[Raion]

I have moreorless finished coding the changes to our EZTrader plugin. Sale price is not listed on feedback pages but is captured by the database so we can later create reports for it when we've captured enough uses.

http://gitea.irixce.org/IRIXNetwork-WebDev/EZTrader

The code is janky, and the plugin has some questionable design choices the main dev did, clearly this is based on older PHP code. It however does work and it's fast enough for our uses.

This will likely be among the plugins completely supplanted with the next site redesign.

I appreciate the feedback and will probably add a "services" section as well.

[Raion]

So I have been busy working on codification of how the new marketplace is going to work.

Here is the tree:

Top Category: Marketplace

Sub Category: SGI Systems

Forum: Systems for Sale (Only working systems)
Forum: Parts for Sale (this covers both parts and non-working systems)

Sub Category: Other Systems

Forum: Systems for Sale (Only working systems)
Forum: Parts for Sale (this covers both parts and non-working systems)

Sub Category: Software

Forum: SGI Software for Sale
Forum: Other Software for Sale

Forum: Services (For repair and customization services

Closed sale threads will be deposited into the boneyard, and will receive their own subforum where they will not be indexable by search engines. This is primarily to prevent price-fixing on eBay from people looking up isolated sales.

The rules will be adapted from Amibay.com however there will be changes to better suit our situation. Some rules will not apply. Other rules will be changed or added to better suit our use case. In particular the volume they utilize is far and above what we will probably see here so there will be a relaxation of rules to a certain degree.

after several months I plan to compile the data that will be collected as part of feedback into a statistical report system that will allow us to provide median sale prices for transactions on the site. Eventually this should cover most systems that are commonly circulated and will allow us to better understand pricing trends as well as possibly help reverse the eBay issue. In particular I'm probably going to purchase a domain that is specifically search engine optimized to provide market values for the systems

[JohnnyJohnny]

What constitutes a "working system?" Without clear parameters this will be open to interpretation. For example, many people sell systems without HDs. The system will work with a HD and OS installed by the purchaser, but if it doesn't come with it, does that mean it's a non-working system? 

To me, a non-working system means there are components that are not working, like a faulty PSU, or known bad motherboard. Others may have different ideas.

[Lady Serena Kitty]

My Indy shipped with no operating system.  It still powered on, gave me firmware graphics, [insert blah here].  I now enjoy IRIX 6.5.22 on it.

I have never considered a machine without a storage device (or a storage device with no OS) as non-working.  Non-working means there's some critical component that doesn't work - like a SCSI controller or graphics board not working.

[Raion]

What constitutes a "working system?" Without clear parameters this will be open to interpretation. For example, many people sell systems without HDs. The system will work with a HD and OS installed by the purchaser, but if it doesn't come with it, does that mean it's a non-working system? 

To me, a non-working system means there are components that are not working, like a faulty PSU, or known bad motherboard. Others may have different ideas.

A system with functional parts. A "no OS" system would be fine. What I don't want:

An Octane "shell" sold as a functional system. HELL TO THE NO!

An Indy with missing parts. No

A system that doesn't power on. 

All that has to go into "Parts for Sale"

[weblacky]

Well...Playing devil's advocate here, if it doesn't have a hard drive, how would the owner know if the controller or cable works at all? I mean, unless you show a picture with the station booted into an OS and just say "drive not included", OK. But if you say, "it boots to PROM", so it works...hmmmm.....no. I don't expect a CPU stress test (still risks), but if you don't show it booting or maybe even playing a known demo...how do we know it doesn't kernel panic the moment an OS loads or something? Shoving off known bad systems through omission.

What about BAD RAM? Same issue, If the OS can boot and single app runs, I'll take my chances with bad RAM. But to not even try it and show that on the advertisement? It seems like someone can hide it, then say "OH MY, well no returns."

We need people to be aware there is always risk and even a rebuilt old machine could fail in a new way. But we need to see the effort and openness in the steps shown to prove it's a working system. I mean even an HINV picture should be required!

I'm ok with no HDD included, but I think you need to show a picture with an OS booted and a demo running to prove working system (on graphical systems).

I know that sets the bar higher. But a working system versus AS-IS whatever should mean something.

[Raion]

Most SGIs will tell you if RAM is bad on startup in my experience!

Disk controller failures? I never have seen that, unless it's a common failure item on older machines. I don't bother with anything that is before the standardization of keyboards. Sad but true; I don't have an investment in anything that requires expensive hard to find components like that.

Of course, there's a certain caveat emptor. I don't think that the omission of increasingly hard to find and functional SCSI drives should be a problem, nor should it be required to use demos or anything. You're free to ask for that for a user selling something, of course, but I do not want to mandate anything like:

hinv, running demos, testing with an OS etc.

With hinv, you don't actually need half of that information. Just physically checking the module part no online if you don't know the density, plus part numbers of CPU or the model # on most systems will give basic info.

I'm not going to set the bar that high for the reason that oftentimes, drives are in short supply. Not just the actual physical drive, but carrier etc. You can't expect people, especially someone whose looking to simply offload systems, to go through that expense. Otherwise it's going to likely end up on eBay. I think a bar of booting into a PROM with any known defects is enough. If a seller is such an ass that he's either not willing to work with you if an issue is found, or you can't negotiate the price based on that, then you could surely notify other buyers with the eztrader feedback. That's moreorless the intent.

[weblacky]

I was more thinking of like a Fuel scsi cable going bad and yeah I’ve had an O2 ram module go bad that didn’t say squat on Start-Up/PROM. It would just find bad ram spot sometimes if you used enough RAM.

I’ve seen both, not a really a controller failure but I’ve at least heard of ribbon failures.

Running an OS would find those issues.

[Raion]

I'm not focused on rules for specific systems nor do I particularly think we should be overly selective. That being said, listings will require revision without verbosity.

[Raion]

Update:

In preparation for the updated marketplace, I have preemptively passed all old threads into the "Closed Listings" section and removed Misc Software, which had very little hits/usage and all threads inside were ancient history.

The Old Marketplace, as its now called, can continue to be used until deprecation and finalizing of the "new" marketplace.

PM a member of staff if you need a thread retrieved from Closed Listings.

In other news, here's our current rules draft. If anyone has any feedback on the ruleset, let us know:

https://wiki.irixnet.org/marketplace_rules