I'm about a week late on this, but out of the blue, Devon mailed me some old tech! Devon was in Somnolescent not too long ago, but it became a fairly acrimonious split and it bummed all of us out in the end. She reached out to me about two weeks ago with an offer, though—to send me, while I'm still in Europe and thus while it's still a hell of a lot cheaper, a working Wacom Intuos 1 (from 1998!). A digital camera I'd never heard of with a still working website called the Mustek MDC 3000, which seems to date to 2002 or so, got added to the mix in us chatting.
I was initially hesitant, not because she's her, but because I've already been having doubts as to how I can fit everything I'm bringing back from the trip, now including a laptop-sized Intuos, into my suitcase (namely two stupidly-gigantic plushie Paddingtons for myself and dcb :craig:). In the end, though, I did say yes because they sounded fun to play with.
They came surprisingly quickly for coming international! Devon packs things absurdly well too, with many layers of cardboard inners, bubble wrap, and packing tape wrapping the whole box. We suspect that she thought someone might try to drop it from a helicopter. Of course, good packing is always appreciated, since you know what couriers can be like.
In the end, the Intuos and Mustek were both fully working, though the only CF card I currently have is on PhotoCam duty. It's hard getting used to a digitizer tablet again! (Digitizer tablets were called that since you were meant to attach paper sketches to them and trace over them to digitize them onto a computer. This is in contrast to a screen tablet, like the XP-Pen Caby got me for Christmas.) It wasn't that long ago that I was still using my old Wacom Bamboo, but it's super tricky trying to regain the hand-eye coordination. That said, the Intuos 1 is surprisingly still a really good tablet for being older than I am, and even more surprising, Wacom themselves still officially offer the software needed to get them working on Windows 10.
I did initially think that I would be able to turn this and Caby's new ThinkPad into a sketching machine for Art Fight while she was using the big tablet, but that ultimately didn't pan out, and I figure it'd be better to get used to this tablet in a more comfortable, proper desk environment at home than try to get something going on her bed. I'm really curious to try out the Mustek also, I'll have to find a trip to take it out on.
And yes, Devon is doing better these days, which is very nice to hear. I'm always happy to patch things up with just about anyone I've ever spoken to if they're interested in that, not just because they send me neat old tech toys to play with.
Thanks again, Devon! DMs are always open if you wanna chat music or something.
