[Preston] Surplus computer parts

[Peter Duffy]

Strange coincidence ...

About 10 years ago, I was offered a lot of old Sun kit, and decided to
take it (I was keen on getting up-to-speed with SPARC architecture, and
Solaris and SPARC linux.) It was when a large truck reversed up to my
back door and started unloading pallets that I started to realise my
folly. Basically, the load consisted of about 100 Sparcstations (IPX,5,
10 and 20), and about 20 UltraSparcs (2, 5 and 10), together with
monitors, SCSI boxes, tape drives, external CDs, keyboards, mice, etc. -
you name it. (By the way, I should mention that I didn't get it free -
although I didn't pay much!) After an afternoon's work, I had lugged the
whole lot into my (standard terrace) house and managed to stow it away:
there were computers in the attic, in the back bedroom, on top of the
wardrobe in the main bedroom, on the stairs - there was even a 10-high
stack of Sparcstations in the kitchen! Luckily I'm single (if I hadn't
been, I suspect I would have been by the end of that afternoon.) For
some weeks, I would come back from work fully expecting to find that the
house had collapsed.

The coincidental part is that I've just taken the last-but-one load to
the skip this morning. Over the years, I have unloaded quite a bit of it
to other computer enthusiasts - but I was left with about 50 Sparcs and
a lot of other boxes: I finally decided that it was too much hassle to
offer them on Ebay, and that I wanted space in my house more than I
wanted a private computer museum. I have kept back 2 of the Ultra-5 and
3 of the Ultra-10 boxes, and a couple of monitors, keyboards and mice.)

I guess that, following my own experience, my counsel would be to give
it about a month, and if no one wants the items, just let them go to
silicon heaven! 

On Sat, 2016-03-19 at 16:34 +0000, John Craven wrote:
> I have quite a lot of surplus computer parts that I am reluctant to just 
> scrap
> If anybody is interested please let me know.
> THEY'RE FREE
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> John C
>