[geeks] Re: [rescue] Re: Sad end to SGI Power Challenge XL story

[Bjorn Ramqvist]

"Jonathan C. Patschke" wrote:
> 
> The original one was.  However, according to the auction: "This was a
> COMPLETE and functional system prior to being dismantled..."  Clearly this
> guy has killed a perfectly good (and quite nice) SGI to exhibit his
> complete lack of both taste and creativity.
>
<snip>
>
> I mean, I'm all for recycling.  If I weren't, I wouldn't be subscribing to
> rescue and picking up old RS/6000s and Indys and such.  I can -use- these
> things, if for nothing else, than for learning tools to make me a better
> admin, a better programmer, and maybe fixing them up and giving them to
> friends whose only Unix-like experience is PenguinDroppingOS.  Perhaps my
> experience with this "recued" kit will make me better at helping someone
> down the road.

Ok, I think we all see your point about this and most of us agree with
you too. It's a terrible thing to slice'n'dice a perfectly working
machine up for parts, just cause you've found some insane idea about
keeping your beer cold. There are several stories that has the same
origin, a fully functional machine goes for spare parts.

But let's see it from another angle. Wouldn't YOU be happy if your
machine broke down on you, and those oh-so-hard parts is nowhere to be
found, or even for a sane price? If I could renew or even upgrade the
entire machine at home with the guts from this one, I'd be perfectly
happy to get just the parts and not the whole system. After all, why
have two machines when you can have one? (since the "other" machine
would probably stay unused for the rest of it's life)
It's a perfectly reasonable thing to let somebody else be happy about
the guts from your machine, rather than scrapping it for landfill. 
I'm sure DEC-lovers would go nuts over the MicroVAX 3xxx that got sliced
up into a beer-pump.

Talking about ripping the guts out of machines... Look at Compaq, for
example. They "recycle" perfectly good KICK-ASS machines in the
Netherlands, just for their service department. I'd be amazed if even 1%
of that total amount of parts would someday be useful for someone with a
maintainence contract. They probably just stack the parts up on shelves
until they drop service support for the entire line of machines, and
scrap the rest for landfill.
There are countless numbers of "resellers" that does these things too.
One guy called us the other day, claiming that he wanted to BUY our
VAX7000. I ofcourse couldn't resist asking why, and he responded with "A
customer of ours need more memory for his xyz-project". What happends
with the rest of the machine? Yep.

That baby will run until it stops. Then we'll "junk" it and me rescuing
it, and probably strip it for parts for someone in need.

-- 
Vdnliga hdlsningar/Best Regards
Bjvrn Ramqvist, Hdgglunds Vehicle AB