back to article Revenge for being fired is best served profitably

The exchange of labor for currency can be a grim business, which is why The Register ends each working week with a new instalment of On Call – the reader contributed column in which you tell cathartic tales of Working For The Man. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Sam" who has a tale that varies a little from our …

  1. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge

    Result!

  2. Korev Silver badge
    Coat

    I'm pleased he made Sam money out of it...

    1. 'arold

      He's a Fox! (I'll get my coat, that was bad..)

  3. Mast1
    Coat

    When one door closes.....

    .... at least he had left the Window(s) open.

  4. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

    I patiently rebuilt them all with Windows

    You'd have trouble with licenses if you tried that these days

    1. PCScreenOnly

      unless there was a license attached to the PC, as with wth lots of business class devices

    2. ridley

      Why?

      I used to build 1000's of PCs a year all without entering a licence.

      If course when the customer turned it on for the first time then they were expected to enter the licence number. In this case that number would be the one on the sticker usually attached to these type of PCs.

    3. AustinTX

      Just run the windows recovery program. It usually won't bug you for a license key.

    4. rcxb Silver badge

      "these days"... you can download a Windows 10 install ISO directly from Microsoft.com and just click "I don't have one" when it asks for a key, and use it forever with a fews nags.

      And that's the worst-case. "these days"... any OEM PC that came with Windows (7+) installed will read the key right from the UEFI tables, authorize without issue, and never prompt you to enter it.

  5. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Slight aside but a colleague was talking to another new ex-RAF colleague in the '90s. The subject of Spitfire (IIRC) engines came up and the fact that the RAF was scrambling around for parts to keep the few they had running.

    "How many do they need?"

    ""What?"

    "How many, new, still crated Merlin engines do you need?"

    "How ... what?"

    "Scrapman in Scotland bought a load years ago off the RAF, they didn't want them and they're great engines for tractor pullers ... he's still got several."

    A phone call was made and much, much more money than scrap value changed hands ...

    1. jake Silver badge

      If you need a Merlin ...

      ... one could do worse than calling my friends down at the 51 Factory.

      Most of the folks here at ElReg will probably enjoy browsing through their web pages.

      Their inventory is so large that there is no point in even trying to describe what they have, so check it out for yourself. Basically, if you need it, they probably have it new, unused, and in the box from the 1950s. And if they don't have it new, they'll have it in "run-in, but never flown" condition.

      I've seen complete engines sold for under $10,000 in running condition (not flyable!). Shipping and handling extra. Might want to make certain the .sig-other is off shopping and hide it in the garage or shed when it's delivered. Check you local noise ordinances before starting it for the first time ... and please, call me! Firing these things up never gets old. I'll bring the beer :-)

      Try the almost but not quite obvious 51-factory.com

      And you thought Silly Con Valley was just about computers.

      1. I am David Jones Silver badge

        Re: If you need a Merlin ...

        Interesting… thanks for sharing!

      2. Wempy

        Re: If you need a Merlin ...

        What a breath of fresh air that website is, I'd forgotten how good the web could be without javascript. Well done 51 Factory.

        1. ecofeco Silver badge

          Re: If you need a Merlin ...

          A bit plain, but yeah, no needless bells and whistle and and dancing shite or info gobbling.

          And none of my blockers even so much as hiccuped. Didn't even need them.

          Love it. Glad to see someone remembers how it's done.

      3. Gene Cash Silver badge

        Re: If you need a Merlin ...

        I actually live just down the road from "Ti-Co" (Titusville-Cocoa airport) that's a major center for getting old warbirds flying again.

        Almost every Saturday in the summer, a B-17 flies over my house about 10am.

        Unfortunately covid seems to have put a dent in their yearly airshow.

      4. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: If you need a Merlin ...

        I did NOT need this!

        Curse you, how am I going to explain the next credit card bill to the wife?!

        That prop... I have just the space on my wall for that...

      5. phuzz Silver badge

        Re: If you need a Merlin ...

        I'm somewhat surprised that there's no 100% new build Merlins on sale. There's newly manufactured replacements for almost the entire Merlin, and from what I've seen there's plenty of speciality car engine builders who can manufacture entire engines. Of course, getting (eg) a new crankshaft cut from a single billet would probably be more expensive than the castings that RR originally used, but still probably cheaper than sourcing an actual RR one today.

        I guess the big sticking point is getting CAA/FAA/EASA approval to stick it in an aircraft.

    2. PB90210 Bronze badge

      Similar thing happened when BR scrapped all their steam engines in the 60s. A large number got shipped to a scrapyard in Barry, S Wales, where they sat for years awaiting death by gas axe. Then along came Beeching and hundreds of miles of branch lines were closed.

      That was the start of dozens of standard gauge heritage railways.

      (297 'scraped', 213 returned to service)

      1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
        Pint

        The thing that really saved the steam engines from scrap at Barry, was the owner who found that cutting up the wagons, not the locomotive was more cost effective\better return.

        Either way I'm very very glad they were saved.

        1. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

          They were simply quicker to process in terms of labour Vs value delivered. If the supply of wagons ran low there was never a moment's hesitation is pulling out an old loco for scrappage.

    3. tinman

      I seem to recall there was a scramble for Vulcan refuelling components when they decided to send one down to bomb the airfield at Port Stanley in the Falklands War, including finding one part that was being used as an ashtray in a squadron mess

      1. collinsl Silver badge

        IIRC they even approached a museum in the US (Smithsonian springs to mind but I'm not sure) to get the refuelling probe and associated gubbins off of one of the Vulcans they'd donated there to be displayed years before.

  6. PCScreenOnly

    Similar

    I tried that years ago at an old job. We were replacing nearly all the old PC's with Wyse terminals - at whatever cost.

    I suggested running the Wyse software on the old PC's as would be pretty much free, but was told no.

    Thought it dumb

    1. David Robinson 1

      Re: Similar

      I see what you did there.

    2. rcxb Silver badge

      Re: Similar

      running the Wyse software on the old PC's as would be pretty much free

      I also worked for a company heavily dependent on WYSE emulation for many of their programs, but I certainly didn't find WYSE emulators to be free. WYSE rarely showed up in any free or cheap terminal emulators, and even if it did, price of the product was a pretty good approximation of the quality of the WYSE emulation,

      These days you can modify an open source one to fit: https://github.com/gutschke/wy60

  7. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

    Last thing I took home from the IT departments "get rid" pile , thinking I'd make some money was three 21" CRT Dell monitors , never used , boxed.

    Approximately 2008 I reckon. Just at the point CRT became yesterdays news.

    1. Bebu Silver badge
      Windows

      Never say never

      iLast thing I took home from the IT departments "get rid" pile , thinking I'd make some money was three 21" CRT Dell monitors , never used , boxed.

      Approximately 2008 I reckon. Just at the point CRT became yesterdays news.

      I was reading something about the retro computing & gaming communities which mentioned how difficult it was to get CRT monitors. Perhaps an opportunity there although hanging one off a mono Hercules card (MDA/HGC) isn't likely to fly nor a CGA card I suspect.

      Having had to move the bloody great SGI workstation monitors (relabeled Sony Trinitrons?) I was glad to see the back of CRT monitors. Hint: Office chairs with hydraulic/pneumatic lift make excellent trolleys for moving these beasts without actually lifting them but does rather bugger the wheels. (Bring up the seat level with the desk, drag the monitor etc onto the seat, push chair to destination and don't use your office chair. :)

      1. gryphon

        Re: Never say never

        Except when the design office which uses the things is up 2 flights of stairs with no lift.

        Same thing with the big LaserJet 3si's and 5si's. They were always stuck in a corner with tons of paperwork piled around them so it was impossible to easily get at the back without shifting the whole thing with extreme danger to back.

        1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

          Re: Never say never

          all true , I miss getting that much exercise though

          1. keith_w

            Re: Never say never

            Then you are probably the only one. I never did. And as for the huge LaserJets, try lugging a Xerox wax depositing colour printer up 2 flights. Even with 2 of us, it was very difficult.

        2. Clausewitz4.0 Bronze badge
          Devil

          Re: Never say never

          Reminds me of Epson LX-300. Much sought after till today. Perfect to fill forms.

      2. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

        Re: Never say never

        I was reading something about the retro computing & gaming communities which mentioned how difficult it was to get CRT monitors. Perhaps an opportunity there although hanging one off a mono Hercules card (MDA/HGC) isn't likely to fly nor a CGA card I suspect.

        Having had to move the bloody great SGI workstation monitors (relabeled Sony Trinitrons?) I was glad to see the back of CRT monitors. Hint: Office chairs with hydraulic/pneumatic lift make excellent trolleys...

        I've not looked at it recently but I suspect Herc would be within the range of a "modern" multisync monitor you can find in a skip. MDA may be similar but from memory the refresh rate was a bit lower. True CGA is out but true CGA had a TV output in any case.

        As for SGi monitors yes they were great, Sony Trinitron screens but packaged by Iiyama IIRC - now there's a blast from the past. Best way of shifting them was always manually, screen towards your belly, an never touch the base during the lift. If someone else is helping, remove the base first.

    2. PerlyKing

      You might have been able to flog them to a former colleague of mine. He resisted the move from CRT to LCD for as long as possible, because he commuted by motorbike and used to dry his gloves out on top of his monitor :-D

    3. Evil Auditor Silver badge

      Hey, they still do a great job as ambient light and heater. And are difficult to steal.

    4. TooOldForThisSh*t

      Wait Wait. Somebody might need that!

      Last employer before retirement had several IBM PS/2 Model #80 Microchannel servers that were at that time obsolete and headed to the dumpster. Three or four of out IT department staff asked if we could have them instead. I took one fully loaded and headed home to replace my aging home network server ( mostly NAS ). A few days later we were TOLD to bring them back so that other people could have a chance at getting one. Into the storage room they went. Years later after being outsourced a coworker and I were tasked with clearing out the old store room. They all were sitting there collecting dust. So off to the dumpster they went. What a waste.

    5. steviebuk Silver badge

      Retro scene would like those and they might even be able to go into arcade cabinets.

  8. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    The only hardware I "disposed of" was my work PC, which was going to be replaced by a more powerful one. My old desktop machine was no slouch, but it was equipped with fast, but slightly esoteric RD-RAM (2 banks of 1 GB each). Our admin wanted these machine replaced with machines with more common types of RAM. As my machine at home was considerably less powerful, I asked whether they minded me disposing of the item. "No problem" was their answer. I then asked if I could "liberate" the RD-RAM of another machine that was heading for the dumpster, and the answer was yes once more. I ended up with a nifty machine with 4GB of RD-RAM, which served me well for quite a few years. No direct profit, but quite a good savings.

    1. Bebu Silver badge
      Windows

      RDRAM

      I am guessing Pentium IV motherboard?

      I wouldn't have bothered. Even in their time they were slower than the PIII (coppermine?) which didn't use the expensive RDRAM.

      I had about thirty of these P4 these in a Beowulf cluster that were no end of trouble. Glad to see the end of them too. Fortunately being 32 bit and even with the best kernel/user memory split the limited address spaces meant they weren't particularly useful for scientific computing and were quickly shunned when amd64/x86_64 systems were available a few years later.

      I did scavenge all their ram on their way to ewaste (~30 × 4G) as the stuff was then still fairly expensive. Unfortunately I never got to make a quid on that haul. :(

      1. Korev Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: RDRAM

        > they weren't particularly useful for scientific computing and were quickly shunned

        Not to mention the dreadful memory bandwidth of the Netburst systems

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      I remember RD-RAM - 11W PER 2GB STICK

      When your home server is pulling 80+W just in the memory, it's time to update the server

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Joke

        ...and install a proper central heating system :-)

  9. chivo243 Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    only 3 in 25 years

    I've never paid for a computer that I use! I have bought my wife, son and mother new computers, but all of 'my' computers have come from employer's hand me downs.

    1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: only 3 in 25 years

      To me it is the Laptops I have. Never bought one, those are simply fast enough for what I need a laptop for.

      The main machine(s), capable of good gaming or used as a versatile server, are a different story. Though my current server is still my ex-gamer PC with i7-4960x eleven years old now. And I still see no need to upgrade it since the mainboard does have 10 SATA ports and can still saturate a 10 GBit LAN connection.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Bill Gray

      Re: only 3 in 25 years

      For about twenty years or so, I got computers for myself, wife, mother, and sister from the local recycling facility. It was very common for people to drop off perfectly good machines with (say) a bad hard drive or corrupted W__dows or such. Replace hard drive with one from another machine with a bad mobo, install Linux, and we're off to the races.

      (Sadly, the town signed an agreement with an e-waste handler a few years ago. They, somewhat reasonably, didn't want to get machines that had been cherry-picked. A couple of months ago, I actually had to buy, with real money, a computer to replace one that had just died. First time in decades I've done that. It wasn't a lot of money, I admit, but it's the principle of the thing...)

      1. DoctorPaul

        Re: only 3 in 25 years

        Second hand business box from eBay is my go-to solution, OK so it's probably going to be a Dell or HP but at least they don't profit from me directly and the chassis quality far exceeds the cheapest Chinese boxes and their tendency to draw blood.

        Main workhorse is a HP Z230 running the "full Terry Pratchett" with 6 24" monitors, media server is a Dell mini-tower whose stock PSU manages to cope with spinning up 32Tb 6HDDs and an SSD, and finally the driving sim just has the 3 monitors to go with the seat, steering wheel and pedals. Each box wasn't much over a hundred quid and came with a Windows license.

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    New PCs too fast, need older slower ones

    There was a time when Borland Pascal compiled programs failed on Pentium with 200 MHz due to their wait-loop implementation. If you had the source you could recompile with the fix and done forever. If you supplier had the source and was willing to do, you could fix it too. But for many MANY the only fix was a slower PC or a binary-hack which extended the limit until the Pentium II and AMD K6 came along.

    Throw "Borland Pascal runtime 200" into your preferred search engine for more.

    1. Dave Pickles

      Re: New PCs too fast, need older slower ones

      I remember when my 16MHz 386 work PC was swapped for a 20MHz one. I complained because I could no longer read text files as they scrolled up the screen.

    2. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: New PCs too fast, need older slower ones

      I downloaded a copy of SimCopter off the internet a couple of months ago. I used to play that to death on my old P75 box, I'm sure the install CD is around here someplace, but a thirty second download is easier than taking the house apart.

      Yeah. Um. Mostly it is playable on my old 2.4GHz P4 box, but there are certain points which obviously use a software delay loop and to say the game freaks out would be a massive understatement. I think it's when you get out and walk around, which makes it interesting if you tap the cursor key as lightly as you can and end up waaaay over there.

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: New PCs too fast, need older slower ones

        Some of those games rely on video sync as speed setting. So if your emulator does not the 60 Hz or 72 Hz refresh correctly you have exactly that problem.

        This includes some releases on GOG of some windows "deltaforce 3 like" games, don't play without vsync. And if vsync, don't play on at 120 Hz or 144 Hz monitor :D... Luckily the GFX settings of modern video cards have a "vsync to half of refresh rate for THIS game" option.

        1. Helcat Silver badge

          Re: New PCs too fast, need older slower ones

          Some of them rely on the clock speed of the CPU and don't adjust/adapt to higher speeds found in modern systems, so the game plays so much faster.

          So much so that when I installed the original mech warrior game on a newer PC some years ago, and hoped in on the first mission, it was over before I could see the enemy approach.

          Was an interesting experiment - I wasn't sure what would happen, but thought I'd give it a go and see. Game ran: That's the main thing. Just... a little too quickly without an emulator to slow it down.

          1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

            Re: New PCs too fast, need older slower ones

            Whatever they are using, it would be easy to measure the frequency against the real-time clock at startup.

            I'm guessing these game programmers weren't cut from the same cloth as the Voyager engineers we read about yesterday.

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

              Re: New PCs too fast, need older slower ones

              No, they were writing for the bestest and fasted PCs out there so most users had to turn down the options until they could upgrade. Despite the fast pace of upgrades, they always had "the best". That's why those days are "fondly" remembered as being on the "upgrade treadmill". Games had a"shelf life" only a little shorter than the upgrade cycle :-)

              The Voyager programmers were working to a known target platform with an extremely unlikely possibility of it being upgraded after "release day" :-)

    3. parrot

      Borland

      Worst theme park I've ever been to.

  12. technos

    I've been lucky twice.

    Once it was a DVD duplicator.. I'd been toying with improvements to a DVD archiving system and figured I could strip the drives for use elsewhere, and the price was right.

    A few months later the company decides they want to equip every remote office and laptop user with a custom recovery image. I had yet to part the duplicator out, so I offered to loan it to them. They weren't interested in borrowing it. No, they'd rent it from me. $100/week, two week minimum.

    And then they started rethinking what subset of company applications to include, so they ended up paying me for eleven weeks. $1,100 for a duplicator I'd paid them $150 for and got to keep!

    The next time I offered to loan them something (an antique Hewlett Packard) I felt so bad I started negotiations at one six-pack of beer per week, delivered to my desk. They laughed. And said no. They were not going to write an agreement that paid me in beer. They would, however, be happy to write one for $9.35 a week (the cost of a six-pack and sales tax) and pay me from petty cash every Friday.

    But I'd have to buy it myself.

    Still, it was free beer.

  13. ComicalEngineer

    A couple of years ago I quit my former small company (I was a director & a partner in the business) after I discovered the two secret company bank accounts that I wasn't supposed to know about. Cue my *partner* having a shouty fit about me not needing to know about the accounts.

    What my idiot *business partner* didn't realise was that I own the permanent license to the (now very expensive expensive) CAD software that we had used for many years, and it was installed on a machine that I had paid for. I was also the only person remaining who understood how to do the drawings (he never bothered to learn and everyone else who did know left when I did).

    Thus the CAD machine and another desktop containing some legacy modelling software went into the back of my car as I left, along with the relevant documentation, license keys, cables and monitors.

    Ooops, former *partner* is no longer able to service a goodly number of very large clients who have instead come to me for work as I also have copies of all the drawing files (most of which I produced) and configuration files for the modelling software.

    His business is shutting down, I currently have too much work and a 10 week waiting list of jobs.

    Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

  14. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Not as a money making venture...

    ...but I did acquire plenty of hardware during a RIF & office closure.

    The old IT department's paradigm was to retain laptops from departed employees in perpetuity, just in case there was some sort of weird legal discovery action that needed to happen. Sometimes employees left shortly after starting. The result was several rooms of lightly to moderately used laptops.

    Company was paying for the e-waste costs to get rid of them. IT was being shown the door in the process.

    IT showed me their door and told me to make sure it was closed when I was done carting stuff off. Ended up saving the company several hundred dollars and netted a pile of older, but servicable, laptops to issue to nieces & nephews to beat on during their younger years.

  15. old_n_grey

    Not in the same league but back in the late 1980s, before I had seen the light and was still a beancounter, I had replaced the useless Windows Network that we used (albeit only one person at a time!) with a shiny Xenix multi-user system plus lots of dumb terminals. Thus we had a small pile of redundant (other than the dot matrix printer that we used) but still useable equipment. The company had leased everything and we were now paying a peppercorn rent for this pile that was sitting in my office. Having read the lease agreement I noticed a clause that I felt I could turn to my advantage. Our current options were to keep the pile of useless kit or find someone that would buy it. I decided that someone would be me. The deal was that the lease company retained 10% of the sale amount and my employer received the rest. I had a word with one of the directors to ensure that they were OK with the deal and I also said that as we still used the printer, I would rent it back to them. I waited with baited breath for the answer which was in the affirmative.

    So I paid £50 to the lease company, who then transferred £45 to my employer. I then invoiced my employer for that £45 to cover the use of my printer. Meaning for a fiver I bought:

    1 x IBM PC with 256Kb motherboard and twin floppies and IBM monitor

    1 x IBM XT with 10Mb hard disk and IBM monitor

    1 x external 28Mb hard disk with integral tape drive

    1 x Compaq Portable

    1 x printer (can't remember the make now)

    I still have the IBM PC and Compaq in the vain hope that one day I can sell them for a huge amount of money. I upgraded the XT over the years (usually to allow the kids to play the latest games) until there was nothing left but the case. The external hard disk was ditched when we measured disks in gigabytes. I retrieved the printer when the company folded but it stopped working so I replaced it with an inkjet.

    All in all, not a bad haul for a fiver

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Made £££ off customer returned FC drives

    Yonks ago a sales person mucked up an order and shipped kit with 36GB drives instead of 72GB drives. Sales person arranged for free 72gb drives and chassis to be sent (the margins were huge) and the honest customer returned the original drives 36gb drives, in original packing. The not so honest techies (note: no RMA, customer “gave” them to us.. cough) nabbed the drives and drip fed them on to the flea bay over a few years.. that was back in the day when 1tb cost A LOT and drives all had customer firmware!

    Anon… as.. well… yeah.

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