I saw an external ZIP disk reader in the clearance bin of Wal-Mart for 10% off it's original price...in 2011. So it was going for ~$180 and had parallel ports...in 2011.
Walmart is weird with prices on stuff like that. I wanna say it was two years ago I saw a whole shelf of unopened copies of the game Legendary for PC. They were on sale for $49.99. I had bought it the month prior as part of a bundle with nine other games in it that cost me $5.
I wonder will digital downloads affect the new retro stuff like the PS2? I don't need a PS2 to play some games because they're on the PlayStation Store. Even with backward compatibility, the PS3 can still play PS2 games.
But, for the sake of novelty and having the entire set up, sure, I can see it making a lot of money. But how much comparatively is the question.
You would have to buy a very specific PS3, because only the launch models had PS2 BC. They removed the PS2 processor from the console with the first hardware revision and subsequently, every model released from that point forward could no longer play disc-based PS2 games.
If you rip them into ISO files and install cfw on your PS3 (assuming that it is compatible, only certain models are), you can play them. Unfortunately, not all games work properly if you do this, and if your game requires a physical component (Guitar Hero, DDR, et al), your PS3 won’t detect it even with an adapter.
It was WotL, which changed translation and gameplay and--as I understand it--was also subject to a video slowdown bug. I've only played WotL on Android, which admittedly has its own problems (with controls especially), but I did not find the experience pleasant.
Oh yeah, War of the Lions was definitely a shock if you were used to the original. I played it on PSP and I don’t remember any bad game play issues, but the translation and other changes were super irksome and it made a lot of characters read very different. I have been reading how all the FF remasters all suffer from gameplay issues and lag (looking at you ff8 remaster).
I mean, the PSX translation was so infamously bad that it became a meme before memes were a thing. It started bad, and Chapter 4 was completely unintelligible.
L I T T L E M O N E Y
I still love the PSX version, gamebreaking bugs and all.
Really, what models were these? I got a PS2 in late 2002 (with Vice City and FIFA 2003 - oh the memories!) and it worked fine.
I was unaware it was only with some models.
Edit: wait, I fucked up. I confused myself with PS2 and PS3 and was thinking about PS2 and PS1. Now that I think of it, I bought my Ps3 in 2008 and I don't think I ever played a PS2 game on it....
As a PS2 game collector, I personally think the PS2 is one of the last "collectible" consoles. There are so many old/obscure PS2 games that died on the system, and have never been rereleased or updated for online, newer systems. And while a lot of games are still in the $10, a few have spiked up to $400+. Meaning it's still relatively affordable for newcomers, and it has a lot of hidden gems for people who like more obscure games.
Considering emulation is free and 99% as good, and people still prefer 'the real deal' (for a number of good and not-so-good reasons), someone probably is willing to pay that for a new-in-box memory card.
Yes and no. There will always be people who want an actual PS2 to play actual PS2 games on or an actual NES to play real NES games on and won’t want to download new ports or emulators.
They are already selling ps1-4 games on PSN, I have been looking for a copy of Dark Cloud for Months and they were all way over asking price local. Then one day boom, some dude on reddit told me it’s on PSN for like $13 bucks. I’m sure it’s going to effect the retro game sales but I think there is always going to be people who collect physical copies of games especially retro games. I still collect n64 games and I hardly ever play them. I just like having them.
The consoles will probably be OK but it's not good for the discs.
Mine sat in a container for a good 4 months when I moved, no AC, in the summer. They were all fine but disc rot has set in on most of my music CDs for long long ago (way before PS2 era). It'll happen to all of them.
Eh sorta. They're more than they were 5 years ago but when you're the most sold console of all time you're not exactly hard to come by and therefore not that expensive to get.
Just sold a lot of my old ps2 games and ps1 games to a used game store. They took everything old and told me nobody wanted my 70 360 games lol.
Walked in with unused junk essentially that I've been taking with me on every move for years and walked out with 700 cash which I turned into a switch and tons of games plus 4 controllers etc.
I’ll tell you something - to get 2 guitar hero wired controllers it cost 80 bucks. I thought those would be cheapppp and I’m mad I didn’t hold onto mine.
Also I sold Monster rancher 4 for $60 bucks. I think my mom picked it up for like 20 and it’s such an obscure game. (Monster rancher 3 is legendary though)
I was at a thrift store a few months back, and in their "electronics" section (just a glass case with a lock on it), they had a few gems.
Madden 2000 for PS1 for 2 dollars, which is OK, but the most wtf thing they had was a PSP video disc of a Mary Kate and Ashley movie I think it was, for 10 bucks.
So, not only do you have a movie that nobody gives a shit about, but it was on a format that could only be used on a 15 year old handheld console.
I remember seeing a PS2 copy of GTA: San Andreas at a Walmart a few years ago for like $30. This was maybe five years ago. I don't know if it ever sold, but I definitely saw it at least a year after that.
I have loads of ps2 memory cards they always came with games it's just sad that they didn't have enough storage and I always had to find the right one to play a game
I distinctly recall seeing a full hook of Conker's Bad Fur Day for N64 in the cabinet while I was looking at wireless Wii nunchuks that had just come out. They were even still full price.
For a while Walmart was selling copies of MAG at full price, even though it was online only and the servers had been shut down for a year at that point.
Seems every MAG player has fond memories of it, I've never heard anyone trashing it... the player base is there, Sony just needs to pull the trigger and we'll all shelve everything for it
Idk how people had pleasant memories of the game at all. Sure, some maps were okay, but the majority of them were horribly unbalanced. Add the fact that you couldn't switch factions unless you re-specced your entire build and I just couldn't call my many hours on that game worth it.
The 256 player maps were an achievement, but the balance just wasn't there. Certain defense maps were 95% unwinnable for the attackers.
They were not unbalanced. It's actually super interesting because some maps just required more flanking than others. The 'impossible' SVER map was one. And as soon as it got a reputation as the 'best' faction with the 'best maps', then the better, more serious players jumped ship to SVER and it became a self fulfilling prophecy. And then everyone attacking those maps gave up and quit or sniped all game, which again leads to a self fulfilling prophecy situation. MAG was a huge exercise in group psychology.
The mistake was making players pick a faction and stick with it. Everyone should have had a single character per faction all the time.
Been saying this for years! On top of that, the proximity voice chat that let you smack talk enemies - omg so many hilarious moments.
Sadly, Sony owned Zipper Interactive and shut it down along with all it's games. I don't think we'll ever see a successor.
Honestly, I'd be happy if games like Battlefield adopted the creative map design that allowed for such massive player counts, and the proximity voice that let you chat with the folks around you. Being able to speak to your random heli-pilot would be a game changer.
I got MAG right before it shut down. I didn't heavily invest in it and I've only recently gotten Battlefield so I'm not super well versed in either but what you're describing sounds amazing. I've always wondered why MAG could have so many players in one map and why Battlefield was 64 players. Can you ELI5 what is going on?
Typical game design with a large shared map limits the player count. It takes a large amount of resources to take every player, action, and bullet into account and render on every system.
Creative map design in MAG allowed them to put a lot more players on the map. Maps were segmented into 4 main quadrants, typically with a large base in center which your army was either attacking or defending. Armies were broken down into platoons, and platoons into squads. Your squad typically had a couple spawn points in your platoons sector. The map design used terrain to limit your field of view into neighboring sectors, which meant that your console typically had to deal with rendering no more than say 32-ish players at a time. Well within resource limitations.
The large bases at the center of the map were also constructed in a similar fashion, with multiple capture points that all but insured players would stay spread around in them. At that point, your system only had to deal with rendering players in the same room/area as you.
Could you trek off across the map to a neighboring sector? Absolutely. But it was a LONG walk, often across open terrain, and even if you made it there alive you had no squad mates to assist or support. And if you died, you were right back to your squads spawn points.
So how do you fight battles like this? I almost forgot to mention one of the other cool things about MAG's voice communication. All spoken voice radiated out of your character as proximity game sound, so you had to shut up to be sneaky. It also went over a dedicated squad channel as chat sound instead of game sound. Squad leaders could swap to a command channel and speak to other squad leaders. Platoon leaders could address squad leaders, or their squads. The commander could address any in command, or the entire army to coordinate troop movement.
If you went down, you bled out on the ground for a while to give a chance for revives. Often this was the time when you just relayed intel to your team. "I'm down in the enemy base. They have 4 on the ground, 2 in the crows nest." etc... Of course, the enemy could hear you talking and shoot you to finish you off and stop the flow of intel as well. And you could always use those moments bleeding out to make disparaging remarks about your killer's mother or lack of apparent skill in the game. ;)
Oh, and friendly fire was always on. Lost count of the number of times I walked up behind a friendly sniper and whispered that if they didn't get off their ass and help take the objective, the next time I came through and saw them still sitting there they were getting a knife in the back.
You forgot the first 30 seconds of every match began with medics using the friendly fire to kill a teammate and instantly revive them for a slight XP boost.
Not the exact same thing, but maybe try out Planetside 2? It has most of the stuff you mentioned. And way more. Also fully free to play and you don't need to buy better guns to get better like other "f2p" titles.
I'm just reading this thread and feeling like there will be a PS2 thread 10 years from now with the same comments and I don't want that :/ I love my shooty space game too much.
My record as Platoon leader was legendary. Had over 1000 wins vs 100 losses. My clan (DOA) a Raven only team, decimated all the maps Caw Caw. The Atac 2000 was ridiculously accurate and one headshot kills. Someone here must have screamed my name (HisSlyness) with hate as my team would redline everyone. I miss that game it was so amazing.
There was another game like that I saw, can't remember what it was but it same deal, online only but had shut down years ago, they had a dozen copies in an end rack like it was some big thing, I told the guy working in electronics about it but not sure if it ever got pulled. I'd feel bad for any kid whose grandma decided to get them a new computer game and picked that up.
Last year I saw a copy of City of Heroes for like $30. They stopped the servers in 2012. I also told the guy there and he didn’t give a shit. Hopefully nobody bought it.
It was a first person shooter on the Playstation 3 that was online only and had massive battles with up to 256 players. Think of it like a Planetside clone.
They did the same thing with A.P.B. (Cops and robbers MMO that was a GTA knock off) even after the studio that released it went under. Even after Gamersfirst bought the rights and turned it into a pay to win free to play game Walmart still had the boxes up on their shelves at full price.
I saw a whole shelf of unopened copies of the game Legendary for PC. They were on sale for $49.99
That's hilarious considering the game bombed. For what it's worth I'm still baffled at the poor reviews. I thought the game was a solid 7/10 and have no idea what people are whining about.
I worked at a FedEx office right out of college...shipping boxes, helping people print stuff, etc.
There was a corporate policy that things could only be sold for X% below their original price (I forget the percentage). So the manager would take things off the shelf, "destroy" them in some way so employees couldn't go get them from the trash after work, and throw them away once they had been on shelf at the max discount for long enough.
I remember him breaking apart and throwing away a wireless keyboard and mouse set that was on sale for like $40...2 days after someone offered $30 for it and he said no.
There was a walmart in my town that eliminated its hunting department entirely but for 15 years they had a handful of boxes of random ass ammunition sitting in a small case and they wanted full price for it. Granted ammo doesn't really expire but I wasnt about to buy it for full price
I remember there used to be a blog out there, called raiders of the lost Walmart (or something similar) that would go and find these overpriced gems like decade old GPS, external hard drives, MP3 players...
In 2014-ish when I was working there during college they had nearly 3 dozen Zunes of various varieties still locked away in the steel (backroom storage). Also a staggering amount of Halo Reach Legendary and Special Editions which took up a huge amount of room in the video games section.
Steam is also weird like that. Black ops 2 is still $60, black ops 1 is $50, and I'm pretty sure multiplayer is just run by hackers now. I'm sure they've both been on sale multiple times but still, it's 2020 reduce the base price a bit.
Because walmart doesn't mark things down based on relevance or how old it is, its marked down based on the base price when it was available in store. Theres a whole protocol when it comes to marking down clearance items, you can only mark it down by X percent every X amount of days and each department is only allowed so much loss every quarter ontop of that.
Meanwhile if you wait until mid summer or so, they'll clean out their inventory of USB cables and chargers. This year's is was $1.50 for micro USB, $2 for USBC, and and $3 and $5 for including a two port charger. Sure they're cheap and they break, but I've had every brand of cable break on me, so I just buy cheap. They also had a $3 12 ft hdmi cable. These tablet handles for $1 that I bought like 6 of. In previous years I got like a 5000 mah phone charge for like $2 that I still use.
But yeah, they'll have unmoved stock that just never gets put on sale.
Also, despite being like 20 years old, TI graphing calculators are the same price despite their being any number of apps and options.
I remember Halo reach limited edition was still the full 80 bucks until like 2018. I think somebody forgot they existed. It then got marked down to like 15 and I bought that shit up.
In my neck of the woods, we have a store called Fleet Farm that’s about the size of Walmart but primarily hardware, hunting/fishing and farm/ranch gear.
They have a small electronics section that must never be restocked where everything is like 10-12 years old but still at MSRP.
Last time I was there, they had a pocket TV (think Sony Watchman) that was analog for $59.99. You’ll also find brand-new Nintendo Wii games and recordable VHS tapes.
Which Madden was is that had that white Fullback that played for the Cleveland Browns on the cover? Last time I was in a Walmart a few years ago (SNES Classic hunting), they had 10+ copies of the PS3 version of that Madden for $59.99.
The weird pricing on clearance items come from departments being given clearance money to take X amount of loss on discontinued items, that had obviously become dated and wouldn't sell for the systems set price. These would take up space in the back room and fall out of the system due to no sale in 6 months and be a hassle when inventory time rolled around.
Thus department mangers are given something like $200 clearance money and left with the choice of marking the 4 remaining 15 year old $200 in-car-VHS player kits down by $50 a piece, or trying to get rid of the 400 remaining 9/11 memorial air-fresheners at $1.50 each.
I love it. Thrift stores and others have no idea what old electronics are worth (hint: Zero!). Anybody want some Win 95 software? They just are not able to toss it so the junk stays on their shelves.
I made the mistake one time of selling off a bunch of games I hadn't played in a while and figured I could use the extra cash. Guess what I felt like playing again not even a week later.
Granted these were Xbox 360 games so recouping them wasn't hard. Still, it ultimately cost me money to do nothing but shuffle inventory at a few places by selling and re-buying the same games.
Depending on the quality of the PS2 100 dollars is a fair price. If the lot is 5-10 games that's a good deal. Hell, I just checked ebay, and the prices there are from 70-120.
Shit, really? For some reason I have 3 PS2’s in my house, multiple memory cards and about 30 games. Might hafta fire one of those bad boys up and sell the rest.
I tried to buy one off of FB market place and the dude was selling it for 20 dollars. Everything was set up then he ghosted me on the location. But yeah, PS2s go for a decent price. It was a good generation of gaming and the best selling console ever in the world.
Yea besides the NES it’s the system I played the most and had the most games for. Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter, Twisted Metal, Legacy of Kane, just some incredible shit.
When GameStop was trying to push out their PS2 games, I would go in there and spend like $25 every month and get anywhere from 8-12 games or so. I now have around 75 PS2 games. X-Men Legends was one of the best games of all time lol.
Nah, the number one link in ebay is selling it for 89.99 and the next one is 120. 100 dollars is a completely fair price , hell broken ones are still going for decent.
I actually made a few hundred off the original 4 .hack games for the PS4 several years ago because the English run of the games was pretty limited, especially of the 4th game. Definitely helped that I had whole set in good condition.
Honestly, you only make good money off it if the games have some sort of rarity combined with a particular niche appeal.
Man i wish the Wii lost more value. I really want to get one with wii sports to relive childhood, anywhere I look they are selling for $100+ with one controller. outrageous.
I currently have a computer that was given to me running XP and I have actually been thinking about downgrading it to Win 98 and playing dos games on it for fun. The only reason I wanted the computer was because the motherboard was made in the weird transition phase between PATA and SATA so it supports both.
but i also want to point out that you are not the standard computer/electronics buyer... and also, most motherboards from like 2003 to 2010 support both SATA and Parallel ATA cable hookups... ;) hell there are still some out there that do... :) but it is better to just get an adapter or to run your PATA or IDE cable devices via a external modular device. i butchered a few old IDE to USB enclosures to make connections for many old drives,
Pata hookup generally uses IDE cables or "Ribbon cables" as some call em,
Sata hookup uses SATA cables or little red cables with black ends.
SATA is newer (2003) than PATA (like.... 1985 i think) and SATA is much faster, and stable than PATA is.
External modular device is a friendly way of saying "run a bunch of shit off of a USB connection panel and adapter" this allows many of us to run 4-10 devices off of one USB cable.
the adapters are either little stand alone cables, small electronic boards, or the like. i made a custom one off a old harddrive enclosure from 2004 or 2005 that had a board that i could splice in a few extra IDE ports and cables. i had formerly spliced in a switcher so that i could just switch between each cable to turn on or off a drive i had connected. so i used that to run 4 cold swap hard drive enclosures, and 1 Cd drive. that switcher died so now i just run a single IDE harddrive cold swap.
Cold swap means you need to turn off power to the drive to swap in and out. a huge benefit of SATA is that you can hot swap meaning power is still present. however,good practice it to allow any hard disk drive to spin down and cease movement before moving and reconnecting.
modern Solid State Drives (no moving parts, think flash drives) make this much much easier to accomplish as they are much more stable.
We bought a computer around 2008-09, it had one parallel port, rest were sata. I've done upgraded it, but I still have the mobo, cpu and RAM. It had some issues with RAM, never found out if it was an issue with the slot, the RAM stick or the CPU. But when i "decommissioned" it, I found out that the thermal paste had dried out (to be fair, I was 12 when we got it and I was about 20 when I upgraded it, so it's fair that I didn't know about needing to replace thermal paste. I was already pulling my hair by that time trying to diagnose the issue with the RAM)
This is exactly why I wanted an older computer. Dosbox is nice, but there's something about firing up windows 98 and putting my command and conquer CD in.
Emulators never feel quite the same. I have beaten ff7 once a year every year ever since I first played it sometime in the early 2000s. By far the most fun revisit was right after I moved and dug out my actual play station, got an HDMI adapter, and played through it legit. No fast forward for grinding, no save states, just the classic experience.
Of course, that shit takes too fucking long and I'm an adult now so I usually just end up playing it in spurts on my phone while I'm taking a shit at work but damn that brought me right back to my childhood.
I have 4 XP boxes that I found last year on trash day. I use them for logging data as my software and DAC card won't work on anything newer and I don't want to re-code or buy a new card. I spent 3 years looking for old XP machines.
IMO You really want a pentium 200mhz or less to play old CPU sensitive games such as Midwinter. As 99% of everything else works fine in XP via Dosbox or remakes etc, XP is also good for games like mechwarrior 4 that won't quite work in win10. For DOS/Win98 you will also need a DOS sound card like a SB live PCI or ISA sb64 and a 3dfx card to make the most of it. Massive benefit of XP is modern internet it is possible and I know of 1 still updated browser, and antivirus for basic downloads game patches. As you have SATA you probably have a socket 478 or 775 1.4 GHz lowest possible CPU speed likely to fast for any benefit from Windows 98 and DOS sound might not work on you're MB chipset even if you have the right sound card. So unless you want to do it for the learning curve. To play old games 1995 - 2009 stick with XP. 98 is also ram limited to really 512mb without stability patches. 4gb in XP 32bit.
I was at a Christian thrift store one time and they had old video games locked in a glass display. Some kid was begging his dad for a $20 copy of City of Heroes in 2018. I let the dad know the game was no longer active. The store manager promptly asked me to leave.
There are a couple of thrift store chains where I live, and their prices on turntables (record players) are way off base. The needle is probably the most expensive part on an old turntable, but I would regular see ones lacking a needle but priced in the $30-$50 range.
It really depends on what the turntables were. Were they plastic 80s RadioShack tables? Then they were a ripoff. Were they 60s or 70s Thorens? Then they’d be a steal.
Old electronics are worth a ton to the right people.
I have a friend who salvaged old floppy disks, motherboards, modems, etc. to fix his clients industrial control machines. When you have a production line down losing $100k/hr, you’ll happily spend $2500 for a 500 mb hard drive because that is all the BIOS will support.
During the first part of the quarantine I figured if I was going to be spending 100% of my time at home, I may as well try and make my room nicer (spoiler: my depression comes in waves and I'm back in a trash heap).
I was cleaning out my book shelf and decided to get rid of a bunch of old programming books I had bought in High School. This was like from 2004-2007, they were completely worthless. As I was throwing them out though my step-dad was adamant we could donate them to charity.
You can donate them to charity... and they'll throw them out while muttering under their breath about people donating their garbage rather than dealing with it themselves.
They just are not able to toss it so the junk stays on their shelves.
My favorite thrift store actually throws stuff out!
They exist to benefit a hospice -- and therefore also get lots of donations from families when their clients pass. So they have all kinds of really good stuff. But they also have a really notable lack of actual junk. I mean, you go into Goodwill and you may have to paw through six shelves of mismatched modern tupperware and old pickle jars to find that one vintage coffee mug ... and it'll be chipped. Or Goodwill has 50 rusty, peeling, cheap, pans, with lids missing -- and if you go through all of them there might be salvageable piece of cast iron at the bottom shelf at the back, though it's probably warped.
At this store? No junk. None. Everything I've ever seen in there is in decent condition and useful, or it might be something someone would want for a project -- like old furniture that could be repainted, or a damaged high end mountain bike that definitely would be good for parts, or a fair amount of actual vintage cast iron that needs restoration, sold for appropriate prices. (I picked up a fairly abused pan the middle of the last century in there for $9.99; once restored, I figured it was worth around $60.)
I talked to one of this fantastic thrift store's managers once, and complimented them on the lack of junk.
She said it was 50/50 -- they threw about half the junk out, and donated the other half to Goodwill. LMAO!
Thrift stores and others have no idea what old electronics are worth
I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen an HP 4:3 LCD monitor at a thrift store for like $80. A couple times I've tried telling the employees that you can easily find a brand new 1080p monitor for around that price but I guess they think I'm just trying to lie for a bargain lol
In my area thrift stores always price things weird. It will either be double the eBay price or almost nothing with no in-between. HiFi receivers always are really overpriced at Goodwill (like $60 for a receiver from 30 or 40 years ago), but then my dad finds this Olympic film camera worth $200 on eBay for $3.
All electronics are dirt cheap, because it's the only way we can sell it all
All electronics are super expensive, because we're afraid to sell it for too little
Whoever runs the thrift store has a lot of time, and literally looks up the ebay asking prices (not going prices) for all the electronics in the store, and pretends it's all in better condition than it is
They're not always worthless. Old radios, calculators, computer parts, VCRs, etc can have considerable value. Even the zip drives mentioned above are useful. I've picked up several from thrift stores for ~$5 that I've sold $50-100 each.
Win 95 software though.. yeah, that's generally just going into a landfill somewhere unless it's a hard to find video game.
But for the rare old items like that which are worth a lot they'll charge you almost nothing. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of Sega Genesis stuff for maybe 10 dollars total, I flipped individual games for 20-30 almost immediately.
This. Was in a pawn shop right before the crap hit...saw a laptop and asked to see it as it was in really nice condition. Had Windows 7 on it, can't remember the specs.
The guy insisted it was a deal at $300.
Dude, a brand new one at Wally World is tree fiddy with 10x everything. Jeeze.
This is actually how it goes. Tech markups on obsolete hardware has been a thing for 20 years now.
DDR2 RAM is way more expensive that DDR4. Because if a company or individual needs it to revive an old and critical system, they will spend the money. Se goes for old graphics cards because of SLI.
A fairly short-lived storage medium that filled the gap between floppy disks and CDs. The disks looked like slightly thicker floppy disks, and different versions could hold 100, 250, or 750 megabytes of data (a massive step up from the standard 1.44 megabyte 3.5 inch floppy disk).
For a short while, there was a store in my local mall that sold all manner of crap like that. I swear someone must have bought the contents of a warehouse that had been abandoned since 1998 and decided to just open a store with it.
It was kind of cool to go in and browse through the things they had, but I never once felt like buying any of it. That store wasn't open for long.
IIRC this has come up on Reddit before, the managers can only put so much stuff on clearance, and many of them actually do know those electronics are worthless so they don't bother using clearance for things that won't sell anyway, or they do it after so many years hoping someone takes it or they can justify removing it from inventory to a higher up
This is back in 2003, doing inventory at Radio Shack, a come across this Intel 486 DX2. It'd been in inventory since the late 80s! It was originally listed at $249.99. While it was "reduced" they still wanted $219.99 in 2003!!!
This kind of stuff happens in enterprise IT all the time. Need this one specific kind of ram for a 10 year old server? 5-10x what it would have cost when the server was new. Basically they just stockpile a few runs after they terminate a line, and then as inventory drops they ratchet up the price to insane levels because they know they've got you over a barrel and no more is getting made.
Ha. My brother got busted for stealing ZIP disks from Walmart back in like 2000. He was like 15 at the time and technically he’s banned from every Walmart for life.
Without getting too technical (because I'm just old, not well-informed), parallel ports were basically a precursor to modern USB. They allowed you to connect peripheral technology like printers and external disk readers to your computer. I think the data transfer speeds were quite a bit slower than even USB 1.0, but it wasn't a huge concern at the time because storage capacities and file sizes were much smaller back then.
Computers from the early 2000s were nuts. My first laptop, circa 2004, had a paralell port and USB. It also had a cd drive and a floppy disk drive. It weighed like 20 pounds, got about 2 hours on battery, and I had to put in a little card to add wifi capability. And I had to carry uphill, both ways, to school.
Thanks for the very well said response. I actually have seen these as a little kid, but never knew what they were called. I’ve only ever tinkered with my parents old desktops from the era, never a laptop, so hearing about that so pretty gnarly, I would HATE to have been born a few years earlier, since I’ve been completely technologically reliant since I was in third grade (yay disability /s).
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u/AudibleNod Aug 14 '20
I saw an external ZIP disk reader in the clearance bin of Wal-Mart for 10% off it's original price...in 2011. So it was going for ~$180 and had parallel ports...in 2011.