[rescue] VAX Rescue

[Carl R. Friend]

   On Sun, 23 Apr 2006, Bill Bradford wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 06:25:59PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> > Ah, suits!  It's -So- -Much- -Better- to see useful equipment made
> > into landfill than take the off chance that someone else might get
> > some benefit for it without paying.  Would that they should see the
> > same treatment at their retirements!
> 
> I much prefer working for a much more reasonable company.  I think I
> still have rescue-karma built up from the what, four or five vehicle-
> fulls of machines we saved from the scrapper at austin-$ORK?

   Sadly, most companies seem to be going the other way -- they *pay*
to have the equipment hauled off because it's 1) a tax write-off and
2) they don't need to worry about "data leakage" in the form of disk
contents.  It's a crap argument, of course, but it's the sort of stuff
that suits just lap up.

   The last two places I worked for were great for "rescue" work; I
rescued two big VAXen (an 8550 and a 6220[0]), innumerable Intergraph
Clipper-based pizza-boxes, my Netra NFS, several small pdp11s, and
all manner of other interesting kit from them.

   The place I work for now just implemented a formal "disposal policy"
that's so strict that it's *impossible* to intercept stuff before it
goes to the Jawas[1].  Boneheads.  The fun thing was when we "disposed"
of a whole pile of perfectly functional laptop computers a while
back -- we *paid* to have them hauled away, and the Jawas turned 'round
and *sold* them back to a number of the employees at a positively
massive profit!

[0] Both of those required large truck rentals at quite some expense;
    the prior owners were happy that they didn't have to pay to have
    them hauled away and that the machines would have a good home.
    Everybody "won".
[1] "Star Wars" reference; used as slang for "recycler"

+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum           | ICBM: 42:22N 71:47W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+