8 May
2001
8 May
'01
11:03 a.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2001, Chuck McManis wrote:
Reproductions should be clearly labelled as such. The
guy selling the
Mark-8 clone attempts to make the case that if you make the PCBs by
hand (as you would have in 1974), and you buy parts that were
available to buy back in 1974 (w/ 1974 date codes) and you assemble it
according to the directions in the article, then building it "today"
is just as legit as if it has been built in 1974.
I would disagree with this thinking. The era is completely different. As
I said in a previous message, it is an important distinction, since you
really are assembling something from scratch (new old stock) vs. just
putting together existing pieces (used old stock).
I can see the argument and its one used on the
Concourse (classic car)
circuit a lot. If the car has all original parts (even if they came from 6
different cars) then its an "original" as opposed to "it came out of the
factory like this." The Mark-8 is a particularly unique example in that
there was no 'factory.'
I'm on the Concourse side in VAX land, if it was a DEC supported
configuration then I consider it "classic" even if the system didn't arrive
that way. Sometimes I've backed out things DEC _didn't_ support but the
customer did.
In the case of a car or a VAX, you are mostly swapping various parts
(engines, doors, emblems or boards, power supplies, hard drives
respectively). In the case of a Mark-8, you are going down to the
component level using whatever parts you can scrounge up that just happen
to have the appropriate date codes. Is this a valid distinction? I think
so.
If you were able to get, say, the original manifold dyes and smelt your
own manifolds that are basically the same as the original, are they truly
original?
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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