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Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

benr (apparently) - 01:53pm Sep 6, 2006 PST
via email

So here's my problem.

Back in ?1989? ?1990?, not long after the dawn of the CD-ROM, and not long
after the release of the film "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", Phil
Williams and Dave Szetela in Apple's developer group decided it would be a
useful thing to fill a CD-ROM with a load of stuff they thought developers
migh find handy, and send it to members of the Apple Developer Group (or
whatever it was named at that period).

Naturally they named the disc "Phil and Dave's Excellent CD", because that
counted as wit in those days. It was very popular, and may have persuaded a
few more developers to shell out $1000 for a CD-ROM drive to read it. So
popular that it was followed by sequels, such as "A Disc called Wanda", "Discy
Business", "Night of the Living Disc", "Gorillas in the Disc"... you see what
they did there?

Pretty soon they moved to a monthly cycle (at some point abandoning the
increasingly tortuous rifs on popular culture), and then it went to two discs
in a set, three, then DVDs... Roll forward a decade or two, and I seem to own
an awful lot of these, along with CDs/DVDs of system releases, service
manuals, etc - and a few dozen editions of CodeWarrior. In fact, I have about
3.5 cubic feet of them, in a box which has been lurking in a corner of the
office for years without doing anybody any harm (at some point Apple stopped
sending me these, and I stopped keeping them - not sure which happened first).

But we're shortly evacuating our office to allow a long-overdue refurb to take
place. I cannot possibly justify taking this box with us; nor sending it to
long term storage. But it feels tragic to just chuck it in the bin (actually
I think my local recycling organisation now accepts CDs, so in principle it
will all be recycled).

Am I just being pathetic? The box weighs a ton, I can't believe it's worth
the postage to anyone even if I sold it on ebay for $0.00 (or UKŁ0.00). They
must have pressed tens of thousands of these disks, history won't miss my
copies. Indeed, would anyone really care even if these were the last copies,
and bit the dust?

Please help me summon my courage to the sticking point to trash this stuff.
Or, of course, if you know someone who'd like to collect.....

Ben Rubinstein | Email: benr

cogapp.com
Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
http://www.cogapp.com | Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866

Mark as Read

Lewis Butler (apparently) - Sep 7, 2006 2:05 pm (#1 Total: 7)

via email

Posts: 989

Re: Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

On 06 Sep 2006, at 14:53 , Ben Rubinstein wrote:
> Am I just being pathetic? The box weighs a ton, I can't believe
> it's worth
> the postage to anyone even if I sold it on ebay for $0.00 (or UK
> Ł0.00). They
> must have pressed tens of thousands of these disks, history won't
> miss my
> copies. Indeed, would anyone really care even if these were the
> last copies,
> and bit the dust?

My immediate reaction is that all of that has to be of at least
historical interest to SOMEONE. Is there a MUG in your area, you
might be able to find someone there to take them off your hands.

I will say, I finally got rid of my nearly complete collection of
Hardcore Computist about 4 years ago and have regretted it ever
since. Not for the usefulness of articles on editing the source code
of Ultima IV and altering saved games, but just for the sense of
history.

I'm hesitant to get rid of anything these days (my //gs is well
packed in its original boxes and stored -- for now), so my
inclination is to find someone, somewhere, who might be interested in
these archives.

--
My little brother got his arm stuck in the microwave. So my mom had
to take him to the hospital. My grandma dropped acid this morning,
and she freaked out. She hijacked a busload of penguins. So it's sort
of a family crisis. Bye!

Matt Neuburg (apparently) - Sep 7, 2006 2:05 pm (#2 Total: 7)

via email

Posts: 2626

Re: Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

On or about 9/6/06 1:53 PM, thus spake "Ben Rubinstein" <benr

cogapp.com>:

> Please help me summon my courage to the sticking point to trash this stuff.
> Or, of course, if you know someone who'd like to collect.....

I think you should try eBay before you blithely assume that no one wants
them. I just sold an old copy of CodeWarrior last week for $50. If I had
thrown it away I would have gotten $0 for it. As for the developer disks,
I've still got Spinal Trap, Of Mouse and Men, and lots more, and wild horses
couldn't drag them out of my cold hard dead fist. I still see appeals from
people who need some long-forgotten system version or some ancient system
tool, and presto, I've got a copy to give them. Plus the nostalgia (and the
historical value) is just irresistible. m.

--
matt neuburg, phd = matt

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marshall (apparently) - Sep 7, 2006 2:05 pm (#3 Total: 7)

via email

Posts: 126

Re: Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

At 1:53 PM -0700 9/6/06, Ben Rubinstein wrote:
>So here's my problem.

[ history elided ]

>Am I just being pathetic? The box weighs a ton, I can't believe it's worth
>the postage to anyone even if I sold it on ebay for $0.00 (or UKŁ0.00). They
>must have pressed tens of thousands of these disks, history won't miss my
>copies. Indeed, would anyone really care even if these were the last copies,
>and bit the dust?
>
>Please help me summon my courage to the sticking point to trash this stuff.
>Or, of course, if you know someone who'd like to collect.....

Heh. Several years ago, at WWDC, I won a prize at Stump the Experts
(a fun, silly contest held every year). I "got" a huge box with a
complete set of Developer CDs. (The year before, I had won a Lisa
mouse).

What did I do? I carried them home, of course!
So, I know what you're feeling.
Go back and read Tech Note 31 (if you can find it on the CD) ;-)
--
-- Marshall

Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshall

idio.com>

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

Clyde Kahrl - Sep 7, 2006 2:05 pm (#4 Total: 7)

Posts: 26

Re: Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

Some of that stuff may be unobtainable. I have been shopping for--get this--Chuck Jones' Peter and the Wolf CD for at least six years. I finally located on copy owned by a subcontractor. he won't sell.

Now that was a really popular CD, and yet, 11 years later it is unobtainable. (Well, without putting on my ninja garb anyway).

Of course, much of that stuff may be unreadable in ten years, from both collapse of the media and inability to find hardware to read it.

Can you think of ANY reason, ANYone--other than you--would want to have this in 20 years?

By the way, I still have my original, first week's production Mac--upgraded of course. But I don't know if the floppies and so forth will all withstand time so children will be able to look at it in another 10 years and understand what an old computer looked like (the way we look at a Model T).

By the way, one of my favorite history books is an owners manual of a model T. Reading what you have to do to maintain a model T, you just can't beleive that anyone would waste their time with such a piece of garbage.

awd - Sep 13, 2006 1:32 pm (#5 Total: 7)

Posts: 6

Re: Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

Folks,

This also begs the question of how to dispose of CD/DVDs that don't have much historic interest? (Such as the monthly discs from ADC or, say, the videos of WWDC sessions from 2 or 3 years ago?) I've googled 'recycle CD', and found these guys: GreenDisk's TechnoTrash Can. My gut says its worthwhile to recycle all of these plastics that are lying around my office.

Andrew

smeuse - Jul 6, 2007 6:33 am (#6 Total: 7)

Posts: 1

Re: Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

I'm in the same boat. At least rip the music off "Phil & Dave" before you ditch the media (if you haven't already!)

britespot - Jul 8, 2007 3:31 am (#7 Total: 7)

Posts: 4

Re: Pathetic nostalgia for old CDs/DVDs

Alas, I, too, am a horder of old, useless CDs. I used to be a marketing rep for Apple and still have all the install discs from the various Performas that include the in-store demos. Sigh. If nothing else, they allow one to install a fresh, current to the model's release, copy of system software and whatever software was included with each model at time of purchase. There is no use for these. So why can't I get rid of them? We've made as many Christmas ornaments out of the duplicates as possible, so I guess it is time to bite the bullet and contact GreenDisk. Thanks for the suggestion!

Linda

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