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Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#81
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1000 did _exactly_ this right down to the ziploc. Also a bag for audio, HDMI, old apple cables, and "random" cables. These days, I store the ziplocs in a pelican-type case and that goes in a stack with cases for power cords, camera gear, SBC gear,etc - and the stacks all go on furniture dollies, so I can roll them out.

What bag does a cable with HDMI on one end and USB C on the other end go into?

That's still a topic of active debate

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#82
I periodically go through the big box of cables and pull out anything that I don't expect to ever need again.

I put those in another box, seal it completely, and write a message on the outside along the lines of "presumed useless - Sep 2016".

If I come across that box in, say, September 2026, I feel entirely comfortable tossing the whole thing.

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#83
I see those boxes at estate sales regularly. And on FB marketplace for free or $5. Or sometimes somebody thinks they're sitting on a gold mine of technological history and tries to ask actual money for a box of 20 year old tangles.

Sometimes hoarding stuff pays off. It's usually just hoarding.

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#84
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1000 did _exactly_ this right down to the ziploc. Also a bag for audio, HDMI, old apple cables, and "random" cables. These days, I store the ziplocs in a pelican-type case and that goes in a stack with cases for power cords, camera gear, SBC gear,etc - and the stacks all go on furniture dollies, so I can roll them out.

What bag does a cable with HDMI on one end and USB C on the other end go into?

It's own bag, it won't feel lonely for long :)

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#86
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to steal your idea. What ziploc baggie size have you found is best for cables?

Quart ziploc for most. A couple gallon sizes for longer or thicker cables.

And then there's the bags from Bed Bath & Beyond where they were made to hold giant pillows and blankets all together . . .

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#87
post #24

Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc. Grouping them is key to deduplicating. It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. And then you can get rid of... maybe 8 of them. I a…

>However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. My first thought was "awesome, what project can I start that uses ten of those cables?"

Did you come up with anything? Because I'm drawing a blank.

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#88
post #36

How on earth do you survive with just one big box of cables? I've got mine sorted into plastic storage boxes with labels, so things like 'Firewire' or 'Monitor' or 'SCSI' can get me to a particular box to sort through. I recently needed a SCSI-2 terminator to connect a CD-ROM drive to a 1990s sampler, and my box came up trumps. It's so pleasing when you find stuff like that...

A few years ago I had to use a pair of high-voltage to low-voltage differential SCSI converters to connect an external DEC TK50 tape drive to my PC, because while I had plenty of HD68-to-HD68 cables, and HD68-to-Centronics cables, and a wide variety of ISA and PCI SCSI HBAs (and probably a couple EISA and Micro Channel boards if I looked hard enough, and I seem to recall finding a VL bus SCSI HBA on a shelf at work a few years ago), the only PCIe SCSI HBAs I have are multichannel cards with VHDCI ports, and the only VHDCI cables I have are VHDCI-to-VHDCI and VHDCI-to-HD68.

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#89
post #24

Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc. Grouping them is key to deduplicating. It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. And then you can get rid of... maybe 8 of them. I a…

I grouped mine a few months ago. Since then, several times, I've been able to find a cable and use it right away. Before that the prospect of digging through the massive tangle often led me to (lazy!) order new cables.

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#90
post #24

Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc. Grouping them is key to deduplicating. It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. And then you can get rid of... maybe 8 of them. I a…

Welcome to the OCD lounge. I also put my cables into bags, which helps me sleep better at night.
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