[SunRescue] a sad, sad day

[Sheldon T. Hall]

On Wednesday, December 15, 1999 11:17 AM, ward at zilla.nu wrote:
> Some places, like the University of Mississippi, have strange 
depreciation
> tables, or rather, a lack thereof.
>
> An 8086 that cost $5k in 1986 is worth $5k today.  However, if you 
upgraded with
> a $500 386 board, it is now worth $5500.  You can slate it for auction if 
you
> want, but that's troublesome red tape, so folks just hand 'em over to 
property
> control for storage, who then clean it out later with no concept of the 
value
> of the equipment.  They just know that these old 8086s are worthless, so 
most of
> the eqipment they touch is classified as "worthless obsolete junk."  The 
UofM
> auctions are often fun, as you can find old Vax eq and pentiums at times, 
but
> the folks I know mostly go fo rcars and furniture.
>
> It may even be a State of MS thing, rather than a Univ thing.

Nah, must be a University thing.  They all seem to do it.

Here, Ohio State U. has a "surplus department" whose specialty seems to be 
losing computer parts.  They don't know that a, say, DEC 3100 keyboard 
isn't the same as a PC keyboard (or a Mac keyboard) so when the DEC 
workstation hits the department, they toss the keyboard in the keyboard 
box, put the monitor on the monitor shelf, and put the base unit on the 
computer shelf.

When they get too many of something, they just take 'em all to the 
landfill.

The result is that you can find an HP X-terminal base, but not the special 
keyboard or monitor for it .... or a Sun type 3 mouse, but no Sun 
computers.

Ghod only knows what sort of obscure bookkeeping nonsense they go through 
with this stuff.

-Shel