[rescue] OK seeing about Tadpole systems in the list

[Ian Finder]

Yeah looks like they mostly do business through their website, not eBay-
which makes sense given what eBay charges in fees, and the nature of their
business.
I'll bet they have satisfied customers too... It's a reasonable niche
business to be in, and it does provide a service to corporate customers
stuck on these architectures who can't deal with downtime.

That said, for hobby use, of course, I think I'll stick to the as-is
SparcBook 3TX I bought off this list :)


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:45 AM, Robert Novak <rnovak at indyramp.com> wrote:

> I've seen this legacy dependence... on a much smaller scale, I retired a
> Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (old SPARC-based 4-drive 2tb-max-drive-size NAS)
> recently, sold it to a friend for $100 which was a fair price for me and
> him. However, since it's long out of maintenance, they're selling for
> $300-1000 for people who *have* to get data off of the semi-proprietary[1]
> (i.e. can't plug drives into newer model to recover) filesystem.
>
> [1] (I know it's not truly proprietary, and if you had a SPARC Linux system
> available you could probably recover it, but most home and small office
> users don't have a SPARC Linux system sitting around accessible for this
> purpose.)
>
> And as an aside, they may simply use eBay as a marketing/advertising
> destination. People might Google the system they want, find this guy's
> listings, see he's in Pasadena, and drive over to make arrangements that
> way. It could also provide evidence for tax purposes that he is attempting
> to conduct business. 3 out of 5 and all that.
>
> The other thing to note is that he's had zero *feedback* ... it's harder to
> tell if he's had any transactions although there are no recent completed
> auctions showing.
>
> And finally, if you price your item right,  you only need to sell one of
> them, right? :)
>
> (I found one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/161106196006 gutted but
> semi-functional for about $15, which is how I found "portableunix" while
> looking for parts to ungut it. Got memory from Israel for it, still have to
> figure out the display settings when I run out of 21st century stuff to
> do.)
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Ian Finder <ian.finder at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm sure, however, it's a legit business. A handful of legacy customers
> > will indeed pay what they have to to get this stuff with support on short
> > notice...
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Ian Finder <ian.finder at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > My favorite part is the FAQ in each of his auctions, combined with the
> > > fact he's been on since 2012 and has had zero transactions.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:32 AM, Arianna Otaku <otakugenx at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> > >
> > >> Got me parousing eBay.  Well I came across this user "portableunix"
> that
> > >> evidently is a scam or thinks they have gold, look at their prices:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> http://r.ebay.com/8OGYru
> > >> http://r.ebay.com/Svb6XJ
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >>      Arianna (Birth Name Chris) Brandstetter
> > >>
> > >>     Otaku GenX  The anomaly in the machine.
> > >> GCS/IT d+(-) s++:++ a C++++$ UBLISXC*++++$ P++++$ L+++$ E-- W+++ N+ o
> K-
> > >> w-- O M++$ V PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t++ 5+++>5++++ X+ R- tv-- b+>+++ DI D+ G+
> > e+
> > >> h++ r z?
> > >> ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
> > >>
> > >> To Decode: http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >    Ian Finder
> > >    (206) 395-MIPS
> > >    ian.finder at gmail.com
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >    Ian Finder
> >    (206) 395-MIPS
> >    ian.finder at gmail.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
>



-- 
   Ian Finder
   (206) 395-MIPS
   ian.finder at gmail.com