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)
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....
No one f’ing dare touch my box of obscure cables and stupid converters I’ll probably never use !
It's true. That box has the utility of the highest utility cable in it. Which means it's a lot. Worth taking up space under a bed you aren't using. Anti-horder culture goes too far. It's more complicated than dogmatically throwing away everything or keeping everything. Don't throw away things with real utility. Civilization is built on accumulated utility in durable goods.
After switching to solar DC and batteries I suddenly cared a lot more about ac/dc power inverters needlessly wasting my limited energy supply.
Slowly I figured out how to power my devices without ac outlets. Mercifully 5v,9v,12v,19v at 1-5A are pretty standard values for most lower powered DC appliances.
A good DC barrel plug 5.5mm universal adapter kit, a usbc-PD adapter cable with manually selectable voltage levels to 5.5mm barrel plug, and a car plug to dc barrel plug universal adapter kit have taken good care of 95% of my adapter woes.
It feels sooo good to figure out how to power something directly with USBC and see the wattage drawn get cut down significantly.
Whats my point? If people knew a little bit more about the finer details of power supplies and dc barrel plugs most of their box of junk cables could be phased out with confidence. If you have 20 year old electronics with some weird incredibly specific voltage and barrel plug I would heavily consider just getting a new version that runs on usbc-pd or a more standard power rating. And if I ever need an old video cable? You'd better believe amazon and eBay still got it.
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.
Beginner move, you go through the box, check all cables, and do one of two things:
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Get rid of all duplicates but keep one of each type of cable.
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Catalog and label all cables in the box, make a list of all cables including their numbers. List all known devices that use them, index their usefullness based on how many devices you know use them and how long ago it was that you needed them. The more usefull the cable the more copies you keep, but you allways keep one type.
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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.
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.
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. 🤦🏻♂️
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.)
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.
Amateur radio checking-in: the cables and adapters are just the beginning. There is no "box"—it's simply "storage"
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.
The cable knot must grow.
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.
Still got mine
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.
My cable needs aren't so obscure yet that monoprice doesn't work. Of course, maybe monoprice is just that good, IDK.
My box of cables is with my ex. I hope to retrieve it one day.
I am Smaug, and I will slumber in my mountain atop unfathomable cable riches.
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 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
Permanently Deleted
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.
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.
