Honeywell Bull Mini-Computer

[Midnight]

Picked up a companies entire computer system.

Honeywell bull Mini-Computer (about the size of an apartment fridge)
approx 20 network terminals
2 large printers (each about the size of a roll-away desk)
Hard Drive Unit (about 3.5 ft tall and 3 ft deep)
assorted misc. equipment.
about a 50 gal drum worth of old CAT5 cable

Was told that it worked when they upgraded to their AS400 System. Been in indoor storage since. Can't easily verify working condition as it runs off of 220 3-phase.

Any opinions from experienced e-scrappers as whether it's better to sell it as scrap or as equipment? I've heard the Honeywells have quite a bit of gold content, but I've also been told that there are overseas buyers looking for the equipment for parts to keep their systems running.

Any comments appreciated.

[drozenski]

99% of computer stuff more than 1-2 years old is better as scrap. I've been trying to sell 18 500GB-1.5TB hard drives on craig's list for 3 weeks now and only had 1 person ask about them.

Computers are a dime a dozen. Hard drives are cheaper than they have ever been, ram is insanely cheap and u can pick up a full tower with monitor brand new at best buy for 399.99

Makes that 2-3 year old system for 99.99-159.99 look pretty bad.

Rip it all apart and scrap it.

[PartTimeScrapper]

I just sold an 80gb and 120gb on ebay for 15 bucks each. Ide say thats better then scrap price. Made about 7 to 8 bucks each after shipping and fees.

[Midnight]

I know that holds with consumer equipment. This equipment is one step below a mainframe system. Companies don't upgrade these systems at the same pace. In many cases companies actually pay a premium because they need to keep systems going and can't find the parts.

[drozenski]

http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/gcos6/gcos6.htm

The company no longer exists.

Just scrap it.

[ScrapperStoke]

There is a big secondary market market. I don't know the age of the equipment but I would guess '70 /'80s stuff...Honeywell was big in the late '60s to late '80s. After that they kind of fizzled away. Kind of like Unisys. You and pull the daughter-cards out and make a few calls. Pick up a couple of those industry news papers. They have hundreds of adds for companies that deal in the secondary market. Some of those cards could be worth hundreds...maybe a couple thousand. You never know...there's a big network of brokers out there.

[Kotoku]

For that particular lot, I'd go for scrapping. The odds that you'll find a buyer for Honeywell server and storage equipment is next to nothing in my experience (I've worked with a lot of equipment in the past ten years but never any of those).

I kind of came into scrapping from a different angle (maybe) than most of you. I run a local computer consulting business and wanted to find something to do with all the e-waste I accumulate. Here are some rough rules of thumbs I've developed.

Enterprise Grade Equipment:
High end: Decent resell for 2-5 years, takes longer to resell as many true enterprises take bundled offers on service contracts + equipment.
Low end: Usually trash after about 2 years, and heavy old stuff like the Dell Poweredge or HP Proliants won't be worth shipping but have hefty motherboards and multiple processors.

Fun Stuff: List of Poweredge Servers, anything before Gen 9 should likely be scrap. Sell the Hard Drives and RAM though.

I know I'm new here but I'd be happy to give a quick appraisal of hardware value if anyone wants other server info.

Consumer Grade Equipment:
You can get decent resell value from anything that wasn't bottom of the barrel when it was new. I get tons of value out of computers until they pass around the 5 year mark. The LCD's are pretty valuable parts. I still sell Core 2 Duo and Core Solo laptops pretty often for $175-250. The lower end pentium dual core and especially the celeron lines aren't worth too much (sometimes I make more on those through disassembling and selling of their parts). Most P4's? You'd probably do better in scrap unless you can find a local buyer to cut out shipping and online sales fees. Anything older? Scrap it for sure.

Just my two cents (maybe two and a half).

[Kotoku]

Also drozenski, if you are still looking to get rid of your hard drives feel free to drop me a line. I can certainly pay you above scrap (don't destroy those great drives! :P) and (while it certainly isn't a big discount) I do get an OK rate through UPS.

[fivegallonbucket]

Are you interested in HD of more than 100 GB?

[Mechanic688]

Looks like on ebay H.D.'s bigger than 40 gig are selling.

[PartTimeScrapper]

I would buy them and resell them on ebay. This gives me an idea. Ill start another thread.

[Kotoku]

Are you interested in HD of more than 100 GB?

Always. Bigger is better.

If you have multiples that is the best (cuts down on shipping).

[xyzzy]

There are a few people around the world like myself that rescues such systems from ending up as scrap and restore them to working conditions; much like people collecting and restoring old cars.

I am interested in your Honeywell Bull minicomputer if you still have it.


You can see my collection at datageneral.org

/Tommie

[Bear]

There is an enormous market for use-able parts for such systems, and those are quite easy to ship, and can be very profitable. If you are not afraid to ship worldwide, you will find there are countless users of outdated equipment, whose business and livelihood relies on finding parts to keep those systems running. The best way to find if there is any market for a part is simply to list it, but not in just any way. Starting out use the ten day auction, starting it on a friday, for 2 weekends and a full week. This will not only give them time to find it, but give you a chance to determine an acceptable "buy-it-now" price (for later), I suggest initially sticking out the ten days in spite of buy it now offers, until you have determined a solid idea for the current market value. From there you can begin to not only have watchers for your listing of those things, but have a better knowledge of acceptable buy it now prices for each item.

I once had accumulated about 15-20 old SGI INDYs and decided to scale down my collection to one or two, so began parting them out on Ebay. There was not one part that didn't sell, NOT ONE PART, I emphasize this because even the small connecting cables were solely made for these machines. The only parts I didn't offer or ship were the heavy metal cases (which sold well at the local scrap yard ; ) One early (and longtime) customer of these parts was in Taiwan, and must have been running an entire network of them. His first shipment he opted for economy (ground) shipping, for which he (and I too) waited almost 8 weeks, as international ground shipping goes by ship, but was very happy when the order arrived, and opted on future purchases for more expedited, and more expensive, shipping. I'm not sure how many times I filled boxes for them with these parts. Before it was over, if there was a few ounces of weight under the next pound mark, I'd toss in simple extras, which they also greatly appreciated.

[Jeremiah]

Depending on your time preference for income, it is within your interest to at least search ebay for listing prices on your parts. I believe the key is to store a decent supply of a part (like hard drives) and do all the searching and listing for one that part at the same time (it helps save time). I have two stations in my basement, a disassembly station and an office type bench that i use to test equipment, rebuild equipment, take photos and list parts.

Also, if you don't have the means to test certain equipment you can always sell them in lots as "untested"