So I've already touched on this on the G-Series Powermac forum, but I figured I'd extend it here. A while back techfury90 and I learned that ECU had a surplus store, but never got around to looking for/at it. See, normally in NC (and I presume other states) state property surplus from gvmnt buildings,universities, etc including cars/computers/furniture are all pooled at a central location at the state's capital, then a few times a year there is a massive mail in auction. As it turns out, however, separate entities are allowed to put a percentage of their own out-of-use items into a surplus store, which techfury90 and I attended yesterday.
It's only open on thursdays, from 8:30am to 11:30am if I recall, and I sort of slept in a bit so we didn't get there until around 11 or so, but, surprise surprise, there was no one there! Maybe five people total, but even then, it was a shocker. This place was huge too, one single warehouse about 100ft wide and maybe 300ft long, full of tables, chairs, etc, all for sale. Not auction, mind you, just walk in, pick something out, pay for it (no tax!) and walk out with it.
Techfury90 and I of course dove straight for the computer corner. Most were PII - PIV dells and gateways, the PIIs were mostly Optiplex GX1 towers, but there were a few others. Most of them were around $10 each. The PIVs were around $40-$70 each, unfortunately most of the higher end PCs were without RAM and HDD (most everything was without RAM and HDD actually) and the ones that did were unspecified or cost alot. Another really big downside to the PCs is that they all had a ziptie through the locking thing on the back, so you couldn't check the guts. The macs on the other hand had no such devices, so we could dive right into them.
Oh right, the macs.
There were seven total, four graphite G4s, a 6400, and an indigo imac. The latter two were both $15, and had the iMac not been completely gutted (no mobo, drives, etc, just screen and case) I would have jumped on it. The 6400 looked nice but I don't need another midrange mac, and techfury already has a 6500. Of the G4s, there were two that were 450s, and two that were dual 450s. The first way we were able to tell this was not by reading the back label, because of how close they were lined up it was hard to get to them. By opening them, it was pretty obvious which were duals, because of the fact that a dual heatsink is about three times larger than the single. They were $30 each, so we both got ourselves a dual.
They both were without RAM and hard drives, but they had all the cables, the low-profile trays, and optical/zip100 drives. They also had the ADC version of the rage128p, and his had a very basic adaptec SCSI card, wehreas mine just had the space for one. They're also in great condition, with only standard scratches on the side, as well as a surplus sticker on top, and mind has a sticker from some paper on the front. His also had a very nice "no video" sticker on it, but we just ignored it. Oh, and his had a good PRAM battery, I already had spares at home. Also rather nice, my optical drive is an incredibly fast DVD-RAM drive that uses those hilarious caddies, his was DVD-ROM.
So upon getting them home, the first thing we needed to do is source some media and RAM for them. I have a rather massive pile of PC100s, and we were able to sort about 512MB per machine, which is pretty good. They were also both a little quirky to get starting up, but once we figured out what they wanted to do there were no problems. And even though his was labeled no video, it had no problems getting going. One interesting thing we soon learned about these things, is that if you change anything you absolutely have to unplug the mains and press the cuda button, else they just chime and never boot.
He loaded debian on his and we popped in another NIC, so he's doing NAT/Routing with it at ECU. Right now mind is kind of wobbling between OSX, OS9, and "another server that I don't need." Oh, and I think I'm going to bump it to 500 or 550; I already did my sawtooth but this is the same case, not really worried about it.
Pictures surely to follow!
It's only open on thursdays, from 8:30am to 11:30am if I recall, and I sort of slept in a bit so we didn't get there until around 11 or so, but, surprise surprise, there was no one there! Maybe five people total, but even then, it was a shocker. This place was huge too, one single warehouse about 100ft wide and maybe 300ft long, full of tables, chairs, etc, all for sale. Not auction, mind you, just walk in, pick something out, pay for it (no tax!) and walk out with it.
Techfury90 and I of course dove straight for the computer corner. Most were PII - PIV dells and gateways, the PIIs were mostly Optiplex GX1 towers, but there were a few others. Most of them were around $10 each. The PIVs were around $40-$70 each, unfortunately most of the higher end PCs were without RAM and HDD (most everything was without RAM and HDD actually) and the ones that did were unspecified or cost alot. Another really big downside to the PCs is that they all had a ziptie through the locking thing on the back, so you couldn't check the guts. The macs on the other hand had no such devices, so we could dive right into them.
Oh right, the macs.
There were seven total, four graphite G4s, a 6400, and an indigo imac. The latter two were both $15, and had the iMac not been completely gutted (no mobo, drives, etc, just screen and case) I would have jumped on it. The 6400 looked nice but I don't need another midrange mac, and techfury already has a 6500. Of the G4s, there were two that were 450s, and two that were dual 450s. The first way we were able to tell this was not by reading the back label, because of how close they were lined up it was hard to get to them. By opening them, it was pretty obvious which were duals, because of the fact that a dual heatsink is about three times larger than the single. They were $30 each, so we both got ourselves a dual.
They both were without RAM and hard drives, but they had all the cables, the low-profile trays, and optical/zip100 drives. They also had the ADC version of the rage128p, and his had a very basic adaptec SCSI card, wehreas mine just had the space for one. They're also in great condition, with only standard scratches on the side, as well as a surplus sticker on top, and mind has a sticker from some paper on the front. His also had a very nice "no video" sticker on it, but we just ignored it. Oh, and his had a good PRAM battery, I already had spares at home. Also rather nice, my optical drive is an incredibly fast DVD-RAM drive that uses those hilarious caddies, his was DVD-ROM.
So upon getting them home, the first thing we needed to do is source some media and RAM for them. I have a rather massive pile of PC100s, and we were able to sort about 512MB per machine, which is pretty good. They were also both a little quirky to get starting up, but once we figured out what they wanted to do there were no problems. And even though his was labeled no video, it had no problems getting going. One interesting thing we soon learned about these things, is that if you change anything you absolutely have to unplug the mains and press the cuda button, else they just chime and never boot.
He loaded debian on his and we popped in another NIC, so he's doing NAT/Routing with it at ECU. Right now mind is kind of wobbling between OSX, OS9, and "another server that I don't need." Oh, and I think I'm going to bump it to 500 or 550; I already did my sawtooth but this is the same case, not really worried about it.
Pictures surely to follow!
