WTB SGI Fuel: Complete skins & door, 500/600Mhz range, Low/0 RAM, no HDD, V10 gfx, Dead PSU OK, Env Disease OK

[Josh K.]

Hi,
I'm hoping to get a part-complete SGI Fuel with:

I'll take either a 500Mhz or 600Mhz processor,
I don't care how much RAM it has (zero is OK, I have Fuel/Tezro RAM).
I want the internal DVD drive with cabling.
I don't need any hard drives.
I'll take any graphics, as long as it has a working graphics card.
I'll accept a dead original (Untouched/Unopened INSIDE) SGI power supply
Dual Display add-on would be very welcome.
I'll accept Environmental Monitoring Disease, not an issue, I have the
equipment to replace the ICs.



However, the unit needs to be fully complete inside, all fans, shrouds,
cables, skins, front door, and other parts and plastics need to be
present and in good shape (no cracks, no missing parts). Outside needs
to look good.

I'm looking for a repair project so will readily accept a unit with some
faults. But known running prior to storage-only, no explosions, water
damage, rust, etc...just needs work.

I'm in Washington State, USA and can drive if you're local. Otherwise
email me and we'll talk.

Looking for reasonable pricing (not including any shipping and packaging).

[Richard]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

"Josh K." <webl...@hotmail.com> spake the secret code
<rgdiut$1qa1$1...@gioia.aioe.org> thusly:

>However, the unit needs to be fully complete inside, all fans, shrouds,
>cables, skins, front door, and other parts and plastics need to be
>present and in good shape (no cracks, no missing parts). Outside needs
>to look good.

Good luck finding this. They show up on ebay fairly regularly, but in
the condition you require it won't be cheap. Expect prices of around
$500. I regularly see them sell for around $400 each when in lesser
condition that what you describe above. Still, if that's your budget,
you can find them on ebay fairly regularly, although the frequency of
listing does drop off over longer time frames (e.g. years).

The Fuel machines seem to be still used for productive work, or are
highly sought after by collectors, so they still command a price
premium. Even moreso for the Tezro, which I still haven't been able
to acquire due to the amount I'm willing to pay.

For other machines, in order of frequency I've observed on ebay:
Octane, Indy, Indigo^2, Indigo, Personal Iris.

The deskside Onyx, Crimson, Power Series or the fridge sized machines
almost never show up on ebay anymore.
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[Josh K.]

While I didn't mention price, those are totally agreeable numbers and
what I expected. $500 would be great! I refuse to spend $800+ for a
system in the condition I stated.

I already own two Tezros, they are easier to find then Fuels! However
one has power issues on the 1.8v rail that I need to fix (older unit)
and I need to rebuild PSUs are everything!

I'm missing a Fuel, Octane2, and O2+...I have all the other SGIs I want
(Iris Indigo and higher). I've been collecting since 1998. But after
2011 I missed a few chances. Since 2013, Fuels have been scarce because
people threw them out! I've talked to 3 parts people that threw away
fuel motherboards because they were cheap and people didn't want to fix
them.

I'm trying to reverse that trend. But the ONLY reason Fuels are
overpriced is a lot of people threw them in the trash when they stopped
working about 10 years ago... Now they are too expensive due to
artificial scarcity because of early system failures.

I'm working towards PCB repair on SGIs.

If you know of broken Power supplies and the like. Please email me!

-Josh

[Richard]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

"Josh K." <webl...@hotmail.com> spake the secret code

<rgi440$63q$1...@gioia.aioe.org> thusly:

>I'm missing a Fuel, Octane2, and O2+...I have all the other SGIs I want
>(Iris Indigo and higher).

I'm missing Octane2, O2+ and Tezro.

>I'm trying to reverse that trend. But the ONLY reason Fuels are
>overpriced is a lot of people threw them in the trash when they stopped
>working about 10 years ago... Now they are too expensive due to
>artificial scarcity because of early system failures.

Yeah, computer equipment goes through several pricing phases:

- commercially available new at list price from the vendor
- commercially available used from resellers
- vendor discontinues product, but it is still used in industry;
commercially available used from resellers
- majority of industry discontinues use of product,
still available from commercial resellers as spares
commercial resellers begin liquidating inventory
- industry no longer uses the product at all,
commercial resellers liquidate remainder of inventory

Of course during all phases there are individual owners/sellers of
equipment. Individual sellers seem to have much more negotiable
pricing than the commercial resellers.

Each of the phase transitions results in waves of product moving
through the marketplace at various price points. Once the commercial
resellers have exited the marketplace, then things are just scarce.

Some commercial resellers seem to hold onto things forever and charge more
and more for the remaining inventory that they have. In my experience,
they are very inflexible when it comes to price negotiation. Once they
give up on that inventory, they seem to just send it to scrap instead
of selling to the collectors, which is a shame.

Over the past 15 years or so, recyclers have entered the picture.
Many recyclers list stuff on ebay because they get better money from a
collector than they get from scrap.

[Joshua Krawitz]

Sorry, I used a free usenet server before and they purged this post, so I cannot respond with the original account. I'm the same person that asked this original WTB: Fuel question. I ended up getting a broken 700Mhz Fuel for a great Price on eBay in October 2021 and fixing it up! I'm also always interested in another but my immediate want has now been solved...just trying fight my way back to update this old post.

Thanks!

[John GTI]

On Saturday, February 12, 2022 at 9:39:59 PM UTC-7, Josh K. wrote:
> Sorry, I used a free usenet server before and they purged this post, so I cannot respond with the original account. I'm the same person that asked this original WTB: Fuel question. I ended up getting a broken 700Mhz Fuel for a great Price on eBay in October 2021 and fixing it up! I'm also always interested in another but my immediate want has now been solved...just trying fight my way back to update this old post.
>
> Thanks!

Hello, I work for a computer that sells fuels to high end customers. We are looking for help rebuilding some of our bad motherboards. We have a fix for the power supplies. But we do have bad ones that I think they just recycle. Do you expertise in rebuilding them testing them?

If have lots of boards that do not work at the moment. We are also trying to flash the boards to accept 700 and 800 CPUs.

Email me or message back if you want.
john

[Josh K.]

I have replied privately to this posting. I'm interested in hearing more and can help on several of these issues.

[John GTI]

OK well email at john...@gmail.com . I have figured out the flashing of the motherboards. But we still have motherboards that need repair. Are there any schematics or board layout diagrams for Fuels?
Do you repair fuel motherboards?
Regards,
John

[Josh K.]

I've resent my original email with a minor update again to your email address. It's from a different email account, but has the same title.

Please look for it. -Josh

[Josh K.]

If you're still unable to find my messages, please post your company's public contact info here and I'll get in touch via those methods. Hopefully we can do business.