Actually, they range from $3 to $38, usually with shipping and handling additional (although the higher-priced manuals are mostly the ones that I sell for someone else, who works hard to create them).
Sure! LOGSA and BAMA are well known by those in the sci.electronics groups, although I doubt that many others can mine LOGSA as thoroughly as I have. I spent a huge amount of time and effort, and money, developing and applying technicques for finding obscure manuals there, and identifying the commercial model designations of the equipment that they cover.
You needn't worry, though, Ed. Your "frugal types" are usually hobbyists or students. For them, I have often just GIVEN away the URLs for manuals (including many of the "unfindable" ones that I worked so hard for), not to mention at least many hundreds of hours of free help, advice, and technical consulting. [Of course, unfortunately, I'll probably have to suspend those policies, for a while, now that I've had to state them publicly.]
By the way: I buy and resell surplus and used test equipment and electronics, too. And I also always try to make sure that I have good-quality student/hobbyist-priced scopes, etc, in stock, even though they are not profitable. (And, if I have the PDF manuals for them, I throw those in.) I have spent hundreds of hours educating and helping newbies who were trying to choose test equipment, and, for example, parents of very young enthusiasts, who were buying their first test equipment for their budding hobbyists and scientists.
I have loved electronics since I was a very small child. So I like to encourage and help others who are interested in it, especially if they're young, or just need the help.
So: selling manuals and equipment, while necessary for me for the income it generates, also enables me to provide free help to those who need it, and to help and encourage those who are just entering or re-entering the field.
Nevertheless, I still deeply resent the "socialist types" who seem to think that everything should be "free", or at cost. If that were the case, I couldn't BE here, and wouldn't HAVE the MEANS to provide the "newbie help" and the hobbyist/student deals, etc. (Moral: "Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.")
Thanks for the reply.
My used-equipment-for-sale pages are at:
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(Tektronix, HP, and many other makes)
I also have FREE on-line plans for the cheapest and easiest-to-build decade resistor box "ever", which I designed, at:
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And I have complete details of a truly-great method for making printed circuit boards (pcb's), at home, the cheapest, easiest, and fastest way, which are the product of many years of work and many dollars, on line for FREE, at:
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I also sell the excellent curve tracers that I designed, AND KITS for them, at:
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And I have some free on-line service/maintenance tips:
My page about simple repair of vacuum tube equipment (aka "It's the capacitors, stupid!") is on line for FREE, at:
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My page about in-circuit testing of the ESR (equivalent series resistance) of electrolytic capacitors, without buying an ESR meter, using just a scope and a square-wave source, is on line for FREE, at:
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(Anyone doing much electronic repair work should have an ESR Meter, though!)
I also have posted the final recipe and procedure, the product of years of intensive research, on line for FREE, for those wanting to make a REALLY-GOOD PIZZA CRUST (and pizza) at home, at:
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I have also collected a huge time-saving resource, which I have put on line for FREE, that resulted from thousands of hours of my on-line research, which should save countless hours for other people who are interested in finding on-line information about things I have been interested in: Electronics and Its Applications, Tektronix, Computers and Programming, CNC Machines, Robotics and Control Systems, Classic Audio, Antique Radios and Vacuuum Tubes, Searching the Web and Usenet Newsgroups, HTML and Webpage-Publishing Tutorials, Homebrewing: Making Beer and Wine, Astronomy, Gold Prospecting and Geology and Topography, Classical Music, Books, Camping and Travel, Weather Forecasts and Weather Radars and Satellites and On-line Imagery, Cooking and Recipes, Auto Repair, Catalogs and Sources of Merchandise, Gardening and Growing Plants/Fruits/Vegetables/Herbs, Postage Stamps and Stamp-Collecting/Philately, Shipping/Mail/Zipcodes/Costs/Customs/Import/Export/Supplies, Banking and On-Line Payments, Cancer/Medicine/Health/Drugs, Writing/Editing/Style/Grammar, Surveillance and Forensics, and other stuff.
So being a nice guy is now on indefinite hold? And just when I had written your address on my wall. Darn!
Sorry, but I snipped the balance of your long-winded, multi-market ad once you started topics from astronomy to vegetables. You sure do like to advertise!
I don't think it's "socialist" to point out that USA citizens have already paid for all those LOGSA manuals, and that the information ought to be freely available to them what has already paid the bill. It's certainly capitalistic to carve out a market niche, packaging and selling what is already publicly available. We assume your customers are paying for convenience (yes, the LOGSA site is rather, uhh, facelessly bureaucratic ).
OTOH, don't cry when someone points out that the air is free, and tells people how to breathe deeply on their own.
BAMA's quite a different thing. The information, and the venue, are all provided as gifts. Assuming that a newbie only has to acquire the talent to use FTP, there's not much of a barrier to getting the help yourself. I have a hard time accepting anyone repackaging those gifts as a saleable product.
Well, of course, I didn't spend money AT those sites. But I did buy a copy of the Federal Logistics database (not cheap), to help I.D. the stuff at LOGSA. You probably won't be able to find and/or identify MANY of the manuals that I have, without it. I also paid for a high-speed connection, just for downloading manuals.
And, by the way: *NONE* of my manuals came from BAMA.
No. But I thought that I *might* have to watch out for purposeful attempts to take advantage of my good nature, for a while (by the "socialist" types, hehe). (Maybe that WAS a little too paranoid-sounding, hehe.)
Well, I was TRYING to...
And I don't do advertise very OFTEN, here, at all. But, uh, MOST of that stuff in my long list was, ahem, **FREE** (just to point out my good nature, again, hehe).
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. (And of course it's not socialist to point that out, or to find them yourself, if you can. [Nevertheless: "Capitalism good. Socialism bad."]) Smart professionals will pay for a manual they need whenever it's likely to be cheaper for them to do so than it would be for them to search, find, and download it for themselves. (Then everybody wins.) Wealthy, lazy people will pay, too. (Everybody still wins.) And so will uninformed people who just really need a manual quickly. (Maybe only I win, there. But maybe they'll learn, eventually.)
The majority of my manual sales are to companies. I guess they don't want to pay their techs to search for manuals. Makes sense to me.
I didn't think that I WAS. People "attacked" and I (probably foolishly) responded.
I have NEVER, and WOULD never, sell anything from BAMA.
I *HAVE*, however, helped someone who is very closely tied to BAMA to learn how to find more manuals on LOGSA than he was able to, when I noticed that they are missing MANY of the additional manuals that are available as parts of multi-manual sets, on LOGSA. (You CAN find them at MY site, though, at
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