It's the old 'uns that are best
Like some stuffed pet, my old 286 PC has lay dormant for years, its yellowing carcass hiding the equally petrified 300-baud modem nestled deep in its bosom.
That it used to be quicker to drop a letter round by foot than send an email was never a problem. There was always something satisfying about watching the amber monitor suffer electronic convulsions as it battled with Kermit or some equally arcane protocol.
As with watching others work, the more frenetic the activity the more gratifying the spectacle, surpassed in excitement only when you did actually transmit a message - which left you experiencing euphoria on a par with scoring at Wembley or with Melinda Messenger (fat chance).
Even when my 286 had to be updated for a new machine, I couldn't bring myself to part with it. Surely, I reasoned, some parts including its once magnificent 640K memory could be reutilised, even if nowadays your average amoeba would turn up its proboscis.
But as with old cars left to rust, none of this came to pass and so the 286 has garnered cobwebs in the corner, sharing its ignominy with a broken Betamax videoplayer - a sort of technological soulmate.
At least that's been the case until now. But suddenly, I sense resurrection in the offing, not just for my 286 but for all those old Sinclair Spectrums, BBC Basics, Acorns etc. On a higher plane even Digital Vaxes and System 36s could come into their own again, and not just as museum ware. For it seems the IT industry has just woken to the fact that digital data is not as permanent as once thought: historic Viking space records held on magnetic tape have been lost thanks to deterioration, as have vital Vietnam war files.
Even modern CD-Roms, it is suggested, will probably hold their data for only five or so years, while floppies, hard disks and sundry high-density cartridges are similarly proving vulnerable to Old Father Time and his binary bin bags. Compounding matters is that, even if the storage medium remains intact, unravelling its secrets can prove elusive if there are few computers surviving with appropriate operating systems, drives or applications.
But if you're a canny dealer with still some of those old bits of kit left, there's a golden opportunity now to forge a new business giving old files the kiss of life in the same way some firms rescue data from crashed hard disks. The more obsolete the file format, the more premium the recovery service - and best of all, using kit about to be ditched or costing peanuts.
On my 286 I've still got Lotus Symphony in working order, not to mention senile versions of WordStar and Sidekick. And I can also read those old, saucer-sized floppies. Just send 30 quid and I'll happily convert any relevant files.
What's more, I'll even chuck in the 286 for free, though don't expect the Bakelite plug. That's going for auction.
Dave Evans is a freelance IT journalist.