There's a tool sharing program in my neighborhood. You pay like $20 a year for access, and come by, borrow a tool/leave a tool. It's great as people leave lots of big tools sitting around doing nothing.
I want that for computer parts and wires.
Lets pool our ps/2 keyboard adapters and VGA cords together!
I refactor the box every year because there are usually some new cables.
Some simple empirical rules:
- keep the shorter cables
- maximum of 3 cables of the same type: for donating, for lending, for spare
- USB cables that can transfer data > USB cables that don't transfer data
- no damaged cables
- store long cables as coils (tied up tight)
- store short cables in bunches (tied up tight)
- should be sorted and grouped into categories
- box should be sealed, but aired out once in a while (outgassing)
No one f’ing dare touch my box of obscure cables and stupid converters I’ll probably never use !
Last move, I collected all cables in a one HUGE box.
After the majority of the unpacking (like I'll ever finish that) was completed, I sat down with the box and sorted out all the cables.
I kept a sane amount of each cable, at least one and trashed the rest.
I now have half a dozen labeled sterelite dollar store organizers with the cables in them.
add it to your bucket list....
Bro I literally just used 2 of my cables from the cable box today. Never giving that up.
I had an ISA serial card sitting on a shelf next to my desk at work for 14 years. In the yearly clean up it was kept. 10 years after the last ISA machine had been in the office it was scrapped.
Not 2 days after the truck I had to order one exactly like it for a machine i did not know exsisted in a printing press i did not know at a customer... NEVER throw out anything!OMG! I was just about to throw away a box of "cables" I've been accruing since college. My wife has been complaining about these cables that never get used. I think I'm going to have to hold off now. Thanks for the warning!
No problem! You can purchase that hard to find cable at Radio Shack....Oh wait.
If you need to get rid of a pile of DC power supplies and they're all similar, consider donating them to a stem youth club. I have a huge pike of 12v power supplies with the 5.5-2.1mm plug on them and they work great with breadboard power supplies.
I've got 3 boxes. One for power cables, one for signal cables (ethernet, phone, RCA cables, coaxial) and one for usb cables and power adapters.
They're tote sized and I'm going to need even bigger boxes soon. No way I'm ever getting rid of them.
Have none of you learned the law!!?? The act of throwing the cable away is what created the need for that cable. The cable gods MUST be appeased. (Also applies to adapters and random hardware.)
Here I am, literally waiting for delivery of a USB-C to Mini-USB cable that I thought I would never need and got rid of six months ago.
Turns out the little external DVD player I keep around if I ever need to watch a DVD requires it. 🤦🏻♂️
Amateur radio checking-in: the cables and adapters are just the beginning. There is no "box"—it's simply "storage"
Just happened to me yesterday. I needed a 12v power adapter to trigger cable, but I had thrown out the previous one thinking I would never use it.
This was me. A few months ago, I threw out a cable I thought was for a 20 year old flipphone that I'll never use again, but it was a charger for something else and I wanted it last week for a relative. Now we need to buy new hardware. Don't do it, kids, horde those cables. Horde them like you don't fancy spending an unnecessary 30 smackers next year.
I could probably get rid of some of the cables in my cable box, but that damn thing came with my on my sudden cross country move and was almost immediately useful so no one will ever convince me to throw it all away.
The cable knot must grow.
I regularly go into my cable bin. It's a big ole Rubbermaid that is sort of organized but also not
Even old broken USB cables get kept for electronics projects
My cable needs aren't so obscure yet that monoprice doesn't work. Of course, maybe monoprice is just that good, IDK.
I have 30 years of cables and adapters in a box. I needed a cable in that box, it is in my storage unit that is an inconvenient 45 minute round-trip away. I still need that cable weeks later.
The box should never be thrown away or be located further than a short jaunt. Such is the law of the random cables and adapter box.
Trim it down to one of each cable. You don't need a half-dozen patch cables. That weird wall-wart with the proprietary DIN plug for the laptop you no longer have, or the voltage- and milliamp-specific application you'll never need. The 4 SATA cables...etc.
Pare it down in order of likely need. You might need a couple USB cables and maybe a couple SATA cables, but you don't need 3 34-pin floppy drive ribbon cables.
At this point I think that I'm probably safe to get rid of my old cat3 cable, but I'm keeping everything else.
I am Smaug, and I will slumber in my mountain atop unfathomable cable riches.
My box of cables is with my ex. I hope to retrieve it one day.
I took the middle road: use cable zip ties to bundle them and put all in a bag. Since finding a cable is infrequent, you don't need to optimize for that case.
