Surplus auctions and classic computers

At 10:09 PM 5/18/2005, you wrote: I see one of the presentations is by Tim Sell, one of the guys who runs "SWAP", the state / UW surplus center in Madison, WI. It mentions the "USPA online auction / contract" software. What's that? The SWAP's online auction software looks homegrown and I could give them a long list of feature requests but in my experience they don't really seem to care. https://mds.bussvc.wisc.edu/swap/home.asp For example, there's no way to view the results of a finished auction. It counts down; the snipers often get in (manually) at the last second, you don't even know what something sold for. All auctions end at 10 p.m. I've always had this nagging feeling that these sorts of governmental surplus agencies were ripe for corruption. As the cloaca of large and expensive organizations, a great deal of stuff arrives. Where it all goes, who knows. I seem to remember hearing rumors of a RAM chip theft ring; small, easily stolen in pockets, once-expensive and easily fence-able. And SWAP was once located in the heart of the UW campus and state office downtown area, but then they moved it ten miles on the outskirts of town. I can't help but imagine that all sorts of large, hard to move items (like a mainframe) wouldn't be dragged across town, and that the result was that more stuff ended up in campus Dumpsters than ever before. SWAP also has a policy that favors non-profits and governmental agencies. They're open on Thursdays for them; the public gets second dibs on Friday and Saturday. They'd rather sell an item for $2 on Thursday than for $100 on Friday. On the other hand, they have a tough job, squeezing the last bit of value from equipment bought with taxpayer dollars. They can't keep the stuff, they've got to move it out as best they can. - John