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Legacy computer parts hoarders.....

While I can see making a killing once in a while you do realize that most of what you are doing is sinking time into gathering, testing, storing, etc a bunch of inventory that will be worthless to anybody outside the hobby in a few years. People who need parts for business will eventually upgrade so the 386 to P3's that sell now will end up being embedded boards or what have you in a few years making your inventory worthless.

The people who make money are allways the ones who get a customer to a product to make the sale (without having to get their hands dirty or keep inventory). Every factory you visit the sales guys drive the best cars (excluding the owner who has the exotic parked in his private spot) while the people who make things happen drive the junkers or normal boring cars.

When you specify to fellow collectors not to have more then 20% of their inventory being vintage, you are pretty much telling them to put all their hobby time into collecting boring materials to hopefully sell someday. Most collectors would be better off selling duplicates or items they no longer want to support their hobby then to turning the hobby into a poor paying job consuming their time and limited space (you are looking for hoarders after all).

No, actually, I'm not sinking time into doing anything. I make enough doing this to earn a decent living and I pay other people to do most of the testing and tear down and pay them as well.

You really have no idea the sheer volume of companies that, for whatever reason, are maintaining Legacy processes because they HAVE to. They are trapped in the hardware because of the software and they have nowhere to upgrade TO. They maintain it because it works and they need it.

I'll give you a couple of examples; Pan-Am Flight Simulator School in Utah buys whatever 20 MB FH hard drives I have because that's what their old simulators use and it's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy them than to start replacing simulators. A printing company in Wisconsin sent me a number of Tandy Model 4 computers to repair as backups for their working units which they do all their work with because that's the software they have and it works. An ice company in Ireland will buy all the Panasonic JU-257 floppy drives I can come up with that have the connectors on the opposite sides from the usual (yes, I didn't notice there were reversed connector drives either, until they got in touch with me and I went through all the 257s I had) because their control machines have rigid jack-in connectors and the equipment still does the job fine.

As for my inventory becoming useless, well, that isn't going to happen because newer equipment becomes Legacy and older Legacy equipment becomes Vintage and there will always be someone needing it. My inventory actually becomes MORE valuable as it sits around.
 
Pan-Am Flight Simulator School in Utah buys whatever 20 MB FH hard drives I have because that's what their old simulators use and it's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy them than to start replacing simulators.
Here's something I don't get. Any drive, 20 MB or larger will do what this drive does. HH or FH, 20 MB or up to even 85 MB, they'll all work. The HH will fit into the bay, physically and the 85 MB can be partitioned.
 
Here's something I don't get. Any drive, 20 MB or larger will do what this drive does. HH or FH, 20 MB or up to even 85 MB, they'll all work. The HH will fit into the bay, physically and the 85 MB can be partitioned.

Well the thing is any HDD *might" work, but they probably need something that is guaranteed to work, hence their fairly specific request. They probably don't want to spend time trying a new HDD in the things when they know the 20mb HH will work, it's a "time is money" thing.

Being in the computer world we tend to get complacent about the rapid change that goes on and we tend to simply accept the need to move forward as a way of life. This is not the case in other industries and as Druid says, there are a ton of companies out there that maintain their outdated hardware because it is cheaper and less time consuming to do so then to have to upgrade their hardware every other year as well as in some cases their mission critical software (or specialized hardware) simply won't run on newer hardware.
 
Well the thing is any HDD *might" work, but they probably need something that is guaranteed to work, hence their fairly specific request.
Sorry, but I totally disagree with you use of the word 'might' here. FWIW, I have a lot of experience with MFM/RLL drives, about 24 years worth, and I have never run into a situation where a properly partitioned drive didn't meet the 20 MB test. And as far as FH/HH goes, don't make me laugh. :) There isn't a computer I know of that can tell if a drive is FH or HH. And, please, let's not even get into sector translation.
 
No, actually, I'm not sinking time into doing anything. I make enough doing this to earn a decent living and I pay other people to do most of the testing and tear down and pay them as well.

You really have no idea the sheer volume of companies that, for whatever reason, are maintaining Legacy processes because they HAVE to. They are trapped in the hardware because of the software and they have nowhere to upgrade TO. They maintain it because it works and they need it.

I'll give you a couple of examples; Pan-Am Flight Simulator School in Utah buys whatever 20 MB FH hard drives I have because that's what their old simulators use and it's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy them than to start replacing simulators. A printing company in Wisconsin sent me a number of Tandy Model 4 computers to repair as backups for their working units which they do all their work with because that's the software they have and it works. An ice company in Ireland will buy all the Panasonic JU-257 floppy drives I can come up with that have the connectors on the opposite sides from the usual (yes, I didn't notice there were reversed connector drives either, until they got in touch with me and I went through all the 257s I had) because their control machines have rigid jack-in connectors and the equipment still does the job fine.

As for my inventory becoming useless, well, that isn't going to happen because newer equipment becomes Legacy and older Legacy equipment becomes Vintage and there will always be someone needing it. My inventory actually becomes MORE valuable as it sits around.

Reminds me of someone from here a few years ago looking for a specific video card that worked on a 286. Some Japanese company needed 20 systems up and running to interface with older CNC machines.

Everything becomes more valuable as time goes by.
 
I'd be interested in this but it will be at least 9 years before I move back to the States.
 
Sorry, but I totally disagree with you use of the word 'might' here. FWIW, I have a lot of experience with MFM/RLL drives, about 24 years worth, and I have never run into a situation where a properly partitioned drive didn't meet the 20 MB test. And as far as FH/HH goes, don't make me laugh. :) There isn't a computer I know of that can tell if a drive is FH or HH. And, please, let's not even get into sector translation.

FH vs HH may be a physical size limitation of the chassis in question but my point was not that it will or will not work, my point is from the business end of things it makes more sense to stick with what all ready is known to work (for the simulation people at any rate).

Experience tells you that it should work just fine, but I doubt that you could offer an iron clad 100% guarantee that it will work with any MFM drive especially since you don't know the exact specs of the hardware driving the simulator (and before you make such a guarantee ask yourself if you would be willing to bet $100k+ on it working), however if they buy a drive with the same specs they know for a fact it will work. Also if they order a drive that is not the same and for some reason it does not work then their simulator is down for even more time and could cost them a ton of money in down time, so they won't try a different drive till they absolutely have no other option.
 
Here's something I don't get. Any drive, 20 MB or larger will do what this drive does. HH or FH, 20 MB or up to even 85 MB, they'll all work. The HH will fit into the bay, physically and the 85 MB can be partitioned.

Well, as it was explained to me (by the purchasing guy, not an engineer) it's a catch-22 protection scheme by the OEM for that particular model of simulator that works like this;

During the boot-strap operation, the custom ROM sends the hard drive hardware level commands to evaluate the geometry of the drive to make sure it's one of "their" hard drives (for whatever reason) and then boots the software which immediately calculates the checksum of the ROM.

They tried different sizes of HDs right off the bat but the system wouldn't boot with anything but a 20MB drive, so, can't change the drives. Since editing the ROM would change the checksum, can't do that either and since the drive is checked prior to booting, partitioning software isn't accessed yet, so, that doesn't work either.

They got around the "their HD" problem by extracting an image of the drive and writing it to the replacement HD

The FH thing is more of an aesthetics thing as it's a FH hole.

I don't ask, I just earmark any 20 MB FH HDs with the correct geometry for them.
 
Niche software tends to be very pricy and incorporate some very off the wall copywright protections schemes, sounds like this simulation software is on of them.

I'd also bet the company that makes the software either is defunct or has moved way beyond the version they are using and therefore refusing to service or update the software opted instead to sell the customer the newer version at some ungodly cost (could be hundreds of thousands of dollars).
 
Niche software tends to be very pricy and incorporate some very off the wall copywright protections schemes, sounds like this simulation software is on of them.

I'd also bet the company that makes the software either is defunct or has moved way beyond the version they are using and therefore refusing to service or update the software opted instead to sell the customer the newer version at some ungodly cost (could be hundreds of thousands of dollars).

You hit the nail on the head and that's usually the way it's happened to my clients. In this case, defunct as a doornail LOL

I just want to add here that I'm pleased to announce that VintageComputerMan has taken the NE Legacy Computers and Parts franchise and, as with IBMMuseum, I'm sure everyone wishes him great success.

Also, if you're "thinking about" taking one of the franchises, I'd think fast because I'm getting multiple enquiries for the specified "regions" and I'm not going to hold off franchising them while you ponder it.

However, it looks like we are going to get to the "state level" sooner than I thought so, if you're in a "taken" region, you can still get a "state" franchise.

I don't want anyone to think that they are limited to selling within a "region" or "state", they were just convenient "labels". You can sell to whomever wishes to buy what you have.

I'm rather disappointed that there has been no interest in the Canadian "regions". It seems that the Americans, as usual, are more willing to "take the plunge" than Canadians are.

BTW, after Spring Equinox (March 20th), you won't be getting a franchise for the "ground floor" price, especially in the US where it takes two days to set up the state tax rules just in case you sell something to someone in your own state because it's insanely convoluted. I also understand that there are some states that have to charge sales tax if they sell to certain other states.

Perhaps it would be easier if I just said "you can sell to anyone but someone in your own state" LMAO.
 
You hit the nail on the head and that's usually the way it's happened to my clients. In this case, defunct as a doornail LOL

I actually ran into this situation a lot in my last job. Colleges hit this bump all the time. That's why I am so familiar with it.

BTW, after Spring Equinox (March 20th), you won't be getting a franchise for the "ground floor" price, especially in the US where it takes two days to set up the state tax rules just in case you sell something to someone in your own state because it's insanely convoluted. I also understand that there are some states that have to charge sales tax if they sell to certain other states.
Perhaps it would be easier if I just said "you can sell to anyone but someone in your own state" LMAO.


I have held a re-seller permit in CA for about 5 years now, even since I ran my own business. I closed it a few months back because I was not using it at all and was sick of having to file the quarterly sales tax forms. It really is a pain in the ass to do, but at least it was easy enough that I did not need to hire someone to do it.
 
...BTW, after Spring Equinox (March 20th), you won't be getting a franchise for the "ground floor" price, especially in the US where it takes two days to set up the state tax rules just in case you sell something to someone in your own state because it's insanely convoluted. I also understand that there are some states that have to charge sales tax if they sell to certain other states.

Perhaps it would be easier if I just said "you can sell to anyone but someone in your own state" LMAO.

I've seen some following that rule for businesses in the United States. It can be as horrible as a customer residing in a state that purchases from a company with only an office in that state (among others) paying tax, but that state's office not participating in the transaction in any form. The given is that you have to get sales tax from a customer in the same state (unless they have a non-taxed certificate, like government agency, church, or non-profit) when in a business.
 
The really funny thing in Cali is that public schools pay sales tax on their purchases. So basically when they make large purchases they are actually paying a percentage of their own income...
 
The situation is really horrible in Kansas. You have to pay sales tax at the rate for the location where the item is delivered. There are hundreds of tax rates in Kansas, with each county and city being able to pass their own. It's not a problem for normal retail businesses, but anybody that delivers items has to keep track of all the various locations and matching tax rates.
 
The situation is really horrible in Kansas. You have to pay sales tax at the rate for the location where the item is delivered. There are hundreds of tax rates in Kansas, with each county and city being able to pass their own. It's not a problem for normal retail businesses, but anybody that delivers items has to keep track of all the various locations and matching tax rates.

Actually it is the same in Cali, the tax form you have to file has you fill in every county you sell into to, then you have to calculate the different tax rate (it varies here from 7.5% all the way up to 9.75%). In all honesty I used to just lie and say all my sales where in my own county and just paid a flat 8.75%.
 
Ya know what's even worse?

Having to set UP the state taxes for California now that lutiana has taken the Legacy Computers and Parts - CAUS franchise LOL

That's after I set up IBMMuseum's NM state taxes and VintageComputerMan's PA (I think) state taxes. (OK, it's West New York and NY is the second worse in the US, after Florida)

Even better, he's moving to NC in a while, so, I'll have to do them all over again :(

Just fair warning, guys, I'll do it the first time, but, you're the ones that get to maintain it :)
 
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I'd be interested in this but it will be at least 9 years before I move back to the States.

I have no problem going international. If you have the gear with you, we can still do it.

The site does have a German translation for the bulk of it (outside of any text that you add externally to it) and if you have someone that can translate that, you can run it in English, German, French and Espanol at the viewer's preference.
 
I LOVE New Mexico

In a country filled with convoluted tax rates where the sales tax/Gross Receipts are determined by the buyers location, New Mexico's tax rate is based on the SELLERS location.

After a chat with a couple of very nice people from the NM Revenue and Taxation Department to confirm this, from IBMMuseum's point of view, there is only one tax rate setting needed for sales within his state; the tax rate where he lives.

Makes my task much easier than New York and California (buyer's location tax rate) and it means that some info from USPS and a few test transactions and Legacy Computers and Parts - SWUS will be ready to populate with products and start selling.
 
I LOVE New Mexico

In a country filled with convoluted tax rates where the sales tax/Gross Receipts are determined by the buyers location, New Mexico's tax rate is based on the SELLERS location.

After a chat with a couple of very nice people from the NM Revenue and Taxation Department to confirm this, from IBMMuseum's point of view, there is only one tax rate setting needed for sales within his state; the tax rate where he lives.

Makes my task much easier than New York and California (buyer's location tax rate) and it means that some info from USPS and a few test transactions and Legacy Computers and Parts - SWUS will be ready to populate with products and start selling.

I guess I should have known the sales tax information a little bit better - I've got that applicable rate in memory on the occasion it comes up...

Most of the things here are actually pretty logical, get down to it...
 
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