2 Vintage Computers, 1 Estate Sale.

When I was looking for estate sales to go to this weekend, I found one that looked promising, but what I found there totally exceeded my expectations. Right when I went inside I saw a filthy Macintosh SE sitting in the corner of the garage. I was almost sure that it was broken, but I was pretty confident I could repair it (and it was a Macintosh SE!!! I never thought I’d own one!). It had no keyboard or mouse, but that was okay. Especially when the salesperson said it was $5. Then in a (also dirty) box, was an Atari 800 XL home computer. Not only did it have the computer, but it had 4 cartridge games, a data cassette deck, two manuals, a (kind of bad) joystick, and a TV switch box. The best part was the entire box was $25. I didn’t spend much more time at that sale, even though it had lots of cool stuff. I was way too happy that I had those computers.

When I got home, I put both computers on the front step and used a moist towel to wipe away all the dust and dirt before bringing them inside. The mac cleaned up nicer than I thought it would, which was good.

Later I proceeded to do a “Smoke Test”. A Smoke Test is basically when you just plug it in and hope it works and doesn’t start smoking. I was happy to see that the Atari 800 XL did turn on and worked fine. Sadly, the tape drive for the Atari was not working. It was time for the Macintosh. I was expecting to get some hard drive error on the screen, because usually the computer chips work, but the delicate moving parts of the hard drive are almost always dead (and expect to pay a lot of money for a working hard drive!). But, the unexpected happened. Not only did the Mac turn on, but it successfully booted from the hard drive!

The last thing I did was some more extensive cleaning on the computers (removing marks, scratches, etc.). I purchased a keyboard and mouse for the Mac on eBay, and might buy a new tape drive for the Atari in the future. This was probably the best Estate Sale I’ve gone to yet.