On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 12:28:43 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


Not getting testy on my part and didn't mean to insult anyone. I
respect Greg's hobby and interest in keeping old computers running and
using them for all the things he likes to do. It just isn't for everyone.

I guess my problem is I got into the PC business working out of the
parts room. IBM upper management made the decision that hardware guys
had no use for PCs and there was no budget for them. When I said
something about it to my direct manager she said "you know how to get
parts don't you"? I could order everything but cases (they have a
serial number like the receiver of a gun) and that is why my early
machines were all built in wooden boxes. We were managing $12M in
parts with a pencil so I had a good business use.
Once I got into it I figured out how many parts were being replaced in
a "FRU bucket" that were not bad (blindly throwing several parts at a
problem and not isolating further) so I started trolling the returns
for parts. There was an IBM internal "swap" BB where I could trade
used good parts for all sorts of things.
I had the same issue with software. We had no budget for software but
we had software writers who put their stuff, that IBM said no on, up
on the internal network. There were also lots of cool tools that never
actually saw the light of day in the retail world.
I just found pleasure taking things that nobody else wanted and
creating new things we needed.