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A mate of mine sent me this photo of some bulk waste on the side of the road for council pickup 🚚 A full arcade cabinet included! This might seem nuts, but the machine wasn't in working condition... it had been partially parted-out already. Plus, it was a very basic ticket redemption machine. In no way was it a valuable machine to start with. But the more retro equipment you repair, the more you realise how wasteful we are as a society when we just throw these things onto the kerb 🗑ïļ


Of course I headed out there to check it out, at midnight of course. Most of the "valuable" parts had already been taken (display, coin door parts). However there were still a bunch of circuit boards, transformers, wiring, etc. left behind. I grabbed the transformer, speakers, a bunch of bulbs, CPU board, sound board, lamp driver boards, amplifier board, and the entire wiring harness 🔌


The transformer is probably worth $50 in copper, but is useful on its own. The CPU board runs a Z80 processor. These were discontinued a couple of years ago and will soon be impossible to find. There's a perfectly usable 6264 RAM, as well as some EPROMs. Plenty of lamp driver triacs, amps, and other bits and pieces on the other boards, too. I'm always rebuilding wiring harnesses so the wiring will come in handy as well.


So, think about this next time you throw something out onto the kerb. Should it go straight into the garbage truck crusher? Or do you know somebody batshit crazy who works on vintage electronics from 50 years ago who may be able to use it? ðŸĪŠ