old equipment

Well we've made the deal to buy an operating sign shop. I think we're buying out the "Sanford & Son" of the sign business. Our purchase comes with 5 plotters/printers one of which is actually in the production of cutting vinyl. According to the label on it it's a 'Classic Ioline'. It's the only one I've actually worked with. The seller says a 'Gerber GSB Sprint IIB' functions and was most recently used to cut sandblast vinyl, however the letters were usable but all the artwork I had to recut by hand with an exacto. He used contact cement to stick it to the cedar, which is what he chose to build it out of. I'm thinking this must have been his first sandblasted sign?? He had doweled and glued together six cedar boards about 5/8" thick by 6 ft and reinforced the back with a couple of furring strips or so it looked like to me. After having it blasted the contact cement was extremely difficult to remove. That's when he told me there was another glue that should have been used but he's famous for doing everything with the cheapest materials and supplies possible! (This has infuriated me!!) I might need to post this thread in book form somewhere! I love the idea of sandblasted signs and want MY shop to learn more about doing them. I've read about the different sign foam and materials to blast with and the painting processes so far but I'd really like to know more about the glue to use at this point. I'm hoping to actually sandblast my own sign for my business, "Professional Graffiti, LLC" and let that one be part of my learning the RIGHT way to do it. On top of all that he had us (the sons of Sanford &...) use latex paint to finish it. I'm just an old sign painter and am spoiled by 1 Shot, Chromatic, and Ronan, I guess. As I am learning in this crash course to bring my skills up to date, vinyl shouldn't be stuck to latex painted surfaces and 'Sanford' paints EVERYTHING with latex house paint. AAARRRGGHH! I'm putting a clause in our contract that he pays for the labor and materials for anything my business has to RE-do/repair that was done before the purchase date. ...but I digress.
The POINT of this post, and I think I have one, was to list my plotters/door stops that are not connected to anything to find out if I should trash them or invest the time and cost of trying to see if they work. So here's the list:
The Ioline that does all the work right now.
The Gerber
a Vinyl Express Trax
an Artisan Plus 1026
a HUGE Graphtec jx1130
'Sanford' has bought these others and doesn't know anything about them. Neither do I and they come with my purchase. Can anyone shed any light on these, please?
Sorry for the long winded post.

 

In spite of 'Sanford's' self, he continues to make money and has been established for as long as his vinyl equipment is old. (I've seen the REAL books) In addition to this old stuff we're getting 4 computers 2 of which are plenty new enough, a bucket truck, van, and pickup truck, an eight station 5 color automatic screen printing machine as well as a 6 station 5 color manual, huge dryer, exposure table, hundreds of screens, lots of inks; plastisol and air dry and we work the crap out of all that! We knew we would be in for a vinyl equipment upgrade real soon but for now it's working. What we were most interested in is his customer data base and it's substantial with lots of repeat business (and for the life of me I don't get that) We stay busy and behind schedule and turn out tons of work. A web design guy comes with it who maintains the website and does minor computer repair in exchange for his office space. 'Sanford' has lots of advertising already in place. There are really a lot of plusses to balance out the minuses. With Dustin's reply, I think I'll throw a little money at a low end Flexi software for beginners to learn the graphtec. I have to learn this old stuff long enough to know what I want to replace it with but in the meantime it's turning out a lot of work. I plan on doing immediate reputation and quality upgrade first.
Thank you all for your advice! If I fall on my face or other anatomical parts with this venture I can never say ya'll didn't warn me.