1 Sep
2004
1 Sep
'04
2:20 a.m.
Rumor has it that Ronald Wayne may have mentioned these words:
On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 15:53:27 -0400, Ed Kelleher
<pres(a)macro-inc.com> wrote:
That's easy for you to say -- you probably live in a decently populated
area. In the area that *I* live in, almost 50% of the classic computers in
the area are owned by 2 people, a friend of mine and me. And the rest, are
basically unavailable. (Believe you me, I found a guy with a couple of
Amiga 1200s he *said* he wanted to part with -- that was 5 years ago, and
I've yet to see a machine or him. I've sent *several* reminders through
"friends of friends" with no response.
If there's something I need relatively quickly, ePay is the only way to
fly. If it's something secondary, this list and my Tandy Model 100 list
have proven *much* more fruitful than any local hunting grounds... and I've
tried. Lemme tell ya, I've tried.
Most complaints I think are just sour grapes.
:-)
Sour I may be, but there were plenty of sources of neat computer
"junk" before eBay. And I liked those sources, thank-you very much.
They cultivated a sense of patience and appreciation. In my books, collecting old computer stuff has as much
to do with the
hunt as anything else.
I'd have better luck hunting pink elephants. Booze is pretty easy to find
in this town...
If the hunt is turned into a keyword search
and instant gratification, it looses its appeal. Why? I think it's
because you learn a lot more about computers while hunting them down
than you do with them at your finger tips.
I learn a *lot* more working with the computers, than I ever learned about
hunting for one. I looked for a VAX for a few years, and learned *very
little* about them; as there were very few people here locally who'd eve
*heard* of them, let alone knew anything about them. Once I had gotten one
(well, several) I actually started learning how to use the durned thing.
But that's just my take on things. I realize that regionally situations can
be very different - it's just in my region, life in the classic computer
world sucks. ePay helps fill a void that can't be filled here by a little
hunting.
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate."
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch(a)30below.com |