Today I’m going to expand on the advice I provided in my earlier post, “A few words of advice for used equipment sellers“. Today I’m going to address the issues with “As-Is / Not Working / For Parts Only” listing types. These are terms used by eBay, but this advice also applies to anyone else selling equipment in this category.

In general, this type of item is offered by sellers at a lower price in the hope of recovering some money from a piece of equipment that is either not operating properly or is not able to be tested by the seller. Some sellers are very scrupulous about describing the equipment, providing lots of pictures and as much information as they know about the item. At the other end are sellers who use a stock photograph and product description, perhaps with some words like “Couldn’t power on – didn’t test.”

Any buyer who purchases items in this category is hoping to find a bargain by ending up with a piece of working equipment after performing minimal repairs. [There are probably people who buy this material for other purposes, such as scrap metal recovery, components for artwork, and so on, but I’ll leave those out of this discussion.] As such, you (as the seller) want to provide as much information as possible to potential buyers so you both end up with a good experience.

There are quite a few categories of “untested / not working”, and I’ll go through these from best to worst:

• Unable to test / Not tested – this means that the seller lacks the ability to test the item, either because it is a sub-component of a larger device the seller does not have, lack of necessary cabling to connect it, or due to it requiring specialized test / calibration equipment. Items in this category are truly untested and may or may not work. This category should NOT be used for items that the seller did test, but were found to be non-operational. It should also NOT be used for equipment with obvious physical defects which would make the unit not fit for use.
• Tested to power on only – this means the seller was able to apply power to the unit and it did something. Perhaps the seller lacked cabling or test equipment to perform further tests. Any observed behavior (patterns and colors of indicator lights, fans turning / not turning, unusual beeps or other noises, etc.) should be described in detail. Like the above category, it should not have any of the defects noted by NOT.
• Tested, found defective – this means that the seller was able to perform further testing and determined that there was indeed a problem with the unit. The seller should clearly state the nature of the defect (to whatever extent they investigated), such as “no console output”, “Status light solid red”, “displays fatal error message”, and so forth. Again, any physical defects would bump this to a lower category.
• Tested, found defective, investigated in depth – in this category, the seller has somewhat more knowledge of the device and has done further investigation. There might be concealed damage or the seller might have disassembled the unit to investigate further. Essential components may have been found to be missing. Any results of the investigation should be included in the listing, and the seller should return the unit to the condition as found (re-installing all components, including case screws, etc.) or note in the listing why this was not done.
• Physical damage, repairable – the device has some sort of physical damage which renders it partially or completely unusable, such as damaged connectors, bent or broken components, etc. The damage should be described as completely as possible, preferably with good quality photographs of the damaged areas. Buyers should evaluate the usability of the device without using the damaged areas or their ability to repair the damage. Note that modern electronic equipment often uses surface-mount components on multi-layer circuit boards, meaning that the skills and equipment needed to perform the repairs are beyond the reach of most users.
• Physical damage, non-repairable – the device has obvious physical damage which would prevent it from being repaired or being usable as a complete unit. Sometimes it may be possible to salvage components from the device (power supplies, faceplate, memory, etc.). The damage should be described as completely as possible, preferably with good quality photographs of the damaged and un-damaged components.

Now, I’d like to provide a few examples of actual listings that I’ve purchased, and what I’ve found. I am not naming any sellers here, since it is possible that they received the item from somewhere “up the food chain” and did not investigate it completely.

1. Catalyst WS-C4948-10GE switch – Listing simply said “Being sold AS IS for Parts or Not working. Power on but no console. No return, No refunds. AS IS!!!“. The listing also included pictures of the device, including one which showed the status LED being red.

   When I received this unit, the first thing I did was open it up to make sure there were no loose parts inside. During this inspection I discovered that 12 of the 14 screws that hold the cover on were missing and that the memory battery backup battery had been ripped off the main board (and was nowhere to be found inside the chassis). I also found that all of the screws holding the main board to the chassis were loose (but at least they were all present). Based on this, I determined that someone had been inside the unit already and had diagnosed it at least as far as removing the main board.

   I contacted the seller and they said they received it that way from the company that was using it, and the company ripped the battery off to erase the config because they were “security conscious”.

   Soldering in a new battery was not sufficient to get the switch working. I suspected the problem might be due to defective memory components soldered onto the main board, as described in this Cisco Field Notice. I ordered a tray of memory chips from a specialist in obsolete components (they are long-discontinued DDR333 parts) and replaced the two chips on the underside of the board. Since the ones on the bottom were made by Micron and the 3 on the top were from Samsung, I guessed (correctly, as it turned out) that the fault was in the Micron ones.

   After reinstalling the main board in the chassis and powering the switch up, I was greeted with the normal startup messages on the console*. After enabling priv mode in ROMMON, I tested the memory for an hour or so and it passed without errors. I then updated the ROMMON and IOS to the latest versions and gave the switch a 72-hour burn-in test, which it passed. Not bad for $255 plus another $10 in replacement memory chips and an hour or so’s work.

   * To my amusement, it appears that the battery on this switch is only used to maintain the date/time, not power the configuration memory. When the switch booted up after I repaired it, it put up a full-page banner with dire warnings about accessing the network without authorization, part of the saved config file that it had retained the whole while.

2. More items to be added as I purchase them.