It is interesting to note that many of the Large Aerospace businesses still
in existence in Southern California have "Surplus" warehouses where they
keep this stuff.  i.e.  Hughes Aircraft, Lockheed/Martin, Rockwell, Mickey
D's (Douglas not Donald's).

I once dragged out an old Series III out of one of these warehouses and
fired it up as a political gesture.  Because we couldn't get CPU time
allocated on some Series 70s at the time.  Once the MIS department that
owned the 70s got wind of it YOU BET WE GOT CPU ALLOCATED!  [I didn't even
have a operating system for it.  But the octal lights lit up and the three
7920 disc drives made a lot of noise when the departmental managers showed
up.  We used a (micro) Series 37 loaned from an HP Sales Rep underneath
someone's desk to drive a terminal, to make it appear we had a console.]

Hughes in particular would drag this stuff out periodically and sell it to
employes at rock bottom prices.  (i.e. terminals for ten bucks).
 ----------
From: owner-hp3000-l
To: Multiple recipients of list HP3000-L
Subject: Card Readers [Punched, not credit!]
Date: Friday, September 27, 1996 12:38AM

I'm almost too embarrassed to ask, but I have a cousin who has 70,000
punched
cards that he would love to be able to transfer to a medium that still
exists
on the planet.  Does anyone know of a card reader still in existence that
might
be available to transfer this stuff to something else (except maybe paper
tape
or 7-track magnetic tape)?

Since I'm wishing anyway, I'll add that the closer to Southern California,
the
better.

Please, no laugher, no flames...it's for family...

/Steve   [log in to unmask]