Ratio of parts machines to working machines

[Unknown_K]

Do you guys (who collect) tend to have a bunch of non working machines on the shelf that were used to make others work or complete?

Most of my collection (85% or so) are 100% working machines (including duplicates) and a few parts machines. It seems buying a complete parts machine is more economical then buying parts as needed.

[ajkula66]

Instead of saying "yes, you're right" I'm just going to say: let's not even go there...

I amaze myself sometimes at the stuff that I find when I'm looking for something...

[Neil]

Hmmm.... I think we have 6 fully functional Thinkpads around here right now. And the parts machine count is probably higher.

[Unknown_K]

I tend to want to fix up parts machines, so I try to keep them at a minimum (cheaper on me).

A while ago I was looking for the eject button on a floppy drive in my 365 486 machine. I ended up getting another 365 machine from ebay ($10 shipped, not bad) that had the eject button. Now I have a working parts 365 minus an eject button, a missing space bar on the keyboard (how did they lose that!), and a plastic chip in the case.

[RWDPLZ]

It's usually about 50/50, although right now I have 3 functional, and 1 project.

[Harryc]

I tend to keep most of the machines around here working. So it's usually some number to 1 ratio...currently 8:1 working to parts, and even the parts machine will run if I put some time into it. Of the (8) working, (6) are in my sig and the other (2) are used by family members, a T43P and an S10.

[harshbarj]

I have a box 'o' parts but only 1 non working laptop (a t40p that continues to confound me). I do watch eBay often for parts systems as those tend to be just bad cmos batteries.

[TTA]

I really don't know, I know 1 380 works fine and is missing the battery, I just grabbed a T60 today with a cracked screen and no hard drive or cover some of my 760's may not have battereis the two RISC based Thinkpads I have I think are dead (so those are parts machines) I have two i1200's that are missinf ram doors and HDD's but work but all in all I'd say dang near every thinkpad I have at least has ram and will power on. I have a stack of T4x here that I have not yet cheked so those may end up parts machines or reflow test machines

edited to add I have not really looked at my 701's in years so those may be parts machine. got about a dozen of them.

[Unknown_K]

TTA where do you get all those machines? How come you have so many that you have no idea if they work or not?

[archer6]

I'm too much of a laptop addict...ha..ha..ha...

ALL of my ThinkPads

* Were bought new
* Began life as my primary ThinkPad
* Were kept like new, or as close to as possible
* Are used periodically to prevent degeneration, and to enjoy.
* Ended up being a collection as I simply couldn't part with them at collapsed pricing.

Cheers...

(by the way, the list below is only _some_ of the entire collection)