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Going, going, gone!

Westborough, MA. October 20, 2000 - 

It was an eerie feeling touring through Alden this morning accompanied by an

armed sheriffs deputy. Other than papers spread around in a few places, it

was as if some terrible force had sucked the place clean of people and we

were viewing the aftermath. Which is literally what happened not many weeks

ago. In this case though, the force was the sheriff seizing the place under

court order.

The physical assets of Wels Research, dba Alden Electronics were auctioned

off this morning by the Worcester County Sheriff. The auction started just

after 10am and ended within 10 minutes. The assets were sold in 2 lots, all

to the benefit of a secured creditor First Sierra Corporation.

The rules were certified funds or cash, everything purchased had to be off

the property by 5pm on Monday the 23rd. The space is already rented and the

new tenant moves in Nov. 1. Certain items were withheld from the auction,

the generators, the UPS and anything physically attached to the building,

including the computer room floor and walls. A couple of computers were

also withheld as they were the property of Unisys and they were there to

claim them. Also the accounting software and records were not included in

the sale.

The sheriff announced that his intent was to sell everything in lots and

that anyone interested in pieces should negotiate with the purchaser of the

lots.

The first lot was a batch of computer and monitors (26) described as 6 fully

functional, the rest described as in pieces. The landlord was the only

bidder at $1000.

The remainder of the first lot was a pair of Acer Pentium II notebook

computers w/6GB harddrive, 128MB ram, WinNT, Office2000, new, in the box,

with docking stations. Ron Guy bought for $500 for the pair.

The second lot (the unsecured items, but still to the benefit of the secured

creditor) consisted of the phone system which the landlord bought for $1000,

and everything else, which the landlord bought for $7000. The only other

bidder on the bulk of the contents was Unisys who dropped out at $6500. So,

the total realized from the sale was $9500.

The landlord refused to go through stuff today with anyone from the area, as

he wanted the opportunity to take bids on the contents of file cabinets,

computers, etc. The contents included all drawings and documentations for

products, customer lists, spare parts, etc. He made the comment that he

wasn't going to part with a file cabinet for a couple of hundred dollars

when the contents may be worth ten thousand. His attorney made the comment

that they didn't want to hold a giant yard sale today, the landlord replied

with "No, not today. Maybe next week they would have a yard sale after the

big stuff and file contents were taken care of."

They also had delivered two 10 yard dumpsters to aid in the removal of the

contents. It sounded like anything not purchased would wind up in the

dumpsters.

Following the after auction chit-chat, someone made a comment to the

landlords attorney that the creditor didn't make out very well. The

attorney replied something to the effect of - 'it isn't over yet, we're

going after them for sheriff's costs plus storage fees. They won't get any

of the money.'

Former Alden employees present for this final sendoff were myself, Kevin

O'Reilly, Jerry Chenis, Roland Blanchard, Roger Lavallee, Russ Phipps, Joe

Stanovich, Eric Dorsey, Jeff Bessom, Mike Connelly, Bill Hylands and Dave

Lehto. Companies that attended included Unisys, interested in Wx stuff, EPC

Labs and GeoAcoustics both interested in the CTP printer.

- Scott