Date   : Tue, 07 Mar 2006 10:27:57 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: Warning: Sad case on list!

David Hunt wrote:
>> mogwai wrote:
>>>>> I can't see why the 32016 SP on eBay would be duff,
>>> Its too late.. I'm going for it. Sick puppy that i am.. :-/
>> Was that you who got it? 102 quid - wow.
>>
>> I'm getting tempted to throw an ARM Eval kit on there and see what
>> happens!
> 
> Is it a personal sale, or surplus from Bletchley? 

Nope, one of mine - I've wound up with two, so I'm tempted to flog one (the 
other I'd like to see at Bletchley eventually, along with the rest of the 
Acorn stuff I've got)

I just have misgivings about selling one because I got both for free - 
although both were thrown out, so it's not like they were given to me by 
another collector or anything.

 > It would be a good way to
> raise some funds for the museum... I know Cambridge chucks out a hell of a
> lot of stuff, they could eBay it if they had some spare admin capacity...

Yep - that's the problem, it's just not worth their time testing + selling it, 
particularly with H+S rules these days. We've had masses of their Sun hardware 
for that reason - once the support contracts run out it's just junk to them. 
That's where our pair of E6500s came from, and they must have cost hundreds of 
thousands just a few years back.

In a way we're sort of in the same position with CBM PETs - we've got way more 
than we need, but it takes hours to clean them up, *properly* test them, fix 
any faults, list them, sort out delivery / pick up etc. It's something we need 
to do, but for the moment they're not going anywhere and there are a million 
more important things to do!

> Earn themselves some cash and save some equipment from landfill or being
> lost to us forever.

Sure - we definitely have a responsibility to rescue anything possible. 
Surplus / unwanteds tend to either get passed on to Swindon's computing museum 
or listed over on classiccmp...

The only exceptions really are dot matrix printers, PC junk, and the glut of 
LC-era Macs that seems to exist these days! Can't even give them away...

> I recall an ARM eval kit, 4Mb on eBay a few years back, it went for over
> £1,000. "I might have deep pockets, but they're only as long as my leg"

Wow. Seriously, wow. That's nuts!

I can't quite get my head around collectors who have that much cash to burn - 
I mean, if the thing's just going to go in a cupboard then it's a lot of cash, 
and if the thing's going to actually be used for experimentation you may as 
well pay someone to build a replica board for a fraction of that cost.

cheers

Jules