This old laptop got a bit of a work out today, an old Broderbund (Brøderbund?) Living Books of "Just Grandma and Me" kept some young relatives entertained for over a half hour, all while running on battery power. Not a bad use of old technology.
A minor issue with running off of a card in the PCMCIA (People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms) slot, is how do I eject the card when I want to copy files to it? If the laptop is booted from the PC card, I can't. If it's off, I can't. Now, those of you used to PC's would think ejecting would be trivial, but the PC card slots on a Mac of this era are motorized. So I can't get the card to spit out without a paperclip. Otherwise, I'm not sure so far it's really any faster than the internal disk. It is nice and easy storage to move things back and forth. I think a stopwatch and startup would be the only good way to tell for sure.
Read an extended article today about the restoration of a Macintosh TV. I also was reminded via some links of running GPS on my old newton 2100...at the time (the early-mid 2000's), the GPS card was expensive, rare, very slow, but it was unique, and that made it a cool. A very quick cursory glance at ebay reveals several compact flash GPS cards that were reasonably priced, I need to do some more research, which naturally involves acquring a Newton. For like the fifth or sixth time.
It reminds me somewhat of electronic drums. I've owned I think 4 different sets over the years, the same models mostly at different times, but I through cycles of "I never use that, I should get rid of it," which, later on, is followed by "I miss that thing." Lather, rinse repeat. Aside from the v-drums and the Newton I dont' know if I have any alternate examples, but maybe old Macs is the example. Owned a color classic before, want a color classic again. I have some of the same Lego sets as when I was a kid. Am I stuck in some kind of weird childhood loop? Or just exploiting sales markets I have some level of knowledge in?
Guitar-wise I've never sold my main guitar so I've never gone through this cycle, but I could see it happening. It has happened with a car, my old mk2 VW Jetta. I guess I DO have this cycle. I wonder what it means.