pdp 11s to be auctioned at Goddard

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire_at_neurotica.com>
Date: Wed Mar 21 11:28:32 2001

On March 21, Bill Sudbrink wrote:
> For those in the Washington DC area, the 3/29 auction will include
> several pdp 11s. Look at:
>
> http://sales.gsfc.nasa.gov/items.cgi?salenumber=80322620010016
>
> I've never been to one of these (I keep wanting to but can never seem
> to make the time), but I understand that stuff goes at scrap prices.

  I've been to several of these. While otherwise wonderful, these
auctions have classic "government auction" problems. You'll see, for
example, a lot consisting of three pallets of stuff...one will contain
a Dynabyte or something like that with ZERO cash value but that you'd
really love to get, and the rest of it will consist of 2.5 pallets of
dead VGA monitors. During the auction you'll find some guy who bids
the lot up to $3,000. Wondering why, you watch him loading it into
his truck at the end of the day...and underneath the dead VGA monitors
will be one HP 8566B spectrum analyzer or something like that, that he
will have ALREADY SOLD on his cell phone for $20,000.

  The bottom line is this...these types of auctions are great and lots
of fun, and people like us can get good stuff cheaply through them.
But keep in mind that there are hardened, experienced professionals
that show up for every one of these, and make a ton of money doing it.
If you get in their way, you will be steamrolled...that's all there is
to it.

  My intention is not to discourage anyone from going and trying...by
all means, go! Just watch out for the guys I talk about
above...you'll recognize them as soon as you see them start bidding.
And if you do go to this one, and happen to see an overweight guy with
big bushy brown hair, that's probably me. :)

  That said, I may try to make it out for that one. There are a few
RK07 drives in one lot as well...I love RK07s! :-)

          -Dave McGuire
Received on Wed Mar 21 2001 - 11:28:32 GMT

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