MIT Swapfest (was: DEC at MIT)

From: John Allain <allain_at_panix.com>
Date: Thu Jun 24 08:38:38 2004

> Interesting. I've been attending MIT Flea for 10 years, and
> was just lamenting with friends about how nothing resembling
> "vintage stuff" even appears there anymore -

The MIT, as with other flea markets that I've seen has a sweet spot of
6 year old equipment, plus or minus 3 years, that can be found.
( 20 years ago it might have been 8 +/- 4 )
When the thing you're looking for is older than that, it was tough
even before eBay. This lesson I learned, hard, with a desired
IBM 5100.

The Suns and Macs mentioned this month can be augmented with
a 1990 Canon video still camera, and large quantities of Alphas
and SGI's seen last time out, all of which will be gone gone gone
in 10 years.

John A.
Received on Thu Jun 24 2004 - 08:38:38 BST