Episode: 1043
Title: HPR1043: Hacking Second Hand - Obtaining Old Tech
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1043/hpr1043.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 17:52:35

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Music
Hey guys, this talk is called Hacking Second Hand Obtaining Old Tech.
Now first you're probably wondering, who am I? And I'm Famicomand, which is F-A-M-I-C-O-M-A-M.
Find me at Famicomand on Twitter, at Famicomand.com. I am an archivist essentially.
I mean that in a physical sense and that I collect a lot of things. I have over 3,000 vinyl records.
I collect video equipment, so I have beta max, laser discs, select division. I collect
old computers, I have about 30, or so old computers, real-the-real, audio equipment, old
radios, just anything you can think of, I collect it. I also collect digital data.
Mostly in the hacker media sense, I run something called the IPTV archive as well as an
archivism, which is a group archiving project. I'll throw up links to these in the show notes
in case you want to check them out anymore. In the process of getting old tech, you might
wonder, well what experience do I have? And you could say that I have been using second-hand
markets since before I was born. I mean I have grown up going to flea markets and auctions
my whole life, my parents have been doing the same thing. And it's sort of sad to think
I can tell one of my friends, hey I'm going to the flea market this weekend and they look
at me like what's a flea market? People really need to be more aware that there's a ton
of really cool places where you can buy stuff. So now you might be asking why do you need
old tech? Well old tech is actually really fun. You can get some cool little object, some
piece of hardware that you haven't seen before and play with it, learn everything about
it, have an edge above a bunch of people. So you tell somebody, oh man I got this old
debt tape drive and they'll be like what? What the hell is that? And then you can of course
explain it to them, show them how it works. So it's pretty fun. Old tech also has a simpler
design. So you have all of these older electronics, they're a lot more hackable, you can easily
find schematics and manuals for them. Think about newer stuff, technology is getting so much
more complex. I mean it could take someone months to figure out how to crack the potential
of any sort of a new product. But old tech, you have stuff that's been around 30, 40 years
and people have been messing with it. Take the Atari 2600. It's been out since the 70s
and people are still seeing how to make the motherboard even smaller or adding Paul switches
that you can hack in. So it's pretty cool. A lot of this stuff is still really widely
used in some small circles and you can stuff a lot of fun with it. You can also find a lot
of items that they don't make anymore. When you think of the retro gaming scene and everything,
everybody's really into that these days. Even besides for finding like an old Nintendo,
maybe you're finding old microprocessors. So maybe you're into the old Intel's or the
old Motorola's or maybe you're looking for this old radio scanner that picks up a band
that nobody puts on scanners anymore. It can be really interesting and you can find some
of the stuff that you would never think you would find. Now let's get one thing sort of straight
right off the bat. This is not a talk about using the internet to find things. When you think
about using the internet, you think about eBay. And I mean, eBay is great for hard to find objects
because I've been looking around for stuff for years and there's still some stuff that I have
just never found. And that's what's really good about eBay. Now a lot of people will just
say, oh man, I want something and they'll hop right on eBay. But in fact, this can be,
I don't want to say a bad thing, but it could be a waste. Just the other week, I was going on
to eBay looking up Commodore 64's and people had them for $50, $100. And I'm thinking,
I got a Commodore 64 for $10, not too long ago. Then I found another one in a box for $20.
I didn't have to pay any shipping. I didn't have to bid against anybody. So really, eBay is good
for things that are super hard to find. But other things, you can just pretty much find
readily available. One thing to note about if you're going to use eBay is make sure that wherever you are,
whatever you buy will work in your region. So you know, you don't want something rated to work
in Australia. You don't want to get like a VCR that doesn't have the proper AV for your region.
So if you're in North America, you don't want to pal VCR unless you buy an adapter or something.
So just keep that in mind. Now, when you think of the internet, you also think about Craigslist.
Now Craigslist can also be great for hard to find things. And there's no shipping.
For me, I'm not too big a fan of Craigslist. Most of the time, it can just be a hassle. People
not responding to emails or people telling you that they're going to give you a time to meet and
then they just drop off the face of the earth. Some people have a lot of luck with Craigslist,
but it's not really my thing. So let's go into how you find old tech. Just starting small.
You can use the people that you know. So if you have family or friends, get the word out to them.
Tell them that you're looking for something. You know, if you're pulling up your friend bill or
something, just be like, oh, by the way, if you happen to know anybody getting rid of old radios,
let me know. I'm getting into old radios. You can just tell your family, like, hey, anybody
at the office talking about getting rid of stuff, telling them I'm interested in, you know,
like, penny and four computers. So just just get the word out. Let people know that you're looking
for things. And usually, which I find kind of interesting is that when you tell them once,
they will never forget. So you can have people for years is dumping off hardware. Just the other
month I had somebody just come by with three broken laptops and just drop them off. And I was
able to get them most mostly up and working. So it's pretty cool that people remember that you
really end to something and just drop off stuff out of the blue. So that's pretty cool.
Another thing to think of is if you fix computers. So we all know that it's really easy to play tech
guy for family and friends. And if you're setting up a new computer or you're fixing something,
ask if you can take away the old hardware. So you know, you're setting up a new computer for
your friend. Be like, hey, you got this old crappy computer. You mind if I take it. And usually
they'll just like sure, sure, go ahead. I was just going to throw it out anyway. So you can take
away old stuff. That's another way to get things. So now we're going to move into something a little
bit wider like yard sales, flea markets, stuff like that. Before I go into it, there's some preparation
rules that I'd like to give out there. So when you're going to yard sales, do not knock on doors.
A lot of people like to go out really early. So you'll call them early birds. Like if you were to
go to a yard sale or something and you'll ask if they have something, people would be like, no,
but there was this guy here at like six in the morning asking for the same thing. And I had to turn
him down too. So this can seem like a good thing to do. Just go out before anybody else is out
or if the yard sale like before it even starts going out and trying to get things from people. But
really, this is pretty disrespectful. And it's kind of frowned upon in the yard selling scene.
So this is something not to do. Something else to keep in mind is when you see something that catches
your eye, pick it up. If you're walking along and you see this old computer and you're kind of
looking from afar, you're like, hey, that looks pretty cool. Don't just stand there and stare at it
go over and actually physically grab it because while you're sitting there thinking about it,
somebody else will go up and try to buy it. It's happened to me before. So if there's something
that interests you, go over, touch it. That kind of shoes away everybody else. Also,
something to consider is that the time to buy is when you see it. If you're at a flea market
or a yard sale and you see something that you like and you think, oh, I'll just come back maybe
in an hour or so and then I'll get it. That's not a good idea because it'll probably be gone.
Somebody will offer them low ball figure and it'll just disappear. So don't think that it'll be
there. It's not like a retail store. Something else to consider is to go early. Even if this means
programming your GPS the night before. So if you're making a list of yard sales,
it's a good idea to program them all into the GPS the night before and then go out early.
So I'll cover this a bit more later. Also, take a pen, business cards and cash.
Pen and business cards, that's basically so you can write down your information or get
information. A lot of times you're buying something like say you're going out, you're buying a
computer and they'll be like, hey, you like old computers? I get them in all the time. Give me your
name and number and I'll call you if I get anything in, which is really cool. So you definitely
want to have some information to give them. Cash, also very important. None of these places are
going to take credit cards. None of these places are going to take checks. Cash is king. You need cash,
half cash, have a lot. Something else to consider. Don't dress to impress and it's sort of the same
principle as you want to set a certain quality about yourself. You don't want people to think
that you're full of money. If somebody's, they're selling a computer for 20 bucks, you don't want to
look like you have the money. Some people will change the prices just depending on how you look.
So if you go out and like a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, people are going to think that you have less
money than if you're out there wearing a suit. I don't know why you'd be wearing a suit, but
even just like more name brand clothing. It can be I guess a little get you to do something like
that, but it it help. Also don't be afraid to haggle. So a lot of these places yard sales,
sleeve markets and everything, it's almost encouraged that you haggle. So if somebody's saying hey you
know you can have this for 15 bucks, well how about 12? You know try to get them down. But something
to consider is to know when to stop haggling. I've been to countless places where somebody goes,
hey how much is this? And the person says, oh it's a dollar. And then the interested person
goes, oh well how about 50 cents? 50 cents, you're not really breaking the bank. It can be disrespectful
to go way too low. Just make sure that you don't get on anybody's nerves because sometimes somebody
will give you the price and then you'll go too low and then they'll actually increase the price.
So you don't want to you don't want to piss anybody off. Something else to consider is that people
have haggle more later in the day. So say it's sliding down. It might be like two in the afternoon,
something like that. A lot of people don't want to drag this stuff back home with them. They don't
want to drag it back into their house. So if you offer something a little bit lower than you would
think would be appropriate, that's usually okay. Just because people are trying to get rid of stuff.
They'd rather sell it for lower price and just throw it out. Something else to consider
is to avoid the word antique. So if you're thinking about going to an antique sale, an antique mall,
it's probably not a good idea. People who sell in antiques think that things are much more valuable
than they actually are. You can get something at a flea market for probably half as much as you could
pay at an antique sale. They're great sometimes, but if you're looking to only spend a little bit of
money and get a lot of stuff, antique sales are not for you. So let's go specifically here into
yard sales, garage sales, stuff like that. One thing to note about yard sales is that it's all
about Saturday morning. Usually Saturday at eight or nine is when people start opening up their yard
sales. So what you want to do is get a local paper. Any local paper your area probably has one. It's
usually free and then go into the listings and there will be a ton of yard sales in your area.
Take a highlighter, take a pen, make a note of the ones that you're interested in. There's no real
giveaway. Some people list what they have, but usually everything is just it's just hit or miss.
You never really know. So you make a list, you program your GPS and then you leave early in the
morning. I know a ton of people who are like, yeah, yeah, let's go out to yard sales and they get
up at like 10 o'clock. That's not how you do it. You probably want to leave the house at about seven,
maybe seven, thirty. You want to go hit the farthest one away first and then work your way back
to where you are. That's the best way to do it. Of course, make sure that you don't go to places too
early. If somebody's setting up outside, you can usually come up and start looking around, but
sometimes people will tell you to go away until they're finished setting up. Keep that in mind.
Something else you can do if, you know, the local newspaper is not cutting it, is just check for
signs on utility poles. If you're driving around, you see a sign on the pole for the power lines or
something. Usually people like to advertise that they're having a yard sale. Also, when you're
actually at the yard sale, make connections. Usually you go to a yard sale, somebody's sitting there,
they say, hi, good morning. You can be like, it's like, hi, how are you? Do you happen to have any
so-and-so? And then you can ask what they have. Maybe they'll tell you, oh no, we don't have any of that
out, but I think we have some of the basement. Maybe they'll go look for it. Maybe they'll ask for
your information so they can call you later. Stuff like that. Also, you might find a house sale,
which is very interesting. That's when everything in the house is for sale. These can be run by
the homeowners, usually if they're moving, or if someone passes away, or it can also be an external
company. So sometimes a lot of these things have fixed values, and that's usually if they hire
a company to take care of everything in the house, or if you're actually with the homeowners,
you can haggle pretty much because they're just trying to get rid of stuff. Now we move on to
flea markets, swap meets, boot sales. These are usually Sunday morning. Just about the same time,
you'll have a mixture of dealers who sell there professionally, and just people, maybe their
yard sale wasn't cutting it, they wanted to come somewhere with more exposure, more people. They're
not all on Sunday. Some of these are really oddly timed. Like I know ones that are on Wednesday
mornings, Thursday mornings, and you'd think there's not going to be anybody there, but they're
usually packed full of people through really odd. But anyway, recognize who you're dealing with
if you go to one of these. You get pretty good at telling the difference between a dealer,
and just somebody coming there to sell stuff. Dealer is usually, you know, they have a packed
van, you can see how cluttered it is, they have showcases, everything's presented nicely,
they have these nice folding tables. They're usually more organized, like they might have a list
of prices, or if they sold stuff. If you're dealing with someone who just came from their house,
they usually set up a little bit later. Dealers, they're usually set up at 7 a.m., but if it's somebody
later, they're just starting to set up at 8.30, they're a little bit shaky, they might not know their
prices. So just know who you're dealing with. As always, be friendly. So, somebody says,
good morning, say good morning, back, get involved in a little conversation. If you're more personal
with them, they will sell you something for cheaper. It is almost guaranteed if you just put forth
a little bit of effort to be friendly. Don't be swayed by lines like it's going for so-and-so on
eBay, or I bought it for this much money, or I reduced it this morning 10 bucks. That really
doesn't matter. If it's going for something on eBay, they should be selling it on eBay. You
don't really care what they bought it for. You don't care that they reduced it. You're just worried
about them selling it now. They're trying to get rid of it. You're trying to get it. Don't
sympathize with them. That's really the best way to explain it. When you're trying to actually
get an item, you can either play smart or play dumb. So let me explain how this works. Say that
you're walking along and you see, oh wow, let's say you see a computer and you want to get a
computer for a project or something. So what you can do is you can actually play smart
and you can strike out a conversation with a guy and be like, hey, look, this is a pretty cool
computer. Is this like an Athalan XP or something? And then maybe the guy will see that you're
interested. You'll get into a conversation about it. You'll ask how much it is. I'll give you a
little bit of a lower price. So that'll work out. You can also play dumb. So you can just be like,
hey, what kind of computers is this? This is kind of strange looking. And they'll tell you
something about it and be like, well, I don't even know if I could use this for anything. How about
like 10 bucks? So offer them some money. This, this may or may not work, but more often than not,
you can, you can work an angle about it. You can also do setups. So if you have two people going,
so let's say, you know, you have a friend, yes, the price, he tells you the price, then you start
walking away. And then you get him to, to try to get the price lower as you're walking away. So
it looks like you're not really interested, but they're still trying to make the sale. This works
a lot better with just normal people instead of dealers. Dealers are usually, I don't, I wouldn't
want to say tough to deal with, but there are a lot they, they've been in the game. They know that
if they don't sell it to you, they're going to sell it to somebody else. They go week after week,
after week to sell stuff at flea markets where the run of the most person does it once every
couple of years or something. Something to keep in mind is that dealers can also make great friends.
So if you become friends with dealers, they're going out and they're acquiring things to sell.
So they will look for stuff that they can sell to you. So if you tell them that you're interested
in something, they might pick something up that they wouldn't normally do just to hold it for you.
So moving on to other types of sales, we also have your rummage sale slash college move out sale.
They'll just get people to donate stuff that they'd otherwise just get rid of. I think they're
also called like jumbo sales. Usually they'll they'll set some sort of price on everything. They're
not really good for haggling, but their prices are pretty low. They're, they're pretty decent.
The thing is a lot of these open at certain times, like a flea market, you can just walk on whenever,
but these rummage sales, church sales, they have a time and usually people getting like a line
at the door to get in. So when you get in, you got to scan through quickly, grab whatever you see.
You can always put it down later. Just you, you have to be like on the machine. Auctions, auctions
are fantastic. There are two types of auctions. There's the English auction, which is the traditional
auction that everybody thinks about with an auctioneer yelling out the prices. And there's also
silent auctions, which are sort of more like eBay, where you write down your name and a bid on a
little piece of paper. And then at a certain time, everything is done. There's no more bids in and
then they figure out who gets what. The great thing about auctions is that you can just leave a
price. They call it like absentee bids. You can go to an auction preview. So you, you might not
want to stick around from eight o'clock to midnight at this auction for this one thing that you might
want. So you go there at like five o'clock, you figure out what items you want, and then you leave
an absentee bid, which is the maximum amount of money you want to spend for that item. And then you
can go out and spend your night doing other things. And they will call you if you want. I love
auctions. You can usually find a lot of interesting stuff. One thing to note is that some dealers for
flea markets will actually get a lot of their stuff from auctions. So if there's a lot of stuff
nobody's bidding on, they'll offer five bucks for a giant box and just get all this stuff,
which they will sell out. Besides auctions, dealers will also go to like house sales, which is pretty
much the same thing at the end of the day. There's a bunch of stuff that isn't selling the law for
them five bucks and have stuff to sell. The auction is sort of like going to the source. You also
have to consider thrift stores and farmers markets. So thrift stores, you know, we all know about
Goodwill, the Salvation Army, stuff like that. There's also more mon pop thrift stores out there,
which is pretty awesome. Thrift stores usually have, they have interesting prices. Sometimes they're
really, really good. And other times they're just terribly expensive. They usually just slap on
these prices without knowing what they're doing. But what's really cool is that you can usually
haggle with a manager. Cashier's have like no sway with the prices whatsoever. But say there's
a ton of Nintendo games. Asked us to be with a manager and be like, hey, you have like 40 games
and at two bucks a pop. That's kind of, that's a little pricey. How about like 20, 25 bucks? And
usually they'll sell it to you, which is pretty cool. Farmers markets you might not really think
about. Usually people just go to them for produce. So there might be some other little knit stores.
But a lot of farmers markets actually have like junk stores, secondhand stores. So those are
pretty cool to check out. And on top of that, farmers markets also usually throw flea markets
every once in a while. So it's good to check out a farmers market and see what they have to offer.
And once again, there's a junk shop you can make friends with the people who run the junk shop.
If you buy enough stuff, they might start to recognize you and you can get a relationship going.
Now, lastly, in our way of acquiring stuff, you can also get stuff out of the trash.
Good thing to do is in your neighborhood figure out when the trash days are.
So around here are usually Monday and Thursday. So something great to do is on a Sunday night,
just drive around the neighborhood and see what people have put out on the curb.
You'd be amazed that some of the stuff people would just throw away. You can get old computers.
I've got a bunch of old Commodore monitors out of the trash. And this just doesn't stop
at around the neighborhood. At flea markets, even, if there's like a trash area, I one time picked
three VCRs out of a trash can. They all worked perfectly. Don't be afraid to get dirty.
You're going to get dirty when dealing with old tech anyway. You might as well check that
out the door and just go for what you can get. Also, to consider is you should take an item when
you see it. So if you're driving around in the pickup truck and you see like the perfect shelving
system or something, grab it. You can always drop it off at the front of your house because you know,
you might drive around. There's other people doing the same thing. Well, they're looking for
stuff or just passing by. Somebody will come and take the thing you're interested in.
You could also resort to dumpster diving. A lot of people are probably more prone to stay away from
but there's a dumpster outside of a data center or something. You'd be surprised of the kind of
stuff that you could find. Now, here are a couple of buying tips. In case you're at a flea market,
you're at a yard sale and you see an item you want. But you're not exactly sure what to do to make
sure it's a good deal. First thing to do is inspect it. Inspect it, inspect it, inspect it. That's
I can't stress that enough. There might be a lot of dirt on it, but check things. Make sure that
the cables are intact. Make sure if there's pieces, all the pieces are there. If it's a computer
or something, ask if you can open it up. Usually they'll let you. I mean, ask if there's something
that you can test with a functionality, test it. That's very important. It's better figure it out
there before you buy it than after you have it at home. If the item is indeed broken
and you still want it because we all like to fix things, see if you can offer them a lower price
because usually when something's broken, somebody will just assume it's junk, it's trash.
But if you offer them a lower price, they'll probably give it to you for a lower price because
otherwise they just think it's worthless. If possible, ask if you can test an item. So if you're
at a yard sale, say that you come across an old computer, there's a power cable there. Ask if
you can plug it in. See if it boots up, something like that. Also, ask if the item works. Just
flat out. They might just tell you, no, it doesn't work. But having said that, expect everything
not to work, no matter what anybody says. People will lie to you just to sell you something. I mean,
people do it every day. But expect everything not to work. You won't be disappointed that way.
Usually you can tell if somebody's just sincerely telling you that it works. And it's sort of a
skill that you pick up, but usually you can just tell when something doesn't feel quite right.
Something else you can consider is in the world of second hand at flea markets and yard sales,
there are no refunds. Maybe at like a farmer's market, you could get a refund, but otherwise
you come back to a yard sale later in the day and it's sorry, it doesn't work too bad.
After you get your item and you take it home, you might have this dirty item you don't know
what you're doing. Rubbing alcohol and goon can go a long way. I can't tell you how many things
that I have, quote unquote, saved just by cleaning them really well. You can also use retro
bright if you have yellowed plastics like the old Super Nintendo and be careful when you're
plugging it in or powering it on. Because you don't really know what's going on,
but you don't know why somebody's getting rid of it. You could have an item that's been
sitting out in a shed for 10 years. Something crazy could be going on with it. So you know,
make sure that when you're plugging it in, I've had tons of items just plug them in. They give you
the magic blue smoke and that's your first cue to immediately cut the power. So just just always
be careful. And of course, if you can open something up before plugging it in, that's even better
because you might get out the dust bunnies or just generally cleaning something before you turn
it on is probably a good call. So that's it for hacking secondhand. Hope you enjoyed it. As I
said before, you can find me on Famicomand, FM, ICOM, AN. You can find me on Twitter. You find me
at Famicomand at gmail.com, Famicomand.com, and projects. I have my retro tech TV show
at obsolete.com, OBSOLET, and anarchivism.org, A-N-A-R-C-H-I-V-I-S-M. And that's it for me.
Hope to talk to you guys again soon.
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