I know this may be somewhat off-topic (I did throw in the word Altair a few
times though) but I can't help wondering now, what is preventing someone
>from setting an outrageous reserve and then simply accepting the highest
bidder's bid. The Ebay rules state (heh - you can believe me this time - I
just re-read them!) "You will not be charged a Final Value Fee if: There
were no bids on your item; OR There were no bids on your Reserve Price
Auctions that met the reserve price." In this case the Altair seller could
accept a bid of up to $9999 and end up owing Ebay $2.
Perhaps the Altair's ACTUAL (=in his head) reserve is considerably less than
$10000 and the person is simply trying to avoid the Final Value Fee.
<G>But is this ethical?
It should be noted that a winning BIDDER can also back out of a sale if
their bid didn't meet the reserve.
>
>Hey, Bob. I just noticed that you are the current high bidder! We
only
>know a few things about you: you're in it for the money, you've got a
>bunch of Altairs that you got "cheap", and you're an ethical guy. So,
>what's with the first momentum-setting bid?
>
>-- Doug
Doug,
To do this all in one post, first let me reply
to Marcus when he says...
"Ebay takes 5% of the bid
regardless of whether or not the reserve was met.
So if last time the bids went up to
$5000 - Ebay has billed him $250 + $2".
Marcus, When I need information relating to the
history of microcomputers I go to the experts. Doug
Yowza is an example. So, while certainly not an Ebay
expert, I'm a very experienced Ebay seller and you
can rely on my understanding of Ebay's terms.
Ebay charges a seller from 25 cents to $2 to list
each item (determined by the dollar amount of that
item's minimum and/or reserve). If the item does
not meet the reserve there is absolutely no further
fee charged by Ebay. If the item sells, the commission
charged by Ebay is as follows... 5% of the amount up
to $25. $2.5% of the amount between $25 and $1000.
And only 1% of the amount above $1000. The Altair
seller has been charged a total of $2 by Ebay, at this point.
If the Altair were now to sell for $10,000, the total
of fees and commisions he would pay to Ebay is
an additional $115.62.
Now, Doug, you ask "what's with the first momentum
setting bid"?
You have (and I suppose understandably so) jumped to
a wrong conclusion. If you have read all my words to
the readers of this list it should be apparent that
I have been very candid with you. I have no interest
in "establishing a momentum". The fact is that I had
tentatively made a sale on one of my Altairs. That sale
was never consummated. With all of the mention of
list subscribers contacting the parties involved in the
auction - I think it is possible that may have contributed
to my losing a sale and may influence the seller in question.
For that reason, I placed a bid that is the highest I
am willing to pay (Yes I will pay $2500. If anyone wishes
to sell me his Altair, contact me directly). If the seller
is told by those outside of his auction that his expectations
are silly then I am hoping he will sell me the computer
for that amount. It costs me nothing to try.
But, Doug, now that I have answered your question, you
have failed to answer mine. I would be very interested in
hearing your answer.
Bob Wood
>
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
At 08:00 PM 8/17/98 -0700, you wrote:
>
>Strange coincidence, I just picked up another today (my second, the first
>doesn't pass self test).
Hint! Mine didn't either at first. It gave a bunch of ROM errors. I
unplugged the ROM drawer and it passed self tests. Then I took out the
ROMs and found one with one of it's pins bent under. I straightened the
pin and put everything back in place and now it passes all tests.
I know only a little about it from the manuals I
>got with the first. The only thing I know about the keyboards is that
>they are difficult to find, as I've never seen one yet.
I can believe it. I know a guy that has six 4041s and he still hasn't
found a keyboard.
>
>Its 68000 based and has a backplane inside so you can add or remove cards.
>If you look carefully at the bottom face of the unit, you'll notice it is
>a little cover about 1" high and the length of the front of the machine.
>You can pry it off with a coin, then pull on the rubber handle you see.
>Out pops a ROM tray. The one I got today has the Graphics ROM and
>thegraphics printing option.
Mine has the Program Developement ROMs and two other ROMs with Tektronix
part numbers but no name. They show up as PD, XO and IO in the self test
failure listing.
>
>You don't necessarily need the keyboard to program it although it helps
>I'm sure.
I'll bet! I'm still looking for a keyboard for my HP 9915s too!
Joe
>
>Sam Alternate e-mail:
dastar(a)siconic.com
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>Ever onward.
>
> September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
> See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
> [Last web site update: 08/09/98]
>
>
>While there, I found a slim manual to the CDC 6000 series
machines.
>Something about SCOPE...I suppose I ought to read it.
>
There were two OSes for the CDC 6000/7000 series, SCOPE and
KRONOS. KRONOS was the full blown OS, lots of feature,
utilities, etc. while SCOPE was the stripped down OS (I think it
predated KRONOS). As I remember SCOPE didn't really offer much
more than MSDOS in terms of services, it was mostly batch
oriented, big jobs, CPU intensive, not much timeshare support.
KRONOS was a fairly good timeshare environment for it's day, not
in the TOPS-20 league but of course very fast, being a 60 bit
Cray design.
Jack Peacock
Perhaps Bob wants to ensure that the guy has to pay the 5% to Ebay.
- Doug
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Yowza [SMTP:yowza@yowza.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 1998 9:22 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Re: Another Altiar up for Auction
>
> Hey, Bob. I just noticed that you are the current high bidder! We only
> know a few things about you: you're in it for the money, you've got a
> bunch of Altairs that you got "cheap", and you're an ethical guy. So,
> what's with the first momentum-setting bid?
>
> -- Doug
> Actually I'm still running one, in a Leading Edge model D Xt box that
> does cool exceptionally well. The power supply (and the fan in it) is
> behind the disk stack and exceptionally well cooled. I put a second fan
> in the 486/66 for that reason... to hot.
>
> The altair taught me well about heat... and lousy air flow.
>
> Allison
>
One of the computers that had a VERY bad airflow was the Tandy 2500SX.
They used to have one at my school, and someone left it on over the weekend
(turned off the monitor and forgot the computer). When they got back on
Monday, the fan in the P/S had stopped (bearings had somehow frozen), the
HD was still going, the top of the case (plastic) had gotten soft, and the
monitor had sunk into the top of the case. The hard drive was an old
Microscience 72(? may have been 80 with a lot of bad sectors) MB that
sounded like a full-height Maxtor when it was running. Nothing worked
anymore, except the HD would spin up. It was the only computer from that
school that I couldn't revive. Not even the RAM chips worked anymore.
Would excessive heat caused the bearings in the fan to freeze? The fan was
working when the computer was turned on, but was totally frozen (VERY tight
when removed from P/S) on Monday. The computer was a mini-desktop, and
only had a few vents near the bottom of the front panel and only a 2 1/2"
fan.
--
-Jason
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#-1730318
In looking at the PDP-11/03's that I got today, one thing is very obvious.
They've got disk controllers that are useless to me. The controllers are
>from a company called 'Xebec', and it is my understanding that they went to
special drives.
Now I know that the /03's are SLOW, however, they're in a nice little case
so I'm looking at them thinking, hmmmm. I wonder if I can put a DILOG
floppy controller I've got in one of them. What I'm wondering is do such
things as drive controllers care about the 18bit / 22bit differences of the
backplane? At least it's my understanding that a PDP-11/03 has a 18bit
backplane.
On a separate note, I ended up with 3 more VT100's with this, and one of
them had a loose top, so I took a look inside, and noticed that it has what
looks to be a Q-Bus backplane. What is the story here? Can I put some
cards in here and have a working PDP-11? (I know figure the odds) I took
a look through the VT100 tech manual I got today, but couldn't find
anything about the backplane.
On a positive note, I've finally got some documentation, so maybe I'll
quite asking so many stupid questions. :^) On that note, I think I'll
send this, and spend some time trying to find some shelf space for said
documentation :^(
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
At 12:46 PM 8/14/98 -0700, you wrote:
>I fell very truly sorry for you. In a computer you have such an awesome
>and powerful device, which can educate you in more than a few ways.
>Newer equipment to a lesser degree, it's all black-boxes and corporate
secrets
>now, but older gear is perfect for finding out how things work. It's a shame
A quick question... How many people know how to work on their cars? How
many drive older vehicles without as much "black-box" stuff?
I think that automobiles are similar, in that knowing how they work, and
how to work on them, is really cool, and yet, a lot of us drive modern
machines (<20yo) and take them to mechanics, without ever thinking about
them. That's not wrong, but if you can see the similarity, it may help to
understand those who use computers without caring about how they work, or
without wanting to work on them themselves.
(P.S., I drive a '59 Land Rover(s) and my girlfriend's '89 Mazda.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
Don't know if this is classic but I just got an entire VMS 5.2 'grey
wall'free. Allison - can I reliably use this as a reference for my 5.5
system?
Now to learn eve and then VAX Macro.
Regards
Pete
