Well, there is one on ebay at the moment. Looks completely different than the IC-testers I found by googling...
It will probably cost more to ship these beasts than to actually buy them. If I had a possibility to pick them up, I would for shure give them a shot. Anyone willing to do so? This is the auction:
http://www.ebay.de/itm/151707753411
I seriously don't think it's an IC tester.
On the front of the box, the two big stainless pipes' labels are not very visible, but I think they say 'cooling in' and 'cooling out'. There's a kind of plumbing bus visible in the internal pic, with pipes from connectors on it, to boxes on plugin cards.
But the black square on the top of the case, I think is just a small fan with dust filter.
The case is on a vibration isolating mount (which IC testers don't need), it can tilt (but not as much as actual IC testers can, see pic), and it isn't styled nicely (IC testers are styled to the max.)
I'm guessing there's something important on the other end of that case. Perhaps it's some kind of imaging device, with the port being on the unseen face. X-ray? Gamma? Or something really esoteric?
The general construction looks like something intended for a physics lab. Never to be seen by the public.
In the stuff piled underneath, at the back is that a silvery isolation suit headpiece?
Also, what IC tester ever needed an big red emergency stop button? Or a remote operating button box for that matter? If the button box is what's on the end of that big reel of cable, operators need to be far away when running this.
In the last pic, the thing in the plastic bag at the front, looks like it might be some kind of source, also on a small tiltable stand. X-ray? It's very small.
The pic below is from the cover of a HP 81810S IC design verification system manual. To make the point that IC testers are styled so the test socket is the visual focus of the whole assembly.