On Tue, 24 Sep 2019 an ebay auction was mentioned on the Classic Computers list. And so began an exercise of rescuing this large pile of quite useful (some rare) circuit boards from the hands of gold scrappers (and a seller with no understanding of their historical worth.) Now they are mine, many will be available for individual sale. Typically at a flat rate of US $30 per board, plus pack and post (to be determined, see below.) My email: guykd at optusnet.com.au Details of this rescue project are here: http://everist.org/pics/pcbs/ What's known about the board types: http://everist.org/pics/pcbs/Notes_on_boards.txt A mention: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/what-did-you-buy-today-post-your-latest-purchase!/msg2733892/#msg2733892 I'm in Sydney Australia, but the boards will post from Maryland USA. 20190929 This is the huge pile of boards that were being sold as scrap: ebay 174036836066 90 lbs Vintage HP Computer Circuit Boards PCB Gold Scrap Precious Metal Recovery “Used / Gold Recovery Only / Will Be Bulk Packaged (Not Individually ESD Packaged or Wrapped)” Seller greenpowerparts (2445 ) 20190930 Mon (29th in USA) Thanks to a couple of gold scrappers (judging by their buying history) engaged in an incremental bidding war against each other, the price went higher than I'd hoped. Approaching end of auction the current top bid was around $214. Sigh. I loathe gold scrappers. Some hours prior I set up a snipe bid (via service bidnapper.com) of max $317. Won the auction for $306. After winning, I asked on cctalk if anyone on the US east coast could act as handler. Dan V in Maryland volunteered. I like his web site: http://decodesystems.com/ Am informed by the seller that the boards are already piled in a box ready to ship. He would want another $100 to repack with anti-static and padding (reasonable, a lot of work.) I think the extra handling would offset reduced shipping damage, and it would weigh even more thus raise shipping cost too. I decide to ship as-is. Grit teeth. Seller also informs me the "CPU chips" he removed from some of the PCBs (actually just large logic chips, but in ceramic-gold packs) are 'no longer available.' Brilliant. And he doesn't have any of the associated cabling from the cards either. 20191001 - 2. Sorting out shipping destination and payment details with seller. Not helped by ebay insisting on adding $31 CA sales tax, since I had my ebay address set to my reshipper in CA when I bid. Solved, paid the correct amount with shipping to Maryland: Item: $306, ship & handling: $87. Total US $393 AUD $613.49, urrgh. This is actually a very great cost for me, I'm retired and poor. Hoping to recoup much of this outlay via onselling some of the boards. 20191003 Thursday The box of boards ( 96 lb, 43.6 Kg ) is on its way to the address in Maryland, with tracking. There the boards will be sorted, photographed and held for distribution. Photos and details of the boards will be posted at: http://everist.org/pics/pcbs/ 20191004 Friday First delivery attempt missed due to UPS being two hours late. Trying again on Monday. 20191007 Monday The box arrived at Dan's place, intact. 20191008 Tue A lot of the boards are for the HP 6942A Multiprogrammer system, and I don't have one of those (only a couple of HP 3497A.) So I bid on and won this: ebay 372789928614 HP 6942A Multiprogrammer W/ 4x Relay Output 1x RES Output 1x DST HP6942 M0 Ended: Oct 07, 2019 , 8:41AM Winning bid: US $49.95 (sole bid, sniped) Shipping: $70.00 from Houston, Texas to my reshipper in LA. It's on its way. Have also since then bought a few manuals and connectors for it. 20191010 Thursday I received some photos from Dan of the box unpacking. All in folder pics_dan. As anticipated the boards were loosely stacked, with zero padding between. At least there was some foam padding in the bottom of the box. But also a few component fragments apparently broken off boards. Expected, and could have been worse. 20191014 Monday My apologies for the slow pace. Back on Sat 12th Oct I requested Dan in Maryland to take a photo of each of the board types, and let it be known what he will charge for postage. I haven't received this information yet. Not sure why the delay, he hasn't commented on his schedule. So unfortunately I can't predict when this will progress. 20191018 Friday Dan sent three photos of one of the boards from stack 7 - the HP-IB interface cards, all with removed quad chips. ie one of the useless sets, because those chips will be unobtainium. Why'd he choose those? What about the other dozen board types? Those would take maybe 20 minutes max to photograph, surely? More like 10 minutes. He still hasn't responded to any other matters, such as what he'd charge to resend boards. Apparently this is not going to progress quickly. I've sent Dan a list of the boards I want sent to me. See: boards_I_want.txt Asked him a few questions such as time estimates, his costs, etc. Awaiting a response. 20191022 Tues 11pm Still no response. Hmmm... 20191029 Tues He sent photos of 4 more boards. See http://everist.org/pics/pcbs/pics_dan/ Nothing regarding any of my questions and attempts to work out arrangements. 20191030 Wed Sigh. 30th October, more than three weeks since Dan received the box of boards. So far he's sent me photos of five boards. Two of them useless 'chip-removed' ones. That leaves 9 board types still to be photographed. He never identifes which stacks they are from, and ignores anything I say regarding priorities. No other information has been forthcoming, though I have mentioned dissatisfaction. Since it seems Dan is unable to allocate adequate time to this process, I'm now seeking alternative arrangements. 20191031 Thur Dan sent pics of a couple more boards. That makes just the photographs 'half done' in almost a month. By now I'd decided I cannot go ahead with offering boards for sale, given the uncertainties related to Dan's involvement. I must transfer the handling of the boards to someone else, and was just waiting for final go ahead from a US friend of mine who could possibly do it. 20191101 Frid Sent Dan a polite directive to hand over the boards to a US friend of mine, who has more time available to deal with the boards. My friend would come and pick up the boards at a time arranged between them. Dan agreed to this. 20191103 Sunday (in the USA) My friend has picked up all the boards from Dan.