Crawled an attic in July and found a nest of old RG-59 from the 80s

Was doing a rewire in a house built in '84. Pulled back the insulation and found a perfect coil of that old, thick cable. Must have been left by the original installer. The jacket was still soft, not brittle. Made me wonder how much of that stuff is still hidden in walls. Anyone else come across vintage installs like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

fox.jesse2mo ago

Yeah, it's like a little time capsule for the next guy.

blair_davis18d ago

Man, "time capsule for the next guy" really hits home. I left a whole mess of zip ties and a half-eaten bag of chips behind a drop ceiling at my old apartment and I bet someone found it and thought I was a total slob. Honestly, if I find a 40-year-old cable I'm probably just gonna feel bad for the guy who had to run it, because I've done that job and it's never as easy as it looks. I once left a whole note for the next person in a server rack saying "good luck, you'll need it" and I'm sure they cursed my name for a week. We're all just leaving little bits of our frustration behind for strangers to find. And yeah, 1984 guy probably thought he was being smart with that cable, and now we're just laughing at his old tech.

noahbaker2mo ago

Always makes me think about the people who put it there. Some guy in 1984, probably had no idea we'd be talking about his leftover cable forty years later.