IBM 3420 008 Magnetic tape storage on eBay -- needs rescue

William Donzelli wrote: I educated a scrapper, and bought a data center from him as a result about 15 years ago. The sad fact is that there is no where near enough of us to soak up all the old mainframe gear out there, and there is no way I could think to take all the equipment that has to go away from business operations and try to offer an alternative, so that is just the fact of life. There are not many functional 3420s, and these are pretty sad. I had 8 of them, and I had an IBM CE tell me that I'd have the most headaches with them of all the gear I collected. I sold the pile I had, and I don't know if they have gotten them going, but I suspect they will have to either have a lot of luck and patience, or a retired IBMer to help, or they will just shred a lot of tape. Remember they can read forward at 200ips, and rewind at an incredible rate. They have very large DC motors which if off a tiny amount will cause real bad things to happen to your tape. I have drifted off my topic here, but the bottom line is these were nice for parts as the seller said, but they were no prize. I would not cry a lot once one of these or the DASD got this damaged to see it get ground up, as parts Jim