[jyl]

I spoke to the neighbor who put the machine on her curb. She worked for someone in the coffee biz who gave her the machine as a gift or to settle a bill, I forget. She stopped using it and eventually decided to get rid of it. So apparently it was at one point in working order. I'm going to inspect it more closely and contact the shop that last serviced it (sticker on the machine).

All kinds of interesting stuff gets given away here. There are some affluent people in my hood, who would rather give things away than go to the trouble of CL. Watch the local curbs and Nextdoor forum for six months and you can furnish a whole apartment or house with my neighbors' castoffs, and it'll be nicer stuff than I have in my house!

I've been reading - it is an Elektra "Maxi", made in Italy, probably from the 1980s or 1990s. From when Elektra made stuff for espresso bars. The whole process around pulling shots sounds very daunting but I assume that's mostly just uber-snobs obsessing over picayune details, much like Porsche nuts. Thousands of baristas run these machines all over Portland, it can't be rocket science.