[rescue] Looking for sun 13w3 monitor or 13w3 to VGA adapter

[Richard]

In article <20071221191929.GA9560 at jd-colo>,
    Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net>  writes:

> > Google says 1300 miles and 18 hours of driving.  Not in the winter
> > time, sorry :-).  For anything over 12 hours of distance, I generally
> > pass unless the stuff can be freight shipped by a reliable freight
> > carrier.  (I've only found one that will pack items to my
> > satisfaction.) [...]
> 
> Who have you used for freight?  Any chance that Yellow Freight is the
> one you like?  Every now I think about looking into using them.

I have used three so far, and the only one that I really liked was
Craters & Freighters.  I bought a bunch of Tektronix graphics terminals
(4105s and 4205s) from dovebid in silicon valley.  They boxed up each
terminal/keyboard with appropriate bubble wrap and packing peanuts and
then stacke these all onto 2 pallets and everything arrived in perfect
condition.  I had previously used them for shipping a graphics
terminal from Texas, where C&F did the pickup and packing of the item
for shipment.  C&F did a wonderful job packing it in a "cardboard
crate".  It arrived in perfect condition.

I wrote a blog entry about CTS, which other collectors have given good
reviews.  Unfortunately I would say that they did nothing above
average and several things below average.  A comparison of CTS and C&F
is here:
<http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/2007/04/24/a-tale-of-two-shippers/>

My most recent purchase was shipped by AdCom Worldwide.  I would rate
them on a par with CTS, i.e. below what I expect.  I think they even
lost a couple of the mice that were to go with the SGI systems I
bought.  Every single SGI system in the group of 5 wasn't wrapped with
any protective bubble wrap and so all of them arrived with scuffed and
scratched skins, although in the auction photos they look near
perfect.  This place told me on the phone that they would put my
workstations in boxes filled with expanding foam.  All they did was
slap everything on a pallet and put a thin slice of bubble wrap around
the outside, wrapped it in shrink wrap and threw an improved cardboard
top over everything and then strapped it.  The end result was that
several of the monitors had their pedestals cracked and broken and all
the workstations were scuffed and scratched and as I say I think a
couple mice fell through the pallet and got lost.  When it was
delivered, there were keyboard and mouse cables hanging underneath the
pallet and one of the keyboard cables has the molded cover scraped off
the connector due to being dragged.

These experienced are why I won't trust a 4-rack Onyx2 Reality Monster
to anyone but C&F and even then its enough equipment that its worth
flying out and renting a truck to drive back and do it yourself.

My feeling is that if you have something to be freight shipped and it
doesn't require any gentle or special handling, then any of these
people will slap it on a pallet and haul it out to you.  However, if
anything is gentle, delicate, or requires care in packing, then unless
you can trust it to C&F (who specialize in this sort of care for
shipping antiques, art, and delicate electronics) its a crap shoot.

The other collectors that liked CTS talked about shipping PDP-11
racks.  Well, sorry, but I think those require less gentle handling
than SGI machines where the plastic skins are so well known to be
easily damaged.
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
      <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

        Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>