So being the technophile that I am, and having been a Cambridge kid, I really have no excuse for not ever attending MIT's Swapfest until this past Sunday. In this day and age of eBay, it's one of those anachronisms that I'm glad still exists because its such a pure representation of the technology's subculture, in one of its very places of birth (to paraphrase another).
Basically its $5 to enter the parking lot ($4 with a printed flyer), and you walk along the row of cars with tables and makeshift booth set up at the trunks, picking thru the goodies. Because it got its start as an event for the schools nearly 100-year old ham radio club, a good deal of the stuff is radio parts, pieces, and kits... but particularly since this is still MIT, it's a natural progression to "all things nerdy" (their unofficial motto), including computers. These two guys at one table had vintage Mac equipment, from Plus thru Performa, dirt cheap ($10 or so/ea) and eventually free to a good home as it was slated for destruction by the school... I was almost tempted to take home a free Mac II and Quadra 610 so I could mess with A/UX (Apple's old UNIX distro) on them, but I am running out of space as-is and already bought a Quadra 610 3 weeks ago on Craigslist for $5 delivered
Others had older UNIX hardware like SPARCstation boxes... Still others had cards, cables, cases, components... and on and on... some just had typical flea market junk like old LPs (a few of which I did walk away with)... there was something for everyone.
The coolest thing I found? Hands-down, this went to a guy selling a vintage vinyl cutter from the '40s (lid closed, lid open). Think CD burner, except with records as the media and a mic or AM radio as the source... all in a handsome art-deco console cabinet. And it did allegedly still function. At $125 I wouldve gotten it just for the convo value but I had about $30 on me, lol.
And the characters, oh the characters... I enjoy standard flea markets for the weirdos inside, but suffice it to say that these guys were somethin else altogether If ever the distinction between geek and NERD was made clear, it was on Sunday. From the stereotypical skinny pasty MIT freshman of today to the overweight, longhaired, 50-something MIT AI Lab hacker from the 70s yesteryears who still knew PDP coding tricks, all species of the nerd kingdom were represented en masse. Dont get it twisted, everyone seemed friendly, cordial, and helpful... but I was not at all shocked to see a bunch of Star Trek Laserdiscs offered
It's held the 3rd sunday from April to October, and I can't wait to go back in June... :beer::thumbsup:
BE AWARE THAT THIS THREAD IS FROM 2006.
admin allisolm
Basically its $5 to enter the parking lot ($4 with a printed flyer), and you walk along the row of cars with tables and makeshift booth set up at the trunks, picking thru the goodies. Because it got its start as an event for the schools nearly 100-year old ham radio club, a good deal of the stuff is radio parts, pieces, and kits... but particularly since this is still MIT, it's a natural progression to "all things nerdy" (their unofficial motto), including computers. These two guys at one table had vintage Mac equipment, from Plus thru Performa, dirt cheap ($10 or so/ea) and eventually free to a good home as it was slated for destruction by the school... I was almost tempted to take home a free Mac II and Quadra 610 so I could mess with A/UX (Apple's old UNIX distro) on them, but I am running out of space as-is and already bought a Quadra 610 3 weeks ago on Craigslist for $5 delivered
Others had older UNIX hardware like SPARCstation boxes... Still others had cards, cables, cases, components... and on and on... some just had typical flea market junk like old LPs (a few of which I did walk away with)... there was something for everyone. The coolest thing I found? Hands-down, this went to a guy selling a vintage vinyl cutter from the '40s (lid closed, lid open). Think CD burner, except with records as the media and a mic or AM radio as the source... all in a handsome art-deco console cabinet. And it did allegedly still function. At $125 I wouldve gotten it just for the convo value but I had about $30 on me, lol.
And the characters, oh the characters... I enjoy standard flea markets for the weirdos inside, but suffice it to say that these guys were somethin else altogether
If ever the distinction between geek and NERD was made clear, it was on Sunday. From the stereotypical skinny pasty MIT freshman of today to the overweight, longhaired, 50-something MIT AI Lab hacker from the 70s yesteryears who still knew PDP coding tricks, all species of the nerd kingdom were represented en masse. Dont get it twisted, everyone seemed friendly, cordial, and helpful... but I was not at all shocked to see a bunch of Star Trek Laserdiscs offered It's held the 3rd sunday from April to October, and I can't wait to go back in June... :beer::thumbsup:
BE AWARE THAT THIS THREAD IS FROM 2006.
admin allisolm
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