I received an email from a client recently letting me know that one of their desktop computers had been exposed to quite a bit of water when a pipe burst in the wall next to where the computer sat on the floor. Now they were unable to 'control' the computer with the wireless mouse or keyboard. They stated they had tried every USB port on the system without any success. My first thought was that this system was not long for this world and that they were unlikely going to be able to use the computer. Either way, they wanted me to come to the office and have a look. My thought process was to check the bios when the computer boots, but then I remembered that without a working keyboard there was no way to load the bios. I needed to be able to click DEL or F10 in order to load the bios. Then I remembered that I had an old keyboard in my basement and I think it used a PS2 connector. So I headed downstairs and check the part of my basement that holds various objects and collections of items that should probably have already made the trip to the local dump. I grabbed the keyboard and turned it over to see that lavender connector at the end of the cable wound around it. I smiled to myself and thought, aren't I a clever-clogs ( I have a 6 and 8-year-old). When I arrived at my client's office I was able to plug in the PS2 keyboard, restart the computer and access the bios to check the USB setup. In the end, the computer survived its brush with death-by-water and I was able to relocate the wireless keyboard and mouse USB receivers to working ports on the back of the machine.
I've been a collector of older and past-its-prime computers and devices over the almost 20 years that I've been providing I.T. support for small offices. Lately, I've been purging just to simplify my life and free up storage space for other things, but there is still some older technology that can be very useful to keep around for times just like this.