Comment by 🗿 argenkiwi

Feels like yesterday! I love that there are plenty of second hand stores where I can get DVDs and CDs for a dollar or two. And the kids relate so much better to this form of not- so-instant gratification.

Jan 08 · 11 months ago

6 Later Comments ↓

Well yeah. You put it in and it plays. No need to fumble with apps, logins, or searches.

I wish we had easy access to e-waste like that in the US. It seems everyone here either hoards their old devices, takes them to recycling centers for cash, or tries to sell them secondhand for way too much money. The only cheap devices are so heavily locked in as to be useless when the vendors stop supporting them.

@jsreed5 There are some decent deals to be had with off lease computers. I found a 13" MacBook Air from 2017 for about $175.

Interesting. I would have thought it would have been easy to get cheap or even free old gear in the US. I was born and raised in Argentina and it was not easy to come up with afordable second-hand electronics either. I guess NZ inherited a version of what the call Charity Shops in the UK.

All of our charity shops in the US put high value items like computers on auction sites to get the highest possible price. A long time ago you could get them at the local shops for quite cheap. Now it's all on eBay.

Yesterday I read a post on Reddit discouraging readers from donating retro-consoles to Goodwill because they would not sell them back to the community but rather put them on Ebay to maximise profit, just like you said.

Original Post

iMac 2007-2011 as retro-gaming and media centre with Batocera Linux — Where I live (Christchurch, NZ) there seems to be an incoming e-waste wave. I have managed to buy some old iMacs for next to nothing and turned them into Batocera systems. They can emulate console games up to PSX/PSP really well. The 2011 model seems to run PS2 games well as well. Batocera comes with Kodi, so I can also play DVDs for my kids as well as rip my CDs into it to manage my music collection. They still look great...