"Accidental" auction win: IBM mainframe, Avaya telecom parts and old phones- oh my!

Hi howdy all-

It's been a while since I've done any interesting scrapping, but I thought I would post a couple pictures of (and ask a few questions about) what turned out to be a rather large lot of electronic equipment I purchased recently. It was one of those cases where I wasn't actually supposed to win the lot, but someone else forgot to outbid me. Whoops. Sometimes lowballs work.

First, the main picture from the auction lot- a mid-90s IBM mainframe:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psawysceyo.jpg

I'll becoming with a trailer for that on Thursday. But that's not all- there were two more smallish truckloads of boxes, bits and pieces. You obviously can't really tell what's going on here except that I really wanted to make sure I didn't have to make a fourth trip:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psiewgzgdr.jpg
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...pswlwkpme8.jpg

I won't list everything here, but there were a few old routers, a box of desktop 7400 modems, about 50 digital telephones, a whole bunch of computer and telecom cables (I'll post some more pictures later), some spare telecom boards and a few of whatever these things are:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...ps98yquhwc.jpg
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...ps475nygaz.jpg
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psaytvg50x.jpg
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psflszwxm7.jpg

According to the labels this is an Avaya "PPN to EPN Duplex" gizmo (product id 107998). I haven't found much about these online- I'm thinking they are obsolete and not resell-able. Anyone know if this is true? I noticed jimicrk posted a picture of a stack of what looked like the boards of these things and called them PBX back planes. I'm pretty inexperienced with telecom equipment- would you recommend chopping into this thing and isolating the board? I've already put a few items (mostly cables) up on Ebay, but frankly, I don't want to waste my time with this thing if I don't have to.

Many thanks for any advice, and I'll post a few more pictures of stuff soon.

Thanks and cheers,
thebugguy

:winner:
:-o

Nice win!!

The last 3 pics look like an expansion cabinet for an Avaya Difinity PBX. There are still a lot of old phone systems out there and the businesses using them still need parts. Finding them is the problem.
You could try ebay and see what happens. You never know who's looking for that 1 hard to find part.

Thanks. I very well may try it on Ebay just to see what happens. If I don't get around to it (or it doesn't sell), what's the scrap value of the back planes themselves- any idea?

I'm too beat to take pictures of the telecom boards, but I found these "extras" in the storage compartment of one of the IBM tape backup towers. I'm hoping to recover more as I dig through these things!

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psdmbpngxr.jpg

Cheers,
tbg

Look at the phones to see if you have a 302c they are big $.
Avaya Lucent 302C Black Attendant Console Black with 26B1 B 003 DSS Console | eBay

Those mainframes may have 5 1/4 floppy drives and other re sell parts

Also some of those old IBM boards may be worth more than scrap....i have actually parted out several of those IBM units in my day

Holy CRAPOLA.. This thread just made my whole day!
DING!!!
Wicked Score!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Immulmen

Look at the phones to see if you have a 302c they are big $.
Avaya Lucent 302C Black Attendant Console Black with 26B1 B 003 DSS Console | eBay

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Yeesh. Last night I swore that I would break down all the phones from the lot to get them out of my way- and I did. There were a couple odd models (including two examples with an extra console), but they weren't the one listed on Ebay (phew!). Still, this illustrates an excellent rule of thumb: if you find yourself with a pile of 50 items and 49 of them are all the same, you might want to spend a little extra time figuring out what's so special about the 50th!

cheers,
tbg

Yes the "attendant" phones are phenomenally more expensive than the desk phones. I just snagged about 25 NEC phones that go for decent dollars on Ebay. Problem is, I don't have the phone system that runs them to test them. And I'm not too keen on saying in an auction listing "Well my client told me they worked when they were pulled"

Ebay will give a refund to any buyer who sneezes about something not being perfect. So I may just break them down because it may not be worth the risk!

Well, I'm irritated that I forgot to bid on this, as I got tied up at my "real" job. I had looked at this lot several times over the past days. However, I'm glad someone that is a member of this forum got the bid. Congratulations and I do hope that you do well on this haul. It looks like you should.

I have done well (in my opinion) with selling back plane on ebay. Mike

Nice score on the mainframes, you will do very well with them! I scrapped several different mainframes in the last few years (HP, Hitachi, Silicon Graphics, etc) and did extremely well on all. Even if there are zero resale parts, the scrap values can be very good, far superior to any PC or server.

Do u mind to tell us what u paid....the ones I picked up were pretty cheap because either no one knew what to do with them or didn't wanna fool with it

Quote:

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Originally Posted by numbers

Well, I'm irritated that I forgot to bid on this, as I got tied up at my "real" job. I had looked at this lot several times over the past days. However, I'm glad someone that is a member of this forum got the bid. Congratulations and I do hope that you do well on this haul. It looks like you should.

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Hello and howdy, numbers- Good to hear from you! Sorry this one slipped by you, but I'm glad we didn't wind up bidding against each other- that's just throwing money down the toilet. I check the local auctions about once or twice a month but I rarely bid on anything and almost never win. I think I'm averaging about one winning bid per year over the last few years, and generally that's only when people like you happen to be not paying attention at just the right (wrong) time.

I don't mean to rub it in, but to answer mikeinreco's question the lot cost me just shy of $100. That includes tax and commission, but not $20 in gas for three trips to Topeka and another $15 for buying my Father-in-Law lunch today for helping to get the big pieces back to Lawrence. This afternoon I got my first $20 back by making a quick run to the yard to drop off some steel and about 30 lbs of #3 insulated (about 20 lbs of which were the cords for all the darn phones I took apart).

I figure I'll double or triple my money (which wasn't much of an investment to begin with) with some elbow grease and the scrap value alone. Is it "worth" it? I dunno- I don't do this for a living so it's just kind of fun. I'll try throwing some parts up on Ebay before I tear them down, but without being able to test anything I'm not expecting a whole lot for the time spent. Still, flipping even a handful of items for bargain prices will pad my bottom line a little.

I'll post a couple more pictures here in a few minutes...

cheers,
tbg

Ok, here's a shot of pretty much just the mainframe components- not a lot of room (or weight tolerance) to spare! I've been calling her HAL-E, which is sort of a combo of WALL-E and HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey. And that's my FiL, definitely earning his lunch...

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psgorebtje.jpg


There were four (now three) IBM 3174-L1 "controllers" in the lot. Here's what one looks like taken apart:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...pshdjjrq34.jpg

I haven't completely weighed it out yet and will likely try to re-sell some of the components, but given that the body is plastic, there's not a lot of metal here- about 12 pounds of steel and 8+ pounds cast aluminum. The back plane weighs about 3.25 lbs, but there's not a whole lot going on there, so it may not be worth much for scrap...

More later... cheers!
thebugguy

Ok, I've processed three of the four 3174-L1 controllers, making enough room to start chopping into the first of two IBM 6400 printers. For the record, here are the guts:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psm0z7lzdf.jpg
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...pssekwr8ym.jpg

I didn't strip it down to the studs (I may try to sell or give away the cabinet) and I didn't include the relatively small amount of plastic trash that came out of it in the pictures. Again, apart from the cabinet, there's not a lot of steel here and only a pound or so of stainless (I have a thing about collecting stainless steel rods from printers). There is about 18 lbs of 99% clean cast Al though and another couple lbs of "dirty" Al as well as four nice step motors and a fifth motor of a type I've never seen (you can see the exposed windings in the photo). Apart from a couple honking caps, the logic board looks pretty nice and there was another decent board in the control panel as well as the standard LCD board.

As with the unit I did yesterday, there's a pretty steep learning curve, but once you've taken one apart, the second goes a lot faster!

cheers,
tbg

Well done breakdowns!!!
If the SMF had another "breakdown contest"
You could have submitted "How to break down a mainframe!"

Very nicely done (breakdown and score!!) And for $100 bucks- YAHOO!

I am echoing what Sledge has stated. An outstanding photo break down. I know how difficult it can take photos while you work and have the effort come out good. You did a great job. Thank you, Mike

All-

Thanks for the thanks! I'm not trying to do an exhaustive how-to or materials analysis on each item, but I do like to take a couple pics when I'm done as I'll probably never get another chance to play with these things. So, I've done the IBM 3174 L1 controller and the 6400 printer. Today I tackled one of three 3490 C22 tape drives- the beast among the components! The docs say that the C22 weighs 260 lbs, but that's just the tape drive- it doesn't include the power supply and logic module for the roughly refrigerator-sized cabinet. Because the tape drive pulls out the front like a filing cabinet drawer (and the logic module pulls out the back) the cabinet is counter-weighted at the bottom, making the entire thing somewhere between 500 and 700 lbs, at least. We tipped one over to get it on the trailer and I'm honestly not sure how I'm going to get it back upright without jerry-rigging some sort of come-along contraption.

So, here's the cabinet (note that there's no way I'm going to take this thing off the trailer until it reaches it's final resting place):

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psagznu280.jpg

And here's the innards, minus some boring metal sheeting and plastic bits:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...ps5eb3dduw.jpg

There's a lot going on here. Roughly the top third of the dropcloth is not technically the tape drive- there's the over all power supply unit (almost a yard long!), some fans, PSUs for each of the tape drives as well as the boards from what I call the "logic module" from the top of the cabinet and a couple fist-fulls of cables. The lower 2/3s of the dropcloth is taken up by the tape drives, one on the left, the other on the right. Each drive consisted of multiple parts- what looks like vacuum pumps and tubes, the tape loading dock, the tape drive itself, and a stack of controller boards (the boards in the lower left corner are exploded out so you can see what's in there.

If you look closely you can see that the left-hand tape loader is in pretty rough shape compared to the one on the right (the big black thing to the left of the rack of boards). I have to admit that I lost my cool and took a hammer and bolt cutters to the first one to get it apart. There actually are "quick release" knobs scattered around in this thing, but you have to answer three riddles from the Sphinx before you can find them. This thing was, by far, the most complicated PITA machine I've ever tackled (and I'll be gnawing on all the parts for days to come!).

I took a shot of the main PSU just for the heck of it- I'd never seen one so large:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...psa0fmt8o3.jpg

Would those be silver contacts on the copper switches?

And here's a shot of some of the boards in this thing- the ones on the right came from the logic module in the top, the ones on the left are from one (of the two) tape drives, and the ones in the middle are just random boards scattered here and there. The second picture is a close-up of the ones on the right:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...pspgf9zrdb.jpg
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...pslmawvkmn.jpg

In each case the Al cpu caps caught a glare from the lighting. I was particularly impressed with the left-hand board in the bottom picture- I've never seen one put together this way. At first I thought maybe those yellow things were some sort of two-legged tantalum caps, but I don't think they are. Now I have to figure out the best way to process these babies...

That's it for now I guess. Thanks for having a look and chiming in- cheers!

thebugguy

Great job. Very informative. Keep up the good work. Can't wait to get the final tally. All I see is $ $ $

Hey all-

I've disassembled and hauled in 97% of the non-electronic scrap from this lot and thought I would provide a breakdown (I loves me my numbers). This is all from the local scrapyard- I can't tell you whether the pricing is good, bad or ugly, but the place is close and when you're dumping loads over your lunch hour, that's a big plus.

lbs category price total
1 Al sheeting @ $0.30/lb = $0.3 (from printer)
139 Al casting @ $0.30/lb = $30.6 (mostly from printers so far)
20 Al extrusion @ $0.40/lb = $8.0 (from printers)
105 Al breakage @ $0.10/lb = $10.5 (honestly don't remember what this was)
25 #2 insul Cu @ $0.40/lb = $10 (this was a mistake- should've been #3 but I didn't catch it)
327 #3 insul Cu @ $0.12/lb = $39.24
12 Stainless @ $0.21/lb = $2.52
3380 shred iron @ $0.04/lb = $135.2 (this includes an old futon frame or two thrown on top)
53 elect. motors @ $0.09/lb = $4.77

Total output: $96.05 auction + $40 in gas and buying lunch for help = $136.06
Total income: $241.13 so far for a profit of $105.08 (after three weeks of part-time effort!). Note that my original max bid was guesstimated purely on scrap metal recovery- amazingly, the steel alone pretty much covered my costs!

I still have some stainless, cast Al, motors, steel, etc. to bring in but I doubt that's going to wind up being more than another $30 or $40, total.

I put a few of the cables and telecom components on Ebay, but I really don't know diddly about the stuff and not seeing much interest in it I took the lots down. One buyer was lowballing me on some cables- his Ebay rating was good but something smelled funny and I discovered he was being sued for fraud in Hawaii and his wife drowned in a pool under "suspicious circumstances" a few years ago. Maybe the guy's having a streak of bad luck, but I decided I would rather not tie up money and time in Ebay if I didn't have to so I pulled the auctions.

Which leaves the escrap. It looks like I'm going to break down and scrap virtually everything except perhaps a stack of 4.5" floppy drives- I'll test those and put them on Ebay. Eventually. I'm working on totaling my escrap haul- the plan is to drop it off at ewasted's place on the way to bringing the kids to see grandma here in a couple weeks. Problem is, my better half has decided she may come along after all, which means I can't fill the passenger seat (and trunk) with boards- a dilemma!

cheers,
tbg

All-

Well, I thought I would give y'all one more update on/conclusion to my accidental mainframe thread, so here goes. I actually have a few more bits and pieces lying around (a couple of interesting boards I'm saving for my curio shelf, a stack of 5.25" floppy drives I may get around to testing, a small pile of connectors I plan on pulling the pins from, etc.) but I turned in the last of my non-precious metals before I left on vacation and yup, there was about $40 there (with the addition of a few dumpster finds). Most significantly, I personally delivered my escrap to ewasted's facility outside of Cleveland on my way to my mom's house in upstate NY. Picture a rental car with myself, mrsbugguy and the two litter buggers along with two weeks worth of luggage, car games, electronic gizmos AND 244 lbs of escrap stuffed into the trunk, the back window, the center console cubby, etc. I didn't bring absolutely *everything* with me- the PSU boards just wouldn't fit, but I probably could've slipped a few more small bags of goodies around the tire in the spare wheel well, but that would've meant completely unpacking the trunk and starting over again (mrsbugguy was not amused).

So, long story short, we drove about 11 hours the first day, over-nighted on the north end of Columbus and arrived at ewasted's facility round about 10 AM the next day (if I recall). I won't go into it here, but it was a pleasure to meet him and have a look at his shop- as many people have said elsewhere he's a great person to do business with. I started pulling luggage and bags and boxes of boards out of the trunk and about half-hour later was standing there with a check in my hand- pretty amazing, really!

PM me if you want a detailed breakdown of what exactly I brought, but it totaled 244 lbs separated into twenty (yes, two-zero!) different categories for a total payout of $786. Now this included some bits and pieces I had lying around before I bought the mainframe & telecom junk, but at least $700 was from the one auction lot. So, including the random curb finds thrown on top, I spent about $136 all told and grossed about $1,063.

Not a bad month for thebugguy if I say so myself! Granted, I doubt it will ever happen again, but once was enough to tell a good story- can't argue with that!

Again, I don't have exact numbers for anything, but if you want a little more detail on exactly what I pulled out of the mainframe drop me a note- I'll answer if I can.

cheers,
tbg