I don’t hold actual funerals for my old gadgets, but I do retire them to one of many “Tech Sematary” boxes in my closet since I just can’t get myself to throw/sell/give that stuff away. (It’s also very possible that I might say a few sentimental words of appreciation aloud or silently, before I file that box away, depending on how much I used or loved the device.) Fortunately, I didn’t have to retire my old iPhone 3G as it has found new life as a kind of iPod Touch in my car.
So off the top of my head, I know my old Intellivision, Dreamcast, cassette deck, Sony Walkman, Pioneer Laserdisc player, original Gameboy, Commodore 64, NES, Genesis, Power Mac 8500, Dell PC, Motorola StarTAC, Treo 650, and more are all tucked safely away in boxes in the BOTcave.
So what’s in your Tech Sematary?
Three iPods, my iPhone 3GS, my Odyssey2…
(has anyone ever heard of that last one?)
i never had an Odyssey2, but my neighbor did, Geoff! when i saw KC Munchkin, i lusted after it intensely, but it was not to be. parents got me an Intellivision soon after, tho!
and check you out: you just achieved the Shades of Firsting! wear these well or they might just end up in your Tech Sematary:
😎
No JB Don’t do it!!!! The Machines they will rise again to take revenge!!!!
i understand your concern, Jiro Maeda! especially with jefbot putting his gadgets into a “Tech Sematary”!!!
we commend this phone to the archive of other bricks, to be made into a house of obsolete technology, so that our children may inherit them and upon crossing the threshold will utter, “this is not my beautiful house…”
…and they may tell themselves, MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE!?
heheh. i like the cut of your jib, Maesonic. 🙂
as for the list of interred gadgets lessee… several nokia phones, three desktops, One being an old Apple (2c I think), a ps1, snes and a Genesis oh and several vhs players and betamax players
nice, Jiro! i know i have at least one or two VHS players in there, too. wish i had an Apple IIc, tho; those were awesome!
“were” being the correct term JB, especially if your then infant little brother decided to pee on it. Poor Apple didn’t stand a prayer
My hubby almost cried when he dropped EM (Electronic Mistress, yes she has a name) and she shattered. He was soooooo sad…I bought one online @ BestBuy.com, in the middle of the night and he picked it up instore on his way home from work. So, I do understand this comic and can totally relate. 🙂
uh, i’m afraid to ask what an “Electronic Mistress” is, or what DK uses it for, ESQ!
and glad you can relate. now go to sleep!
*hands on hips* That goes for you too Young Sultan.
wish i’d heeded your advice, Pixie; i’m a total zombie at work today. blegh.
Of course Mama Pixie is right! Remember the Jefbot Mantra: “The Harem is always right. I will listen to the Harem. I will not ignore the Harem’s recommendations. The Harem is God.”
i’ll have to get that mantra tattooed to the inside of my arm, T. 😉
Like hell my Dreamcast is in any samantary! I still use it and have the best games ever. Sonic isn’t Sonic unless in a SEGA machine.
agreed, Just cruising by – i have a few Sonic games on my 360 and Wii, and they just don’t have the same magic as playing (the much older) Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast. thinking ’bout getting Sonic CD for XBOX, though…
My old laptop is sitting under the chair I’m in right now (in the living room, mind you, not squirreled away in a basement or something) because I totally planned to turn it into a Linux or Chrome OS laptop for my wife’s nephews to play with.
I’ll totally get back to that plan…one of these days.
let me know how that Linux or Chrome OS laptop goes if you build it, Joe! i have tons of tech in hidden places around the BOTcave here, too. just looking around, i see a Gameboy Advance SP on my shelf, and an old laptop on the side of my desk. (sadly, it has such an old processor in it, i doubt i’d be able to do much with it if i decided to make my own linux or chrome box.)
Awwwww! ‘Sniff . . .
Have to mention—I’m using my Netbook this morning, and saw the dialogue before the art.
My first thought was: “No, ‘bot! Don’t flush the phone!”
Aaaaand my metamorphosis from person to parent is complete . . .
heheh. no, bot knows better than to flush his gadgets down the toilet, Sarah W! (too bad you can’t get rid of old tech that way, though – a burial at sea would be extremely romantic for some of these things.)
XD All our old computers end up there, especially 3 busted laptops… My roomie thinks he might be able to jury rig at least two together to make some kind of supercomputer someday… *sees lightning from a clear sky while her roommate laughs maniacally*
while he’s rigging those laptops together, see if your roommate can bind some old game systems to that supercomputer, JeweledRose! of course, if he does that, you might have a “WarGames” situation on your hands. maybe best to disregard that suggestion. 😉
I don’t think the iPhone belongs with the Walkman. Also, I love ‘bot’s expression in the last panel!
well, there’s probably an old iPod at the bottom of that box too, GG, if that makes you feel any better. 🙂
glad you liked bot’s expression!
Haha! Im not hoarding this kind of stuff. but I totaly get the funeral mood that comes with retiring a piece of reliable technology.
happy you can relate, Maryz! funny how us humans grow attached to inanimate objects. especially beautiful tech objects. 🙂
Morning Everyone,
OYE the collection of technocrap in my house is not even funny! But we don’t consider it junk unless there is absolutely NO way it’s ever going to work again. In fact, The ps2 is hooked up in the bedroom and I still buy games for it. I play it all the time, sometimes for hours on end.
*gives the iphone in the strip last rites as Sister Anita Bonita Concita Dulcita Esmereldita O’Malley from Our Lady of the Purpetual Suffereing*
We should never forget the countless cords and other odds and ends that pile up that we’ve forgotten what they go to. (I would’ve put that in my post, but I forgot. D’oh!)
i have so many orphaned cords i could start a cord orphanage, KB!
morning, Pixie!
glad to hear your PS2 still gets some love – yep, the games for it are still pretty awesome. (especially a bunch of the JRPGs!) fortunately, i got one of those PS3s that’s backwards compatible so i was able to retire my PS2 back to its box, and lovingly stored it away in the back of the closet with my Gamecube and original XBOX.
and thanks for Sister Anita’s blessing! 😀
I just recently got rid of several walkmen (of the cassette variety) and a walkman CD player. Still lying around are a few old phones and a broken microwave that has been riding around in the back of my hubby’s pickup. It is waiting to be taken to the recycling place cause I won’t let him take it to the dump.
how did you “get rid” of those walkman cassette/cd players, shanna? did you toss ’em in the trash or are they in a box in your house somewhere? (don’t tell me if it’s the former!) and good call on the considerate disposal of the microwave – even if it is riding around in your hubby’s truck, waiting to get dumped!
I still have my old ps2 stuff, and playstation one stuff. If you dig you might be able to find my own walkman CD players. Still have my old laptop. Still have all my old cell phones too. I have an old Moto Razor of all things 😛
i don’t think i ever had a walkman cd player, dj (but i think Mombot has one somewhere.) i did have one of those mini-cd players, which was pretty cool, but i never really used it much. funny how you still have your old Razor and the new, Android-powered one was just recently released!
my tech cemetery usually goes to the gun range for, um, destructive testing. to date there have been 5 VCR’s, about 10 console TV’s, couple of computers, a microwave, a washing machine, a blue toilette, and a pepsi machine.
ok, so maybe my tech isn’t very tech. i have a couple of old cel phones in a drawer, but for crying out loud, i still have a cassette adapter plugged into a discman to put tunes in my car….
wish i could take old tech to the gun range, Hairba11! funny, i was just at one on saturday to celebrate a friend’s birthday; they let us put a tennis ball in front of one of the paper targets, but that’s about it, sadly.
and i still have a cassette adaptor in my car i plug my iPod into!
I love outdoor gun ranges. And since my best friend is a gun twinky, I call him whenever I really want to make things explode with guns that can’t be shot inside normal ranges. 😀
Hello Jeff,
Just want you to know that there is something wrong with a banner of yours on another site. I clicked on a jefbot banner on weregeek.com just now, and got directed to a site http://www.jefbot.com, which Firefox told me was some sort of attack page. Seeing as your URL is http://www.jeffschuetze.com, you might want to check this out.
Regards,
Robin
thanks for the info, Robin! http://www.jefbot.com is just a forwarding address for http://www.jeffschuetze.com, which some browsers see as a threat, but there’s no virus or anything there. i’ll probably change the url on the ad, though, seeing as how i have no idea how many people have been scared off by the notification.
Most of my old stuff is computer parts since I both build my own computers and have been poor most of my life. Being poor means I upgrade the hell out of a machine before buying the fundamental parts for a new one and scavenge from other machines that come my way.
Most of my friends are poor, too, so the more tech-savvy among them get first choice of whatever parts I have left over. Then I pick through the oldest parts and if there’s stuff no one could conceivably want it goes to expand my computer parts collage on the wall. Anything that’s left gets donated to Free Geek. And of course when I make a trip over I look through their thrift store to see if they have anything I can use to upgrade… and so the cycle goes.
i try and upgrade as much as i can before i retire my computers, too, Sharra. so far on my 4 year old (and counting) macbook pro i’ve upgraded the ram, then the hard drive, two OSs and just replaced a faulty fan. hopefully, that’ll keep me in business before the processor and gpu become obsolete for my needs!
nice of you to donate parts to your friends and Free Geek. would love to see a pic of your “computer parts collage”!
Oh god, I can see it now, the machines merge to become a monster!
it’s very possible, John. especially since bot keeps those retired machines in a “Pet Sematary” box!
Hey, I had the 8500! It was a great tower. By the time I sold it, I had upgraded the processor (to a G4 I think), added IDE, firewire, USB, gigabit ethernet and some unholy graphics card.
And yes, I sold it. eBay is my Tech Cemetery. Well, eBay and family hand-me-downs. My mom, my step mom and my wife are all using old PowerBooks of mine .. the mother-in-law has an old iBook. ;D
yeah, that 8500 was awesome, wineinthewater! i had mine for the longest time with some upgrades like yours, and eventually retired it (it never failed and would probably still work if i powered it up) for a powerhouse PC. i still have it sitting on a shelf in my closet, actually. using eBay as a Tech Sematary is probably way more logical/practical. not to mention space-saving. 🙂
Adorable!
thanks, Xin! adorkable, too, kinda. 😉
HURRAY Adorkable!!!!!
i keep seeing ads referring to Zooey Deschanel in that show New Girl as “adorkable” and always think of you, Pixie!
*blush* And I find her just as cute as a button and the show is down right ADORKABLE!
It’s official: You are a tech-geek.
If you want to get rid of the iPhone you can just give it to me! 😀
the home button doesn’t always respond, DAS, but other than that, it still works pretty awesomely. i’m using it at the moment as an iPod Touch in my car, but if i decide to get rid of it, i’ll know who to contact. 🙂
If I have broken technology, I usually just take it apart and make charms and pendants out of the circuit-boards. 😛
And you can use old resistors for beads and make dangly chandelier earrings.
sounds cool, Geek! do you have an Etsy shop?
LOL… Our entire garage is a Tech Sematary of my dad’s old stuff. Ancient computers you’ve never heard of, lots of old HP instruments, not to mention unused computer cases, boxes of circuit boards, a Teletype, boxes and bags of cables and wire… About the only worthwhile things out there IMO are our two C64’s and VIC-20, still in working order, in bins.
Oh, there are semi-modern computer parts out there, too. But there’s just as much of that inside the house. 😉
i looOOoooved my old C64, Insectoid! it’s in my Tech Sematary, still in working order too, i’d assume. always wanted to upgrade to a C128 or amiga, but it never happened.
I think I probably have the oldest pieces of tech in my “closet o’ old stuff”. I still have a working Commodore Pet with an 8″ floppy drive. I used to have a Commodore Business Machine as well, but it got donated to the local ITT University display. The other items hidden away are an IBM 8088 PC and an Atari 800XL.
wow! you have quite the collection, Tekara! i remember reading about the Pet, but never had one myself. i used the hell out of my C64 for word processing and games, tho. was such an awesome machine.
nothing
I buy new tech only if its real necessary, like the old ones are broken/incompatible with actual software
this includes to jailbreak and upgrade them manually
(like installing a Linux-based OS or crack a mms-client to make it still working on old tech)
broken/outdated stuff get:
a) sold
b) dismantled in order to gain re-usable components
c) dismantled in order to gain salable metals
d) blown up for fun
i wish i had your discipline, Malkav! and i dig your Borg-like assimilation techniques for old hardware. 🙂
its kinda fun what you can do with custom tech
once, I forgot my keys inside the car (which has a custom self-lock-function, which kicks in if the engine is more than 30 min off… one of my rather bad ideas), therefore I had to hack the wifi-port of the car to unlock the electronic door-locks… with my cell-phone
I don’t even know why there is a wifi-port in the first place, cause this is one of the single most retarded security-exploits that modern technology brought to us…
but hey, as long as this grants me advantages: proceed world^^
What do I have in my tech sematary? Nothing, because I’m not, um, whatever the DSM-IV terminology is for people who do that.
My Apple II doesn’t count. It still works. You never know when I might suddenly need to play Crossfire. And I’ll finish Ultima IV, one of these days.
*drool* my friend had an Apple II and i remember lusting after it, shagbark. and i’m proud to say i finished Ultima IV on my C64, and (as i’m sure you remember) this was in the days before the internet and sites like gamefaqs. my friends at school and i would just compare notes every day and do trial and error stuff for hours/days/weeks. i think that game took me over a year to finish.
I did the same thing for my first electric wheelchair, then I repurposed the actuators into a robot..
sweet! methinks repurposing tech into robots is the best use of that stuff, Oz. 🙂
Hmm, I ecently moved to a different country and I left my tech cemetary behind! Gasp!
So all tech I own now actually works, it’s actually quite nice.
i can theorize how unloading some of the gadgets from my tech sematary would be somewhat cathartic, Nahiyana, but i just can’t get myself to let go. 😉
Well when you only have one medium sized car to put all your stuff in you pretty much don’t have too much choice. Although something tells me the techy stuff probably for the biggest part wasn’t thrown away. My dad most likely adopted them and added them to his tech cemetary! Just a hunch 😉
I’ve never been one for keeping gadgets that don’t work around the house. I used to go through a walkman a year, because I listened to tapes while working, but aside from the old brick Gameboy, I can’t think of things I hang onto.
someday there will be a Great Purge of my tech semataries, Tiana! until then, my closet and cupboards will be full-to-bursting with now-useless gadgets. 🙂
…and the Arc of the Covenant. I thought you learned your lesson!
heheh. some things never change, Stan. 🙂
Original GB, GB Color, GB Lite, Game Cube, countless old video games that my computers are too advanced to handle….that’s pretty much it.
i still have a soft spot for all my Nintendo-related gadgets, too, KB. pretty sure that loaded with some fresh batteries, they’d all still work!
Yeah, but not all the games. I KNOW for a fact my original GB is toast (plus it’s buried somewhere in my room and it would take a ‘Locate Object’ spell to find it. Just for the record, I meant GB Pocket not Lite (I got the see-through Pocket, too awesome).
I’m with Hairba11 on this one. I keep tech until it is really and truly dead. Then I test the ballistic resilience of said device. I wish I had been taking video when i put a 12 gauge slug through my old moto droid.
i, too, wish you had recorded that slug going through your droid, jeff135729a! (in slow-motion to boot!) that stuff never gets old. 😀
GRAR!
Every time I let my comic-reading lag for awhile, I come back to JB and find that……..
The storyline I CAN’T WAIT to keep reading has had NO PROGRESSION WHATSOEVER!!!
“Gotta go, Bot! I’ll be back in a couple hours.”
That was in March.
We last saw Musashi in November of 2009, and Abraxas 8 1/2 months before that!
This story is far too epic to be told as sporadically as it is.
Abraxas was in the strip just a few comics back, Ed! but, i hear ya re: Musashi, as his story is one that i’m champing at the bit to tell. unfortunately, it’s going to have to wait ’til next year, as it’ll indeed be epic, and i just can’t take it on at the moment. soon, tho, Ed. soooooon!
Not really a Tech one. More of a nerd one containing many assortments of legos, video games/consoles.
videogames and consoles still count, Micah! but, yeah – we might have to make a distinction for Geek Semataries. (i got a whole big box of Legos somewhere, too!)
even my sega cdx is still in my livingroom with all its games one shelf down ready to play. I used my original gameboy “the giant grey brick” to play pokeymon yesturday. i swear its indistructible. mabybe its lined with adamantium or something?
yeah, those original Gameboys were made to last, drakeye! (adamantium is a definite possibility.) i still have mine with a whole mess of games (loved Final Fantasy Adventure, Gargoyle, and Pokemon (of course!), and it still runs beautifully.
Sadly I’m old enough to remember the Very Old Commodore machines of the late 1970s, and the devotion that was heaped upon them as The New Thing. Many weekends were spent up and down the country at Commodore meets, discussing the hardware, the software, the subroutines…I fondly look upon those meetings these days as PET seminaries.
Hello again, sir. I finally broke my rule and joined Twitter…and I’m following you! (I hope that didn’t come off as stalker-ish. :/ LOL) I even tweeted you (@SelfTitledNerd) and genuinely hope you and your family are well! Great work as always! 🙂
P.S. I hope your eye gets better. Take care of yourself! 🙂
Oh the sematary… Let’s see, have an old Atari 7200, NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, Ninendo 64, all with a nice selection of games except the Dreamcast…. and all (last I checked) still in working condition, just partially forgotten and tucked away (possibly forever).
I looked through mine and I found a Sega Master System, a Mega Drive (Genisis to you americans), an HP Pavillion laptop, a Game Gear, a Snes and a Commodore 64.
Also some original xbox games, and Oddworld Oddysee for ps1
So, first thing’s first, I again apologize for my extended absence, but world domination doesn’t plan itself. Secondly, loving the new posts Jeff. 🙂
Now, this isn’t a guarantee, but if all goes well I may actually make it to Comic-con this year!! (So excited, first actual con that ISN’T illegal. X3 ) I hope I can make it, and I hope I get to meet some people from the site there. 😀
I’ll make myself more frequent now as I have most of my plans smoothed over, I just need to work on actually saving cash now. Talk to everybody again soon!
Gamestop is taking trades on old iPhones, unless your old one truly did die that is. My old iPhone 3G sat in a box for quite some time before I traded it yesterday. It felt good to actually get something out of it.
I just wish they were still taking trades on Gameboy Advance models; evidently I hung onto it a little longer than I should have and it has boldly gone to the “Tech Sematary”.
Finished!
I stumbled across Jefbot a few days ago and have been reading it at work ever since… it may have even prevented me from working a little bit… D:
I should have paced myself!
Hey you mind giving that commodore 64 to me? LOL. I collect old stuff. I was born in the mid nineties so I try to collect all the awesome stuff I missed out on! Working on buying an original Odessey. Those things are gosh darn expensive! Sonic CD and the 2600 Pitfall are my favorites. Sorry for trolling I just like talking about all that stuff! Love your comic! Hope to see many more! P.S. I tried and failed at lucid dreaming!
DUDE you can’t just put a Dreamcast in a sematary with an Intellivision!!! That’s sacrilege!
We totally need to make one of those!