Never again

One time I had an ex ask me for some obscure cable that I happened to have. We went over to my cable drawer and as I pulled it out she said "Why do you have this drawer of random cables?"

FOR THIS EXACT PURPOSE BECCA YOU BITCH

You never know where you'll be when you need a mini-B usb to 30 pin apple sync cable.

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)

My wife had her finger nail grinder break and it turned out to be the power adapter. It was an obscure 9.6V. guess who had it in my box.

She still complains about my box, but that night she complained a little less.

Been there, done that...tossed the hd with crypto....

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.

Microcenter is the answer. But never ever give up the box. One day you may need to daisychain VGA to DVI to HDMI through a series of adapters.

Bro I literally just used 2 of my cables from the cable box today. Never giving that up.

This is natures way of punishing you for defiling and disrespecting the box.

The Box should always be kept, and respected, lest it bring ruin to your household.

A few months ago I FINALLY organized my cluttered box of miscellaneous technology and cables into one of those plastic bin drawers with wheels. I now know what I have and can keep it all fairly organized. Found some stuff I could've thrown out, but this post just told me not to. So thanks!

Work at retirement home doing tech. My drawer has grown to a closet of old cords.

It pays off weekly. Too many people with too many different generations of tech. Never know what you'll run into.

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.

I lugged a box of cables around for 10 years without ever needing one. I finally decided that I was being foolish and donated all of them. Literally the next day I needed one.

Beginner move, you go through the box, check all cables, and do one of two things:

1. Get rid of all duplicates but keep one of each type of cable.

2. 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.

If you've got the money, and just want to reduce clutter, get some adapters for existing standards like USB-C cables instead.

I have multiple Micro USB, Micro-B, Audio Jack, and Lightning cable adapters that take up less space than one single USB-C cable.

I have all my cables zip ties and in labelled clear bags and grouped by cable type into larger bags. It's like my own store inventory, I love it.

You never know when you might need a PS/2 to DIN convertor!

Of course you'll never be able to find the one you need in the moment, so will end up ordering one for about £3 from Amazon.

I have several boxes of these that I'll never let go, but I have to admit, I ditched the SCSI cables at one point and have no regrets.

I’m sure I’ll never need all 4 of the SCART cables I have, but then maybe I will so I’ll hang onto them just in case.

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.

This has happened to me, which is why I now have an entire section of a cupboard dedicated to parts and cables. I'm not entirely sure an ISA card would ever be needed today, but you never know!!!

It’s okay, you wouldn’t be able to locate it in that tangled ball anyway.

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. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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.

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.

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.)

I continue to carry a box (well, currently it's in three shoeboxes, technically) of cables, some of which are roughly as old as I am

Label and bind cables, throw them into a big plastic bin with lid, label the lid with contents. Repeat as necessary.

Amateur radio checking-in: the cables and adapters are just the beginning. There is no "box"—it's simply "storage"

I got around this by keeping several USB-C to USB-C cables around, and buying female USB-C to male whatever adapters. Doesn't cover everything, but enough that I got rid of a small crate full of cables and only have to keep a half-dozen or so other cables.

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.

My spouse the other night: "Where is the camera?"

Me: "In your phone?".

Apparently we have a digital camera, which I'm sure we have no way to connect to our current computers, and he is convinced someone stole it even though it's from like 2004.

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.

I threw away my weird cables when I moved two years ago. How fucked is future me?

It’s settled then. The VGA cable stays.

The cable knot must grow.

Just when I was summoning the courage to throw mine out!

It'll be a cold day in hell before I give up my cable box.

I'll need this LPT cable eventually, then you'll see. You'll all see.

My box of cables shall be passed down through the generations!

Still got mine

Tip: Organize the cords into ziplock bags so they can't tangle. The freezer bags are thick enough to handle the prongs on power bricks.

You can also label and date the bags so if you decide to go against all the wisdom of the gods and do a purge of old cables.

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.

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

All my cables are USB-C and then I have a box full of adapters. Works like a charm, takes up less space.

I am Smaug, and I will slumber in my mountain atop unfathomable cable riches.

My box of cables is with my ex. I hope to retrieve it one day.

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.

At this point I think that I'm probably safe to get rid of my old cat3 cable, but I'm keeping everything else.

Yes. The correct approach is to get rid of all the cables that are not needed, and to keep the few cables that might come in handy. Throwing away a collection in bulk is risky.

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.

I have plenty of duplicate cables. Pretty sure I don't need all of them so I can throw out most of them and just keep one of each.

Pretty sure I don't need a SCART to VGA cable but doesn't take that much space up.