4 ms·

In the early 80s I used to, every tuesday morning at 6, with my nephew, go past all the houses in our neighborhood because that was the time when people put out

In the early 80s I used to, every tuesday morning at 6, with my nephew, go past all the houses in our neighborhood because that was the time when people put out their non-organic garbage. We used to find stacks of stuff like in the picture, so my room did look like that. In those days you could find serious treasure if you had interest in electronics; big boxes with circuitboards in front of the tv repair shops (we had a few in the village), many machines or boxes with beautiful old switches and electronics inside (wish I had those still). Every few weeks we would find an something with tubes inside which was a great find. Very rarely we would find a game console or handheld game. Good times :) We didn't have any competition for years so it was like christmas every week.

jlg23 9y ago
> we had a few [TV repair shops] in the village Oh grandpa, is this dementia? Everybody knows that electronics cannot be repaired but must be replaced every two years! ;)
- tluyben2 9y ago
  Hahaha yeah, my grandfather brought the last tv he bought to the shop he bought it from and was rather baffled they recommended to him to buy a new one without even trying to repair it.
3chelon 9y ago
In the early 80s we had an electronics factory a few miles away from home. A friend and I used to cycle there in the summer evenings and weekends and avoid the security watchmen and raid the rubbish skip. Amongst all the general detritus we'd find PCBs and discarded, fully functional components including relays, LEDs and seven-segment displays. We briefly ran a small business at school selling some of our haul to equally nerdy, but richer kids - until the other kids worked out where we were getting the gear and started raiding it for themselves!
bluedino 9y ago
We had an electronics recycling day in our neighborhood once a year. It was fun to just go pick through the old boxes to find blank tapes, old computer games on floppies, assorted cables, keyboards, tape decks and VCR's that needed small repairs, and the occasional outdated computer or two.

jlg23 9y ago

> we had a few [TV repair shops] in the village Oh grandpa, is this dementia? Everybody knows that electronics cannot be repaired but must be replaced every two years! ;)

tluyben2 9y ago
Hahaha yeah, my grandfather brought the last tv he bought to the shop he bought it from and was rather baffled they recommended to him to buy a new one without even trying to repair it.

3chelon 9y ago

In the early 80s we had an electronics factory a few miles away from home. A friend and I used to cycle there in the summer evenings and weekends and avoid the security watchmen and raid the rubbish skip. Amongst all the general detritus we'd find PCBs and discarded, fully functional components including relays, LEDs and seven-segment displays. We briefly ran a small business at school selling some of our haul to equally nerdy, but richer kids - until the other kids worked out where we were getting the gear and started raiding it for themselves!

bluedino 9y ago

We had an electronics recycling day in our neighborhood once a year. It was fun to just go pick through the old boxes to find blank tapes, old computer games on floppies, assorted cables, keyboards, tape decks and VCR's that needed small repairs, and the occasional outdated computer or two.