> From: Rob Jarratt
> I got this:
> ...
> For security, please keep all communication through the eBay message
> system.
Well, that bit sounds positive.
And the feedback sounds good, but 56 items is a bit low - I've heard of scams
where people do a number of small items to build up a feedback, then 'cash
in'.
Overall - I dunno. I'd try asking eBay - 'I've gotten a slightly odd
second-chance offer from this person. Is this legit?'.
Noel
Gentlepeople,
I have a Philips logic analyzer (PM3585) which is about 20 years old at this point. It seems to be basically functional except for the keyboard, which unfortunately is a critical part.
This is one of those molded rubber type, with a circuit board behind the rubber that has contact areas made of carbon film (at least they are black in color) and on the back of each key a small cylindrical bump also coated with carbon. Some of the buttons work but most don't seem to even if I press hard.
I've disassembled the keyboard, which was easy enough. Inspection shows no damage and no signs of corrosion or contamination. I wiped everything with isopropyl alcohol anyway. The result is no change in behavior.
Any suggestions for what to do next?
paul
> From: Fred Cisin
> Adding additional OR'ed terms (eBay does OR with comma delimited list
> in parentheses) sometimes results in FEWER hits, when that SHOULD
> always give more hits
A similar one is that adding more terms (i.e. AND) sometimes turns up things
that didn't turn up before. I guess this 'PDP-11 parts' failure is an example
of that.
> The change of category is reprehensible.
Yeah, it was pretty irritating - I just happened to notice it by chance,
and then for a long time had to manually re-search. It seems to have gone
away (at least on 'pdp-11') in the last few days, though?
Oh, and the corollary (which people with brains faster than mine probably
already realized :-): if you list something (epecially expensive!), wait a
bit and do a search on the obvious terms that people are likely to use - if
it doesn't turn up, cancel and try again (maybe with a slightly different
title).
Noel
> From: Ali
> the real winning price. Basically on second chance he is offering you
> your highest bid price (the one that lost out to the original bad
> bidder). What it should really be is if that guy didn't exist what
> would have been the winning bid?
Good point. That _is_ a bad sign. The seller might not have thought it
through (they do after all only have a feedback of 50, so they don't have
that much experience), and maybe they just made a mistake. But it might be a
scammer/shill who used a high shill bid to find out your top.
(And maybe the 'only use eBait comms' thing was just a double bank shot to
take in people like me...'he says that so he must be honest').
Noel
> From: js
> I've seen similar behavior before, and other search problems. At one
> point in time, eBay's search engine worked just fine. Then, a number of
> years ago, they revised their - supposedly making it 'smarter' - and
> ever since then, it hasn't worked as well
That's troubling. I wonder if there are any heuristics one/we can apply to
work around this failure? We can't really add a zillion different words
('parts', etc) to searches in an attempt to work around this bug.
I'd previously noticed that searches for 'pdp-11' turned up things with
'pdp11' in the title, so they apparently internally drop the '-'. (Google
does a similar thing.) I just tried, and searching for '"pdp-11"' (i.e. exact
multi-word match, which I use for '"Digital Equipment"') still turns up
'pdp11' items. Case ('PDP-11' versus 'pdp-11') doesn't seem to matter
either.
On a whim, I tried searching for '"pdp-11" "pdp-11"' (i.e. just repeated the
keyword), and this time it _did_ turn it up! Very odd. I wonder why that made
a difference? Well, I guess I'll just have to add that to my list of searches.
Until the next one...
Interestingly, this does blow up one theory that I had about what caused the
failure. I had assumed they have lots of threaded lists, with e.g. all 'foo'
items on a list from a 'foo' header, and when given a search for 'foo bar'
they'd just go to the 'foo' list and run down it looking for items with
'bar'. So my theory was that there'd been an error, and the item in question
never made it onto the 'pdp11' list; the 'pdp-11 parts' search found it via
the 'parts' list.
But I have no potential explanation at all how '"pdp-11" "pdp-11"' found it!
FWIW, 'pdp11 pdp11' worked too. Bizarre.
Noel
> From: js
> To take a suggestion from your playbook, I'd try asking eBay - 'I'm
> getting incorrect search results. Why?'
Yeah, that would be something to try, but I was wary of stirring up trouble -
eBay might decide to void the sale, etc. Maybe I should.
My message to this list was as much a warning, as it was a query if anyone
had any idea why this was happening, or if they'd seen similar behaviour
before.
Noel
Hi folks - hope there's a history buff out there that can help me please.
Google has not been my friend or I'm just searching wrong.
I am trying to ascertain what the last computer released by Tandy/Radio Shack was that had the TRS-80 name on it (as opposed to
later machines that used the name Tandy).
I think it was the CoCo 3 in 1986 but I'm trying to nail down the (official) day and month of release (assuming that I'm right and
it was the CoCo 3).
Thank you!!
Kevin Parker
How bad do you want the item? If you can live without it message the seller through eBay and offer him the real winning price. Basically on second chance he is offering you your highest bid price (the one that lost out to the original bad bidder). What it should really be is if that guy didn't exist what would have been the winning bid??
So say three of you guys bid as follows:A: 201 (bad bidder)B: 200 (you)C: 102 (some other guy)
Seller is offering you 200 as second chance but the real winning bid is 104.50.
Of course if you really want/need the item then you are SOL.
One note there is one special ahole out there based in Italy but sells with listing listed in Europe and Alaska. Has a number of handles (scroogemcduckbonaparte, dagobertduckbonaparte, paperonebonaparte, amongst others). He is a pure scamming thief and does shill bid.
Come on people, please i) try doing some actual research to see if theories
hold water, don't just quickly post, and ii) read prior posts thoroughly.
Searching for "pdp-11" (where the "'s are to indicate what's in the search
box, and are _not_ typed into the search box) turns up a host of items - all
PDP-11, and none PDP-8, so it's not searching for "PDP -11".
And as I have pointed out several times already, searching for "PDP-11 parts"
in sold items turns it up, despite there being a "-" in the middle of a search
term).
Noel
I bid on something, 1 hour later I got this:
Due to eBay reporting the highest bidder as a spammer this item is now
available at your last bid price of xxxxx. If you would like to purchase it
please arrange payment and collection. If you're not interested I would
appreciate a quick message as there is another person who is interested if
the item is still available. For security, please keep all communication
through the eBay message system.
And then an hour or so later I got:
Hi (Again) eBay playing strange games removing item after sending second
chance offer!! I've been advised by eBay to re-send this as they removed the
item because I didn't cancel the transaction from the original suspicious
buyer that they had already cancelled the bids from and sent a MC067 notice.
Can you believe it??? So sorry for the duplication, but this is a genuine
second chance offer. If you are interested (or not), please let me know
either way as I have another person interested, but thought it only fair to
give you first refusal.
Feedback is 100% on 56 items.
I am not good at understanding all the possible scams, and I know others
here are.
Regards
Rob
