On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:01:41 -0700, leaknoil <leaknoil at gmail.com> wrote: On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:13:53 -0400, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: There are a lot of reasons that old equipment is (re)purchased by the Government, especially the Department of Defense. Most of the equipment in question is not sitting on someone's desk running a spread sheet, but is generally part of production equipment - especially test equipment. A production line is shut down and the contractor is allowed to close down and disperse the line. A then an action or foreign customer comes along and the contractor is called upon to reopen the line, generally on a short leash. At that point the contractor can purchase new equipment (cheap), re-engineer and program the line (not so cheap and generally not quick), and re-certify the new line (not cheap and definitely not timely). This of course requires re-engineering and building the certification stations. Or the contractor can scrounge around and rebuild the line as originally constituted. The equipment isn't inexpensive for what it is, but the line is reconstituted by a bunch of techs in a fairly short time. The engineering and software is done and the unit stands certified as built. A good number of years ago Hughes Aircrash shut down the TOW missile line and after storing the production equipment for a number of years was allowed to auction off the obsolete equipment. One of the many messes that we seem to be continually caught up in used up a goodly number to the missiles that were laying around and Hughes was asked to make more. They had a team of people running around buying up the old equipment wherever they could. An acquaintance got several times the new price for a HP 2115 that he had stored. I chatted with an engineer and questioned the wisdom of buying and using old equipment. They had a bonus riding on getting production going in a fairly short period and the cost of going that route was a very, very small fraction of re-engineer the line. The moral here is that paying $3k for an old VAX might in fact be saving $300k... -> CRC