[Cialug] Advice on a replacement box in the Ames area

[D. Joe Anderson]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 11:49:00AM -0600, Stephen Hawkins wrote:
> Barry,
> 
> On Tuesday 04 January 2005 09:23, Barry Von Ahsen wrote:
> > There is the ISU surplus sale on Wednesdays.
> > http://www.public.iastate.edu/~centrals/isusurplus.htm
>  I'm not sure of its status with the holiday and the break, but it's an
> > option.
> 
> Thank you very much for the info.  I called the number and got a recording 
> with times.  It did not say anything about them being closed for the holiday.  
> I am new to the area and did not know about this.  

Since you're new to the area, I'll go ahead with the plug.  You
might be interested in checking out http://www.amesfug.org and
perhaps signing up for our mailing list[s] or hanging out with
us some Wednesday evening.  Several of us follow both the
AmesFUG and CIALUG lists (among other state and regional lists)
which is how you get so much Ames-related goodness from a list
administered from Des Moines ;-)

> Have you been there 
> before?  If so how does it work?  The last place I went that had something 
> like this was Lawrence Livermore labs.  They charged you by the pound, and it 
> was cash, check, or money order.  Lots of the stuff, nobody could figure out 
> what it was.  But there were some great bargans there.  I got 600 feet of 
> high quality, brand new, 90 cents a foot coax for $20.00.

They take cash or check.  It's a pull tab system--you tear off
the bottom half of the tag, go to the desk and pay for your
item, then you pick it up.  If its small enough to carry, you
can just haul it to the desk with you, but otherwise you can go
back to get it, and they have strapping young folks with hand
trucks and carts and such to help you carry the stuff out and
load it into your vehicle at the loading dock, if necessary. 
There's a cash-only line for purchases under $10.

There's an intra-ISU sale on Tuesday's from 10 to noon, then the
public sale is noon to 3 on Wednesdays.  Folks have been known
to line up to get in right away.  One sometimes get the feeling
that someone has been tipped off about what's there (I'm sure
the Tuesday intra-ISU sale has *nothing* to do with this ;-). 
For example, a few weeks ago, one of our AmesFUG participants
noted someone making an beeline immediately at opening for a set
of SGI O2s that were priced at $3 and $4 a piece.
 
Depending on the item and who knows what other factors, they'll
gradually mark items down from week to week until they sell.  If
there are several of a certain kind of item and a few get sold
each week, the marked price will sometime stay fixed.

They generally don't cotton to shoppers doing live tests on the
systems--they sell full system bundles that they do have
powered-up but often not at prices that attract me, at least. 
If you want to open a case to look at components, that's OK,
just grab one of the helpers to chaperone you, so they can make
sure you aren't trying to swipe a memory stick or NIC or
whatever.

-- 
Joe

> Steve
> -- 
> 73 49 111 01001001
> Stephen Hawkins NG0G
> ng0g@arrl.net
> 
> 
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