Evil Lurker Won, Gets His Parts

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Tue Jun 27 15:13:59 2000

At 03:13 PM 6/27/00 -0400, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
>Chuck was right about the guy that won the bid on
>the MicroPDP-11/73... the buyer's name is Chris
>Hoaglin, and all he is interested in is f*cking
>up a working computer to end up with parts he
>can sell to fund his greedy little schemes. He
>wants the backplane and all the cards. I wish the
>seller would have said NO, but that was not to be.

I'm sorry but I can't agree with the sentiment here. Chris and people like
him are very valuable to this community, they will often have parts in
their warehouses that can bring a new acquistion back to life after a long
period of dormancy. This is one of the other aspects of Ebay that hasn't
really been debated to death, which is that the people who make their
living selling replacement/refurbished/used parts to keep older computers
alive "discovered" Ebay not so long ago and suddenly the price of piece
parts went up. I know of at least half a dozen folks who are DEC resellers
(some even reading this list) that recognize an "ebay" bargain as such and
act on it. Let's take for example Mitch Miller from Keyways, he sells DEC
stuff (www.keyways.com) and he buys stuff on Ebay. Now Mitch quotes the
price of an M8043 (last time I asked) at $125. I watched him buy four for
$50 on Ebay. That is a really good deal for him. (Not so good for me)
However, I do know that if I absolutely had to have one I could call up
Mitch and he would send me one at some high price. Money == Time.

However, knowing that this is true (resellers haunting ebay) I knew that
"your" 11/73 would not be yours for less than about $75 (value of the parts
in side of it) Although why he wanted the backplane I can't figure.

On an unrelated note, I've got a 5' tall DEC rack (black and tan, door in
the back) available for "free" FOB Sunnyvale California. Like most things,
while it is in great shape it probably isn't worth the cost of shipping it
unless you _really, really_ need an official DEC rack. It was half of a DEC
Channel Server and has a coax patch panel inside of it. (which you can have
or leave behind, your choice, but if you take the coax patch panel you must
also take the rack, themz the rulez)

--Chuck
Received on Tue Jun 27 2000 - 15:13:59 BST