11 Jan
2015
11 Jan
'15
9:50 a.m.
On 1/10/2015 7:41 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
Yes, I tried to talk to him at about the same time and
got nowhere.
This time I made an actual
offer but I needed to see it and might up it depending upon the
condition. As you can see from
my earlier posts today that because of the way it was put into storage
and the way it was stored
it's basically all just scrap now which is too bad.
TTFN - Guy
I talked to him at length and got a little more on the story. The path
the systems took apparently was from a company where he worked, then
idle. The company donated them to a local college where they were used
in some capacity for a while then stored. The storage was not under his
control, and though he'd had direct interaction when it was originally
in production, he did admit that he thought some damage had occurred
when the college had stored the units.
I'm willing to say that my impression of the guy is that he had very
high expectations of what he had stored, and has invested a lot in it,
but doesn't get what is really required to make these things go. When
you deal with people heavily invested in something they are not
realistic, and will want more than an item should be priced at.
He may or may not be at the end of his capability to store it or
whatever where it is, he says he needs to sell it as he has imminent
plans to move to NM, so that deadline is self imposed, and should not
legitimately impact the negotiation. Just he should be and seems to be
more open to negotiating now.
I'm sad to hear it was damaged as badly as it was, had high hopes the
4341 had at least stayed closed and somewhat safe. I think the console
controller is in the end chassis. The main swing outs have the main
processor. Don't try to swing them one at a time, the thing will tip.
Jim
On 1/10/15 6:51 PM, Marc Verdiell wrote:
I talked to the owner maybe 6 months ago. It was
a bizarre and difficult
interaction. He refused to let me see the units, and insisted I give
him an
offer first. He would not even give me the list of the items he had.
We went
into a circular discussion: that I couldn't give him an offer if I
didn't
know nor see what the items were, to which he replied that if I were a
serious buyer I would make him an offer beforehand, therefore I was not
serious and he would not show me the items nor give me the list. So
that was
not very helpful. Then later on he sent me 3 or 4 close up pictures
of only
the name badges of some of the machines (one badge from HP, maybe two of
IBM). I got the distinct impression that either something was fishy
or that
the guy had unreasonable expectations. Or maybe both. I just gave up.
Looks
like you are faring much better than me, so that's positive. I am
interested
in the IBM system, the tapes and tape controller units mainly, if you
don't
want them.
Marc
On 1/9/15 6:38 PM, Lyle Bickley wrote:
When Bob and I initially talked to the owner, he
told us that what he
had was a major find for a collector. He spoke in glowing terms as to
the condition of the 4341 and the HP mini (de-installed from a running
environment and then stored for many years). So as you would expect,
Bob and I were very anxious to see both systems. What we found was a
serious disappointment. As Bob said, the 4341 and the HP mini were
crammed into a storage unit with lots of other junk. It was impossible
to see/determine what system components were actually there. There was
no way to know how complete or what features either system had.
Repeating what Bob said, everything was water damaged, rusty and in
poor condition - and I do mean everything. We told him that his asking
price was too high - and that the condition of the systems was so bad
we wouldn't even make him an offer. Lyle
Well that's a disappointment.
I'm still going to take a look at it
tomorrow...but I'm going to be prepared to walk away from it.
TTFN - Guy