Free Chit...

[Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>]

     Bill, perhaps you could also send this to the Weird Sci group.

     I've got a bunch of free stuff I want to get rid of because I'm not going
to make use of it, fix it, etc, and it's taking up precious space. 

     I'm offering this stuff for free, but hey, if you want to give me a few
bucks for it I'll take top bid in that case, but if nobody offers anything then
the first person asking for it free will get it. 

     I don't want to ship, so you should be in the Seattle/Everett area (I am
in Shoreline) or willing to travel to pick this stuff up. 

     I am initially going to offer this just to users of Eskimo North and their
friends, I am only posting the info here initially, but if I don't get takers
for some of this stuff then I will offer it more generally to seattle.general,
pnw.general, wa.general folks. 

	
     Item #1 & 2 (I have two of these)
     
     Sun 4/3xx series 9U 192MB memory board.  This board has six banks of SIMMS
that may be populated with 4MB 34-pin SIMMS, I believe 100ns will work although
I had 80ns SIMMS in this at one time. 

     This board is not populated with SIMMS at present (though I do have some
4MB SIMMS, I need to hang onto a few for spares for 4/670MP, but could give up
a few), but I definitely don't have 192MB worth to give up. 

     This board is not defective, it was working when taken out of service, but
was taken out of service because I didn't have enough card slots to accomodate
a 9U memory board and a 9U graphics card on a Sun 3/330 simultaneously and I
had a bunch of 3U and 6U memory boards I could use with it instead and so did. 


     Item #3

     Umax LC 1260 SCSI scanner.  This thing set me back big time when we bought
it, around $2,000.  It's a 1200x600 optical resolution scanner with a fairly
large bed, something like 11x18" so it can scan legal documents and other large
items.  It has a automatic document feeder. 

     After we had it for a while, the mechanism that moves the scanning head
got flakey and started slipping and not returning the scanning head all the
way. 

     It is belt driven and I thought the belt was lose so I took it apart and
tightened it.  It has never worked since and basically I've been told it would
cost more to fix professionally than I can afford; so I just got a cheap
scanner and hooked it up to a parallel port on a PC. 

     Someone who is mechanically inclined might well be successful at getting
this thing to function.  It is TWAIN compliant and when it functions it will
work with the twain driver for gimp as well as with photoshop.  The latter
proved more reliable. 

     I know I'm never going to get time to futz with it again so I just want to
get rid of it. 


     Item #4

     Royfax Bond Copier 115 copier.  This has a paper feeding problem and needs
manual help in it's present state.  Comes with copier cabinet and a lot of
toner.  Bill's friend has first dibs if he wants it but I've been absolutely
unable to contact him by phone.

     Bring at least four large strong individuals to move this.  We moved with
three people but my back told me about it for several days afterwards. 


     Items #5-8

     Sun 3/180 computeres.  Some with no memory or hard drive.  These are
Motorola 68020 based workstation machines.


     Items #9-12

     4 4x8' sheets of sheetrock.  Somewhat dinged, but probably not
irrepairably so.


     Items #13-14

     Two large saturated transformer ferro-resonant power conditioners.  These
things are the ultimate in providing quality power to computers BUT they are
not effecient, they dissipate a lot of heat.  One is 1.5kw unit the other I
believe is 2kw. 

     The way these things work is that they are transformers with a core
designed to magnetically saturate at about 80 volts.  Once the core reaches the
saturation point, no further voltage input resultes in additional output
voltage, it remains fixed at 117 volts whether you put in 80, 110, or 150. 
However it does result in more heat in the transformer so sustained high
voltage would eventually burn it out though there is a hell of a lot of thermal
mass in these thing so it would take a while. 

     The transformers are resonated with capacitors so that you get a good sine
wave output even if you have crap for input.

     Unlike the cheezy solid state spike protectors, these provide absolute
protection.  The devices in the solid state protector can only sustain a very
short surge and then burn-out and no longer provide protection.  Owing to the
huge thermal mass of these things they can sustain a much longer larger surge
without damage, but in the event of catastrophic failure, the primary will burn
out and no power will go to the secondary.  However, there is a circuit breaker
on these units that will trip before this will occur. 

     The solid-state surge protectors won't clean up noise in the power,
harmonics, etc.  These units will, you can feed them a square-wave or stepped
approximate sine wave and a sine wave will come out the other end. 

     The downside to these is that about 30% of the power consumed is
dissipated in heat.  Additionally they are large and heavy.  The smaller of the
two weighs about 100lbs, the larger probably about 200lbs.

     These can be moved by one strong person, but for the sake of avoiding back
injuries, unless you're the type that doesn't bother with an engine hoist and
moves 440 blocks by hand, I would strongly recommend two people.  I have moved
these by myself, I have suffered for it.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

     Well, that's a start.  Probably more will be listed later.