I don't want to keep you from collecting AVID hardware, I think it is cool to have around. Just don't expect to find a few cards and be able to do anything with them without doing plenty of hunting for software, misc other devices (signal generators for one), and some major research.

For example one of my dongles came directly from South America (Rio) after I helped a video editor setup his bosses oldest AVID for a show (sent him some software I archived so they could get a very old Nubus systems up and running). He sent me a dongle for the last Nubus/Early PCI systems plus newer archives software.

One of the reasons I snagged a pair of mac IIx's is to recreate this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ7Cdgr83uE

Avid/1 the setup was what became the original media Composer.