On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Jay West wrote: I wouldn't doubt if that 7970 is still at WeirdStuff. Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Sellam Ismail wrote: If you're up for paying duties on around 70% of *new acquisition cost*, backed up by *the original (NOT a copy) manufacturers invoice* -OR- the right amount of discrete 'speed money' to the right person (you hope), which 'speed money' will be a substantial fraction of the original duties, and *then* you pay the re-crating (because the customs guys tear this stuff apart and then throw everything back in what's left of your box and some guy from the villages comes and slops 3 feet of cheap tape on it... and then you pay the actual shipping... *then* you deal with customs here in the US... AND you pretty much need to be there to take care of the little 'derailments' as they continually arise. Doing this long distance with no representative there, would be impossible. Been there, done that more than once, was going to get the t-shirt but I had to give it away as a bribe. The company I worked for in India (in '01) bought a big SGI Onyx from a guy in Wisconsin who refurbs them and sells them on eBay. We gave US$7K, including crate and ship. We had to have a 'Chartered Engineer's Certificate' (a European group of appraisal and capital equipment inspectors, not found in the US) and of course the 'original factory invoice'. "Negotiations" began... four months later, we had to pay just US$22K in duties, plus 'speed money' plus 'storage'.... originally the bastards wanted 73% of *new cost* of the Onyx - it was over $300K new. That's one of the reasons there is so little used gear availale in India - everyone hangs on desperately to whatever they have. Cheers Swami John