TI Professional Computer and "Smart Shopping"

I'll have to add my voice to the geek chorus here ;-) Buying random hardware out of a mountain of spares at a hamfest is one thing, but getting a used S-100 FOOBAR at the local Red, White, and Blue is another. No store owner with any notion of what liability means is going to let some random come in and start attaching probes to a motherboard even if the store owner should happen to understand the difference between AC, DC, and Metallica ;-), let alone to a power supply or monitor. I've definitely bought used systems over the years that I've said "I should have looked" when I got them home and found blown caps, melted wires, skunked power supplies, and even dead rodents inside. Once I get them home, I always open them up before powering them on. You hopefully only experience the "OhNo" second once in your collecting career (the first second after you turn something on, it smokes, and you think "Oh no.") My general philosophy for such things is "parts is parts." I've frequently bought pieces of systems or docs and software for systems I didn't even own - eventually, when I find another one or the rest of one, I'll be that much closer to a working system. It'd be nice to be able to always know what you're buying. When I bought my wife our first Jaguar (er, the car, not the game system), how was I to know that one of the gas tanks was rusty and they were both welded inside the body? I wasn't happy then, but now it seems funny. Much like buying our first house - the owners had all of these hardcore born-again signs all through the house. Would they lie about things? Absolutely. Was I irritated then? Definitely. Do I still care now? Definitely not. As I read back over this, maybe I'm just advertising the fact that I'm not a smart shopper. Having confessed, does anyone have any 1980s vintage workstations they're looking to get rid of? I would still give my eyeteeth for a WCW or Hitec workstation, and could always use more NBI U!s or ISIs. Any condition is OK (and I think you see that I mean that!). I'll be glad to pay shipping from almost anywhere. Bill t 01:39 PM 6/10/00 -0400, Glenatacme(a)aol.com wrote: