Julian Richardson <JRichardson(a)softwright.co.uk> wrote about X terminals: I've never seen a new X terminal that didn't come with a ROM. Some had optional ROMs that could avoid the need for a BOOTP host. Any X terminals you find with no ROMs at all are that way for the same reason they're missing DRAM: the idiots that run surplus stores think the ROMs and DRAMs are more valuable than the rest of the terminal. I wouldn't mind so much if they stripped the things *AFTER* they've tried to sell them. I visited a surplus store that had what appeared to be an HP 2116 minicomputer. Upon closer inspection, they had already removed all of the circuit boards and sent them out for gold reclamation. I asked them how much money they expected to receive from that, and they said about $75. I pointed out that if the boards had been present in the computer, I would have been willing to pay $250 for it, but that I wouldn't pay more than $10 for what remained. They didn't seem to care, and they still do dumbass stuff like this all the time.