First Pentium Pro!!!

I stopped by a small time thrift store on my home after work today just for the heck of it and sitting on top of a desk was a Pentium Pro tower with no price tag on it. I went to the counter and asked the guy what he wanted for it and he told me $5. I literally almost pooped myself. He said he doesn't know anything about computers and that this one had been sitting there for over a month! I told him that i scrap computers and would gladly buy every single one he gets, untested, at that price. He went on to say that the one tower they had there was actually a mistake and made it from the warehouse to the store on accident. They usually get put upstairs in the warehouse because he can't sell them. Anyway, long story short he said that he has about 25 more just like that he got from a local Vo-Tech years ago. I am following him to the warehouse tomorrow afternoon to buy the rest of them. Just when i was getting a little down about my incoming flow of PC's, i get a bomb dropped on me!!! I'm so geeked out right now i can't even sleep.

Congrats

Yea it's a good feeling. I just got my first one a couple weeks ago. Good score. I hope you get all the other ones he has also.

Photos of your stack towers and PP when you get them, please. Congrats, Mike

That seems to be how it works. While supply is occasionally intermittent and we might feel like things aren't going well, then we get slammed with opportunity.

Nice Score...:)

I got a tower that had a big pentium pro sticker on the front of it yesterday. Popped that sucker open and to my surprise, some one gutted it and placed their gaming rig in the case because it was big. :( no pro for me.

I hate finding gutted towers!! Unfortunately I haven't gotten anymore so far, he said he hadn't made it the warehouse, but that he wiuld call when he does. Got the feeling I'm not too high on his list of priorities.

Wait until Monday morning then give him a call. People's first priorities on the weekend are themselves.

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Originally Posted by miked

Photos of your stack towers and PP when you get them, please. Congrats, Mike

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I don't know but I don't need a pic of his PP,,,,,,;)

Haha^^

I would think finding PPro towers is getting rare these days? The endless supply of 386/486 machines should be tapped out soon too.

Nice find. Take care of that guy.

The 486 machines are still in abundance. Many people do not realize that the reason Pentium Pro's are so rare is that they were only made for 3 years, and mainly used in servers. The 486 chips were made for twice as long and used in lots of home computers. Intel was still making 486 chips(non ceramic) for use in embedded systems up until 2007.

You would be amazed at the age of computers people are still using. I picked up a bunch of old compaqs that were just retired from a montessori school last week. They were window's 98 machines with amd ceramic chips in them. I can't imagine they had much fun with them.

Monday morning with coffee and donuts, or a hour before closing with cold beer and you will be his first priority.
Did you leave a business card? maybe he wanted to google you first to see if you were legit.
once he figures out that he can make 50-70% of thrift store retail selling to you and only having to deal with one person, you will have all of his scrap/salvage business, but it's all in how you market yourself.
what I've found with thrift stores that are locally owned you need to sell them on the idea that they spend 5 min dealing with one customer to make $20. they spend 5 min dealing with you and it's a couple hundred, + they have more storage space free for other items. once you establish the relationship (donuts/beer) you will have all those PP's by the end of the week.

The thrift store in question is ran by a local non profit for recovering alcoholics so the beer idea would be horrible. Lol. I tried to give him my card and he said, "honestly, I'll lose that, I never call anyone" he just said he would make sure the rest made it to the back of the store for easy loading when I come back. I'll wait until this friday and stop by. Don't want to become a nuisance.

A small donation,is better than a card any day.Remember cash makes memeries last a long time.Best of luck.stephen:))

Turns out the other towers he had were not Pentium pros, and most had been stripped already. They all had motherboards and power supplies so i gave him an average of $2 each for the 20 towers he did have. He then went on to say that he gets an average of about 1 tower a day and usually ends up pitching it in the dumpster because he cant sell them. So now i got my first major contact, he's going to sabe them all for me, and ill swing by every Saturday morning.