HP Forum Archive 14

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HP86 sold thru HP museum ad, spammers Message #1 Posted by Fritz Bjornsen on 15 July 2004, 2:56 p.m. I advertised my HP86 system with the HP Museum classified site, and after a time succeeded in selling it to a company in France that still uses the 86 for process control in chemical manufacturing. I received a number of legitimate inquiries, as well as a slew of responses from our Nigerian friends. These Nigerian emails were mostly comical, and followed the typical pattern of offering to send large cashiers checks, with the excess amount to be forwarded to "an associate". Yeah, right...Most of the Nigerian replys were from people who had two first names. The HP86B sold for $150, which is pretty good for a computer that is over twenty years old, had 128k of memory, and no hard drive. (Not to mention the green monochrome monitor and dot-matrix printer...). I was more interested in it finding a good home than making any money, and couldn't bear the thought of throwing it away. (The shipping cost was $250!). Thanks for the site! Fritz

Re: HP86 sold thru HP museum ad, spammers Message #2 Posted by bill platt (les etats unis d'amerique) on 15 July 2004, 4:29 p.m., in response to message #1 by Fritz Bjornsen Hi Fritz: Quote: a company in France that still uses the 86 for process control in chemical manufacturing I though only americans kept using old technology to actually make money---it is refreshing to see a Euro doing that! Only a few years ago, I looked across the office and saw my German colleague shaking his head in disbelief as he was looking out the window. "What do you see out there, Thomas?" I said. He replied, "[A midship house tanker still in commercial service]--unbelievable." (You have to imagine the Baltic accent--it makes the punch-line). What he saw was the ex-NEW YORK SUN or PHILADELPHIA SUN (can't remember which) which, built in 1963, was still plying the Delaware river in 1999, serving her purpose for Tosco. She was older than the "Museumsschiff" at Warnemünde. Regards, Bill. And I too am happy you found a home for that old silicon.

Re: HP86 sold thru HP museum ad, spammers Message #3 Posted by Namir on 17 July 2004, 4:46 a.m., in response to message #1 by Fritz Bjornsen Hi Fritz, I had a few ads on the HP muesum to sell calculators and I too experienced a barrage of Nagierian scam emails. By now I should be a billionaire if all these are true. I also got another set of replies that ask for my ITEM (in generic term) and claim that they can handle shipping .. they also want a picture, description, and price (most of that info is in the ad itself). I guess some people need a life instead of trying to BE SMART with collectors like us. Namir

Re: HP86 sold thru HP museum ad, spammers Message #4 Posted by Chris Catotti )Florida) on 18 July 2004, 12:42 a.m., in response to message #3 by Namir And in reply to a free HP shirt tha no one has asked for yet, I got the following: "Hello, i am bruce daniels i am very happy to come across this site for i have been trying to buy these ( Free Hewlett Packard Shirt ) my customers have been asking for the ( Free Hewlett Packard Shirt ) because i buy it and sell in africa esp. nigeria but i will like you to please send me the price of these ( Free Hewlett Packard Shirt ) so that i will be preparing your payment and i will like to add that i will be paying you by a cashiers check drawn from a US abnk so i will be expecting you mails as soon as possible... regards daniel" Wow! If I only had 100 shirts to sell for FREE, I could make a fortune giving them away! Maybe I could get an airline stewardess headed to Nigeria to bring it to him, after all if someone could just pick it up, he wouldn't need to get a cashiers check . . . sigh ... http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/adforum.cgi?read=12401

[old HPs at work] Re: HP86 sold thru HP museum ad, spammers Message #5 Posted by John on 20 July 2004, 4:42 a.m., in response to message #1 by Fritz Bjornsen Hi, I was kindly sent some photographs of some HP-85s in use by Agtronics of New Zealand: http://www.vintagecomputers.freeserve.co.uk/hp80/pictures.htm If you want to e-mail me about the company in France, perhaps they could photograph their HP-86 machines at work, or perhaps you could send them a request? Regards, John

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