DEC & HP available - a trip to an infrequented collecting spot in stlouis

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Fri Jun 11 18:58:34 2004

I had an opportunity to visit my absolute favorite spot in St. Louis for old
puter stuff. It's definitely not open to the public and the opportunity came
to get in today so I went. I found some stuff that may well be of listmember
interest.

First. Pallets and Pallets of DEC disk drives... RD52, RD53, RD54, etc. I
even found a case (about 8 drives) that were RD54's that were new or
refurbed and STILL SEALED in antistatic bags. There were several mounting
trays and rails for these drives, sealed in bags too. There was also some
other drives that were RZxx, I don't remember the xx part, and they looked
just like RD53's do.

Two DEC LA120s (very yellowed)

A pallet of IBM selectrics.

A really nice microvax cabinet, but it had been stripped of all cards.

A bunch of 1/2 mag tapes, 6250bpi , still in original seal.

A few HP line printers... don't remember the model... but they are pretty
big. Maybe 4 feet tall, about 8 buttons on the top. Looked to be in good
condition. Freestanding units built inside a cabinet with wheels. I have
seen and sold these before but I'm drawing a blank on the model. I am
guessing around 1987 era? This model is known as a tank/workhorse.

An odd dec item I've never seen... it was something like TA90Z... I figure
it was a tape drive. Pretty huge. But on the front through the cabinet
cutout were the buttons I'm familiar with on 14" drives - run, stop, fault,
drive ID plug, etc. And in the front was a recess where a removable
hand-held keypad unit sat. This hand held unit had like 40 or so buttons on
it, almost looked like a diagnostic keypad or something. Odd.

There was a nice dec rack with something in it that looked like a disk
drive... HSC... something. Didn't get too close of a look.

A few HP lowboy cabinets, and some 7980S tape drives.

Several microfiche readers that looked in good shape.

I spent a lot of time talking to the owner, and sucessfully built a rapport.
I'm welcome to come back any time, and they'll let me just walk through.
They also agreed to call me when stuff comes in that may be of interest so I
can have a looksee before it's torn apart. The "big iron" stuff listed above
they will let go very cheap. However, the RDxx drives they know get some
amount of money on ebay, so those they will not let go dirt cheap.

If anyone is interested in any of this, let me know. They will be moving
buildings before too long and want to get rid of as much as possible so they
don't have to move as much. That means their motivated to get rid of the
heavy stuff cheap. I'm also curious just what that TA90Z thing was.

Jay
Received on Fri Jun 11 2004 - 18:58:34 BST