Mr. Collins,
Unfortunately I do not think that this is an option. While I appreciate your time and effort, there is simply no way I will be able to afford $30,000. If you saw in my first email, I only have approximately $100 to spend (actually, that's everything I have!) on this. My plan was to allow anyone to have access to a mainframe free of charge, as a sort of non-profit computer education program. Many people think that a mainframe is old, dated technology that is something only useful in the 1970s. I want to prove this is simply not the case. IBM Mainframes offer the advantage of being able to run the fantastic VM operating system so I can therefore theoretically provide every user with their own virtual mainframe. As you must know, buying a $100,000+ computer (as in the latest z9 and z10 series) is very big investment and not something taken lightly. I doubt there are many prospective buyers with that much disposable income (I am not criticizing the price of these systems). Just like a person would not walk into a car dealership one day and decide they are going to buy a car. Research and testing must be conducted first. By that analogy, I would like to provide this "test-drive" for prospective buyers. Of course, I have a personal desire to own one of these fabulous machines myself, I also want to better educate people about mainframes and allow them to realize they are not a thing of the past. I would obviously be willing to cover any freight charges that would apply. I am also working on earning more money to devote to this. And of course, putting aside everything mentioned above, that if you do decide to "give" a a mainframe away, just know you are making one kid very very happy!
Thanks for everything!
-Kevin