Part II
So what's the pattern for keepers vs. old junk?
Tech guys will immediately notice the pattern. Every single thing with a
digital output has been rendered completely worthless, or unusable/incompatible
with more modern equipment. Even in a world taken over by Martians or consumed
by a zombie-making plague, I would still be better off breaking into an
abandoned computer shop than using my old digital junk in order to make an
effective weapon to scramble the brains of the zombie-martian invaders.
However, all the things with analogue outputs, microphones, power-cables etc,
have not really changed in the past 20 years and are still useful. Having
broken into Fries or Circuit City to get a late-model Pentium 7 to make my
Barry Manilow-driven de-zombifier, I would still need to plug it in using a
power cable and connect a microphone to sing into. Of course I don't actually
need 300 PC power cables, but that's what garage sales are for and perhaps I
would want to recruit helpers and build more kits to speed the de-zombifying
effort. There could even be a profit in it.
So, apply the lesson to the question of new vs old sports cars. Today's units
are massively superior in technology to our old LBCs. Anybody who argues
differently is simply being overcome by emotion. However, all of the digital
controllers and stereo/satellite navigation equipment that they are built
around/stuffed with will start to look very antiquated in a short time. The
present sports cars are designed to look and feel futuristic. Think of a
Delorean. It was supposed to look futuristic too. Strip off the time-machine
kit (still available on Ebay) and you have a pretty boring 70s interior on a
rather cheaply made drive-train. And that's for a winning car due to notoriety.
Take out the electronics package from a modern German or Japanese machine and
the car becomes a useful flower pot, not a James Bond fashion statement. The
feel/functionality of new machines is very dependent on the electronics and not
just in the cockpit either. The concept of limp-home went out a while ago and
became "Use your cell-phone and call AAA/CAA to get home".
On to part III !
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