For those in
the Washington DC area, the 3/29 auction will include
several pdp 11s. Look at:
http://sales.gsfc.nasa.gov/items.cgi?salenumber=80322620010016
I've never been to one of these (I keep wanting to but can never seem
to make the time), but I understand that stuff goes at scrap prices.
I've been to several of these. While otherwise wonderful, these
auctions have classic "government auction" problems. You'll see, for
example, a lot consisting of three pallets of stuff...one will contain
a Dynabyte or something like that with ZERO cash value but that you'd
really love to get, and the rest of it will consist of 2.5 pallets of
dead VGA monitors. During the auction you'll find some guy who bids
the lot up to $3,000. Wondering why, you watch him loading it into
his truck at the end of the day...and underneath the dead VGA monitors
will be one HP 8566B spectrum analyzer or something like that, that he
will have ALREADY SOLD on his cell phone for $20,000.
In your expirence, and using the above example, could you approach the guy
and make an offer for the Dynabyte or will he get pissy or greedy?