On Mon, 13 May 2002, Douglas H. Quebbeman wrote:
> > My guess is that the reporter failed to grasp that they are probably
> > looking for milspec parts, as opposed to the common stuff found in PCs and
> > whatnot. These of course would be far harder to find in quantity.
> >
> > I don't doubt that they are also looking for regular parts for test
> > systems as well. I know they are using a lot of older systems. Last year
> > I did a data recovery job for them where the data was 8080 assembly code.
>
> God knows, reporters are idiots about everything except journalism,
> and who cares except another journalist. But this reporter made a
> point of stating that the stuff most people have in their basements
> doesn't qualify as NASA-sought-after...
But the stated reason was that they only want to buy in bulk, not onesies
and twosies.
> But clearly, as they buy only in bulk from "qualified"
> suppliers, no one on the list other than Sellam might
> have what they want in bulk.
This is true at least of what I do have in bulk. Hopefully one of their
ground systems relied on a Commodore 64. I can sell them a couple pallet
loads of those suckers ;)
> However, this could still put pressure on the supplies of
> stuff that we like to collect. Think about the effect as
> it propagates upstream...
Well, I'm not wont for any IBM PCs, but I'm sure there are some rare items
that they may be snapping up. I guess that means Joe will have first dibs
on a lot of cool stuff in about 10 years when NASA finally starts
obsoleting all this stuff.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Mon May 13 2002 - 17:48:00 BST