On 6/15/07, William Maddox <wmaddox at pacbell.net> wrote:
When I was a kid, I used to deal with the John Meshna
company. They sold great electronic surplus.
Supposedly, the government once sold a lot of
Sidewinder missile IR seeker heads to them, which they
then sold to hobbyists. These were highly classified
at the time, and this was a big boo-boo. Meshna
turned over their buyer records, and the government
recovered the parts.
--Bill
I bought a big lot of circuit boards and small mechanical servos from a TI
plant's employee surplus store once. I wasn't an employee but as an
employee of a contractor on site, I was allowed access to the store. I was
planning on salvaging chips from the boards. The next week the manager over
the store and a couple of other serious looking people from TI showed up in
the section I was working and asked my the disposition of the boards and
servos. I explained that I had de-soldered some of the boards but had the
chips and still had not done anything with the servos.
They met me at my house a hour later and took the box of boards, servos,
salvaged chips and all hardware from that lot. The boards and servos were
from Paveway bomb kits. The next day I was refunded my
original purchase
price, given a $100 store credit and a new in box TI99/4A.
--
www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers