serial number machine
 

maybe this wouldnt work as well as i think but maybe it would,
\
if someone wrote a program that had a database of known serial number ranges for differeing company's/models that you would input your serial number and it would give you possible match's to help narrow down your search. This would not work with some of the smaller custom company's but I think it might still work often enough to be worthwhile. I dont know enough about how different the serial number ranges are between companies to know how viable this is... and it would take some time/effort before it had enough info in it to be worthwhile.

Actually it's kind of a good idea. Each serial number is a string of characters. Just compare character by character to known databases until each serial number series is eliminated. For the series that aren't eliminated, compare the serial portion of the number to decode date of build and any other information that's stored in the number. It would take a comprehensive listing of serial numbers from different companies is all.... but that might be hard to come up with.

Well.. We're kind of in the process of it here, what with all of our serial number database threads we have here. If someone were willing to go through and collect them, it might work.
-Gene-