I found, for example, the C-64, its attendant disk drives, and all the software. Said floppies are probably only fit for use as coasters, but one can hope that the data is still intact and accessible. We won't know until I hook it up, which isn't going to happen this week.
I found my videotapes of the three Indiana Jones movies, bought from McDonald's as part of a holiday promotion in 1990 or 1991. (Buy a combo meal, get one of the movies for $8 on VHS. I bought all three in the space of a week.)
I found several textbooks which I will never, never, ever need again--control systems and communications. While I may someday go back to school, I will never use those textbooks again, because they are already two decades obsolete. (Hint: there was a picture showing an example of a cellular telephone. It was a handset attached to a briefcase-sized unit, which was state-of-the-art in 1989.)
Also found in the same box: Borland Turbo Pascal reference manuals, and a C++ programming guide. Both those books were written for DOS 5.0; enough said. I haven't written any programs more complicated than simple WoW scripts since 1997 and if I ever decide to program something I'm going to have to start from scratch anyway, so I tossed them all.
So I made a big pile of junk to toss, a smaller pile of electronics to recycle, and an even smaller pile of donatables. One of the latter is a fully functioning Norcent DVD player, which--again--I will never use, as I've got some three or four other DVD players which are of much higher quality and feature HDMI outputs.
I also found some of my older writing, stuff that I thought hadn't been printed. It had; it was put into banker's boxes, in file folders, and carefully stored off the floor. This makes me happy, because I'm going to want to have a gander at all that stuff. Eventually I'm going to have an actual office where I do all my writing, and I'll want to have this stuff in filing cabiniets so I can refer to it as needed.
One of the things I've been meaning to recycle is the old Compaq Presario 1230 laptop. It's vintage 1998 and I'm not going to use it any more, not even as a diagnostic terminal for the Fiero, so it's time to let it go. Right now it's next to my computer desk because I want to try booting it before I pull the hard drive and toss the remainder on the recycle pile.
So I've got a big pile of stuff to take to the store tomorrow, to put on the "recycle" stack. I'm even getting rid of my HP scanner since I haven't used the thing in seven years, not since I got Cephiro and discovered that HP hadn't bothered to write drivers for Vista. (Asshats.)
Until I know what I'm doing with it, the box for the blab slab is being stored in the garage. There's room for it out there and I need the room in the basement to move stuff around. But I don't want to toss it, because if I have to transport the 'slab long distance (farther than a few miles) I'll probably want to put it into its box.
In short, then, I got a sizable pile of junk out of the basement tonight, and it took me a little less than an hour to do it.
Whee!