free as in blog

Every year brings around the MIT Flea Market, a collection of computer/HAM/other crap from years ago. It’s pretty rare to find something that was made in the past 18 months there. More commonly you’ll find things at least 5+ years old.

I go for two reasons: to sell or get rid of crap in my basement that has been accumulating for the past while, and to socialize usually with my friend Nelson. Nelson usually has far more stuff to sell than I do, so I’ll hustle what stuff of his that I can for him.

This year (actually the Apr 18 one) was particularly interesting. Nelson had a U-haul van PACKED with stuff whereas I had a small cardboard box with a bunch of cards and cables in it. One of the items Nelson was trying to get rid of was a Dolch logic analyzer. Now I remember Dolch as making luggable PCs in the late 80s/early 90s. But apparently they made these logic analyzers in the early 80s, making this thing 20+ years old. It couldn’t have been that bad, as it came with two 5.25″ floppy drives. There was this sign on the Dolch that read “Dolch Logic Analyzer: Free. Textronix cart: $100″. Yes, the empty cart had more value than the analyzer. The analyzer (and cart) sat in the van for most of the day with most people not giving it a second look. Near the end of the day (about 2PM), we started our “Free Bin” where we take the stuff we don’t really care about and give it away. It might be a 9600 modemwe couldn’t sell, it might be PCBs that do nothing. It might be a mouse or joystick. In some form of desperation, the Dolch was hauled out of the van and near the Free Bin in the hopes we could get someone to take it.

And that’s when we met Pevner.

Pevner, as it turned out, was 17 and looking forward to going to MIT next year. He started asking about the Dolch, and Nelson, his friend (Steve Wadlow) and I started to talk poor Pevner into taking it. Some of the more memorable quotes:

“Imagine the joy of owning something older than you are!”

“It’s a logic analyzer! It analyzes logic!”
“So, I could feed it in things like ‘Sorcates is a man ; all men are mortal ; therefore Socrates is mortal?’”

That went on for a while. With me chiming in nice things like “Socrates was a guy?”. Steve and I eventually wore him down to the point where he said he’d take it (success!).

But he didn’t have a car with him that we could haul it to. He had his dad’s car. And his dad may not want it.

Uh-oh.

Pevner returns with his dad. Dad know exactly what this thing is.

“That’s a Dolch Logic Analyzer! I know what that thing is. Why do you want it?”
“It’s cool!”
“Uh huh.”

Steve and I really start laying it on. Looking back, Pevner must have really wanted it in the first place and just let us talk him into it, but we didn’t realize it at the time. So we brought out the big guns:

“Imagine the creds you’ll get when your roommate sees you with this thing!”
“He’ll be impressed?”
“Impressed? You bet!”
“Will I get girls?”
“Girls? They’ll be flocking to your room to see this thing! You’ll be beating them off with a stick!”

About this point in the story is where everyone seems to agree I’m now a Grade-A Bastard ™. Ehh. I didn’t have to haul that thing around anymore.

We eventually convince the dad that Pevner really want it, so he agrees.

As he’s hauling it away, I have a tinge of regret and try to do my one good deed for the day. I recommended that if he really wants it cool, he can yank the CRT from the front, replace it with some clear lexan or something, make the interior watertight, add a lightbulb to the back, and make it a fishtank. Then he could at least get posted to slashdot.org and get plenty of creds. Or something.

Pevner, if you read this, let me know what you really did with the stupid thing. And I hope you learned a lesson. I’m not sure what it is, but you probably learned it. Or will.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2004 at 4:18 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.