--- Bill Sudbrink <wh.sudbrink_at_verizon.net> wrote:
> I wasn't able to go. Does anyone have any tales
> of great classiccmp finds? Or any other stories?
>
I went, and I was somewhat disappointed. I didn't
expect much in the way of classic computing stuff and
my expectations were met (but I didn't manage to get
to Marvin Johnson's booth). There wasn't much classic
stuff from the 80's, much less the 70's. What there
was, was a lot of garbage PC stuff that really WAS
garbage. Seriously. I could garbage pick better stuff
in Atlanta than these guys were trying to sell. Honest
to God. You'd think they had spare parts from the
Space Shuttle.
There were some used test equipment vendors there;
apparently, they hadn't heard of eBay (or they were
hoping that their customers hadn't); trust me, you
could do much better on eBay and in some cases with
better guarantees.
On the parts front, I scored a few things, MECI had
some good deals on racks and UPS's - IF you could find
a way to get them to your car. I heard grumblings from
others that this was a very difficult thing to do,
even if you had a wagon or cart. I would not even TRY
to buy anything big unless you brought a cart and at
least one friend. A battery vendor had such good
prices at the show that you could make money selling
on eBay (too bad these were show prices only).
All in all, for my purposes, I think I would have
better spent the day at MECI's warehouse!
I thought the ticket price was high for what was
basically a very large swap meet with a very small
program, parking was really bad, and the show was
surprisingly disorganized and unprofessional
considering the high expense of admission (however,
I've never been to one of these, so my expectations
might have been unreasonable). The few "official"
personnel I found didn't know anything about the site
and had no maps (the only maps I found were illegibly
small). There were no obvious markers, banners, etc
for the outside vendor rows.
I was this close to buying a few small switchers for a
project, until I picked one up and water came pouring
out of it (it had rained pretty hard the day before
and overnight). Not worth it.
Hey, but other than that, it was great!
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
http://launch.yahoo.com
Received on Mon May 20 2002 - 13:30:13 BST