25 Feb
1998
25 Feb
'98
5 p.m.
At 08:28 AM 2/25/98 -0800, you wrote:
Sure! I want one, what's the price?
Joe
On Tue, 24 Feb
1998, John Higginbotham wrote:
You've also got the issue of date codes on IC's to deal with. And not many
40-pin DIPs are still made the same way as original 8080A's, i.e.
white ceramic with a gold cap.
Thinking out loud:
I wonder what the market would be for an Apple I replica?
It would be very strong if you claimed it was an original :-) That's one
reason I won't pay a lot for a collectible computer. How are you going to
authenticate it? Most of the chips and processes are still available
today, so it's fairly straightforward to clone them. Prediction: 10 years from now, we'll be able
to go to Hong Kong and buy a
couterfeit Altair for $100!
Not a chance. While the actual electronics "silicon" inside an Altair is
worth less than $50 today, the sheet metal and the power supply transformer
would cost you a couple hundred dollars to duplicate. (While the total
cost would be about the same, the distribution of the costs is almost
exactly reveresed from 20 years ago.)
For those who really want a S-100 front panel machine, maybe they'd be
willing to pay for me to make duplicates of my TIMSAI.