for it (or at least the box), and he replied that it would no doubt end up in the trash.
That just seemed so sad to me. I wanted to ask if I could have it...but what would I do with it? It didn't have any software with it, and even if I found software on the Internet, it wouldn't be able to read modern floppy disks. It would probably just sit in the storage room, and then when it came time to move we would probably have to get rid of it ourselves. Still, I felt a pang of regret as we left it sitting there, like a box of first-edition Hardy Boys novels in a burning house.
