Safe, but not as available as at first thought...
Safe, but not as available as at first thought...
Sorry to disappoint so many people who were offering to drive great distances to retrieve this piece of hardware... I now understand the details of how equipment is disposed of. I'll describe it carefully because it explains one way that hardware can leave an academic institute and end up in your garage.
The primary issue is ownership - in this case the equipment is owned by the Physics
Department, so it is not so easy to dispose of. In fact, the only way to dispose of it is
to either transfer it to another department or to send it to University Surplus. They establish a price and sell it, keeping some of the profit and transferring the rest back to the Physics Department. There are no other legal ways to get rid of this equipment.
It is even more difficult to get rid of equipment purchased on a government grant since
it technically belongs to the US government, not the university. That's why we still have our card puncher...
Anyway, one scenario would be to find a buyer, and work with the University Surplus to
establish how to pay for it and ensure that any profit makes its way back to the Physics Department.
However the simplest thing for me would be to keep it in the Physics Department and start my own vintage computer collection... That's not what I had originally intended but looks more attractive than sending it to University Surplus without a guarantee that it won't be ground up and sold for its gold content. I have no time to devote to this in the foreseeable future, but the stuff isn't going anywhere now.
So, the bottom line is this hardware is safe and may one day be restored to a working condition but it is not quite as available as it first appeared. However, I will be happy to share anything I learn about it.