IMHO collectors
will want early genuine IBM PC bits in the future. Just
like some people will pay for Altair bits today.
Interesting... the thought, though, reminds me of the whole "genuine"
Altair discussion. The same way that an Altair chasis may contain Compupro
or other S-100 cards, an XT chasis could contain cards from Hercules, AST,
Quadram, or any number of other manufacturers.
Will this make these systems any less desirable/valuable in the future? Or
will people just want to pay lots of money for matching IBM logos on the
monitor, CPU, and keyboard? (Oops, almost forgot the logos embossed on the
drives. :-)
Well, I'd prefer genuine IBM cards, if only because they can be trivially
kept running. And IBM keyboards are much nicer than most clones :-)
I personally think an IBM box with all IBM cards is a somewhat rare
machine these days. It may be worth a little more in the future.
And then there's the historical aspect. The original set of IBM cards
(CGA, MDA, Floppy controller, memory card, etc) were the _first_. The
PC/AT serial/parallel adapter was the card that defined the 9-pin serial
port pinout on a DE-9 connector. The Hercules card defined that standard,
etc. So those must have a historical interest.
<<<John>>>
-tony