On 2/9/2006 at 8:51 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: Consider the big picture--there are folks who collect everything from barbed wire to bottlecaps. I once knew a fellow who collected Mrs> Butterworth's Syrup bottles (they all looked the same to me, but he said there were significant differences and he had hundreds). It's entirely likely that I've recycled barbed wire or tossed a bottlecap in the trash that some collector would have given his eyeteeth for. I used to run into old glass power-line insulators all the time when I was clearing brush--I threw them away or gave them to neighbors who used them as something pretty to put in the garden. I didn't know that there were avid collectors out there. To most folks, an old computer is just that. Don't blame them for throwing them into the landfill. On the other hand, many disposal authorities now demand that you take your old electronics gear to a specialy recycler (who will usually charge a fee to take something off your hands). That's good--not many people will spend money to throw something away. Cheers, Chuck

Chuck Guzis wrote: I worry now that monitors and systems are being considered both toxic waste, and that people are starting to fear what may be on their disk drives when they discard them, so for both reasons, bad things happen to hardware that would be collectable. you usually don't get anyone wanting to properly prepare obsolete systems for disposal with any care, so ripping out the hard drive and powering it or otherwise horribly damaging it and the system is happening more and more. Also, unless someone pulls systems out of service with the possiblity that they may be scrounged for parts, the care is even worse overall. Also no one ever seems to realize when they do recycle that those boxes of software and manuals may be more valuable than the systems themselves. anyway, hopefully someone can get this calculator running again. It has many nice things for it's time, with the delay line memory, and the CRT being pretty advanced for their time. Also that it is RPN is interesting, considering that it was sold as a business device at the time. I lucked into a pile before a guy sold them to local hams for scrounging the 5" crt for ham shack duty, and still have 2 or 3 around. The crt system was actually a dropin as a module, and could be pulled from the calculator and used as an X-Y indicator or whatever quite easily (so I'm told), so many went that way, and were lost. Jim

Bering straights land bridge! On 2/9/06 3:45 PM, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:

:-). One semi-serious question. Given that this item showed up in the listings on ebay.co.uk (which, as I understand it, is only supposed to list items available to the UK), and given that the summary specifies he will ship to Europe, even though the description says he won't, what would happen if I bid on, and won, that item? I assume he couldn't demand I pay for it and receive nothing. (Don't worry, I don't intend to bid on it, I am just curious) -tony