Fair price and ways to find a teletype

-----Original Message----- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of drlegendre . Sent: 15 October 2015 00:35 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Fair price and ways to find a teletype Brad, A few montns ago, with a fair bit of help of the folks on this list, I did up an Altair 8800 rebuild. And apparently you & I both saw the same videos, as I got all hot and bothered about getting an ASR33 and using it to load software - BASIC, for starters - into the Altair. And again, on members' suggestion, I joined the Greenkeys list. Too bad, but I was totally +shocked+ at the 'value' placed on ASR33 these days!! Thousand dollars and more, not all all unusual.. and my resources just can't justify that level of expenditure for what is generally a 'cheap' DIY hobby of sorts. Meanwhile, a Greenkeys member in St. Louis, MO popped up with a very nice M15 (ex-Bell) that was Free to Good Home. I have (or at least had, ha!) a good friend in St. Louis, and he was able to take care of the pickup for me - and several months later, i arranged to have it delivered to my house by a relative. Now the M15 isn't a 33ASR, and lacks the paper tape punch & reader (though devices do exist). But what it is, is a truly fantastic piece of electro-mechanical engineering that borders on the "tight metal" genre of some earlier business machines, such as the Felt & Tarrant Comptometer. If you have general mechanical experience, I'd say the M15 is roughly on a par with a 2-spd or even 3-spd automatic transmission, in terms of mechanical complexity (the the tranny will have a higher parts count.. I think!). So while they can be worked with, and documentation is plentiful, they are a bit intimidating the first time you see one in action - or inaction, as it may be - and they do NOT respond kindly to false moves or other ham-fistery. But they are well worth learning, and don't yet seem to have joined their later progeny in the financial stratosphere. -Bill