21 Apr
1997
21 Apr
'97
9:17 a.m.
On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, William Donzelli wrote:
Yeah, the Lawrence Livermore Labs here in California phased out their CRAY
I a couple years back and the high bidder was a scrap dealer who bought it
for...I forget how much. Either it was $10,000 or he expected to get
$10,000 out of the metals in it. At any rate, reading his quote in the
paper about what he would get after melting it down got me incensed.
If it does
become mainstream (though I doubt it will, not in the very near
future), we have another reason to be more aggressive in collecting. So far,
we're rescuing old iron, minis, micros and what not from the disgusting
tentacles of "computer recycling" and the dump.
I would like to point out that this attitude towards scrap dealers is
really unproductive to our efforts. I have noticed it several places on
this list.
Simply stated, scrap dealers are not the enemy! Some of my best goodies
have come straight out the junkyard. The secret is to get to know the
people doing the scrapping - some of them will turn out to be fine, just
uninformed. True, some are jerks that would stab their brother in the
back just to get a good deal, but most are simply out to make a good
living, being their own boss.
To them, the old minis are resources of gold, some chips, some aluminum
and tantalum, and misc. dirty metal. Most do not know that there are
people that cherish and collect the old gear. They are simply interested
Good point. I never thought to go to the scrap dealers and get a
relationship going. This is a terrific idea! I think I'll start
scouting them out this weekend.
Sam
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