rarest computers. was: RE: Xerox Alto Restoration + Emulation

On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 22:43, Tony Duell wrote: Yes, but you have one of everything :-) Actually, IME ex-employees from the various hardware companies often seem to have stuff hidden away in storage from their days with the company, and have almost forgotten about it - as it's there just as a memento of their time there, rather than something that they consider collectable. In other words, it's hard to give estimates on surviving numbers of what were always uncommon machines, just because I get the impression there's a lot that'll never see daylight again until they end up as landfill... Any install media? That's one thing I don't have, so the machine's shelved until I can work out a good way of being able to back the drive up and restore it if needs be. I've actually got two QX's and a memory expansion board, but one CPU board is duff. The quinring's aren't common. The Torch Primagraphics workstation has one, plus I think I have one spare which isn't attached to a machine. If you ever need keyboards or mice, shout - I have around 15 of the critters :-) I've got 5 complete Triple X machines I think, plus a couple of spare boards, plus a prototype Triple X. Again, I need a good way of dragging the data off the drives on to modern media; once I've done that I'll have spare machines that I can give to people. I'm not sure how many ended up with the metal cases; a guesstimate would be somewhere above 50 though. But then 380Z's were common as muck at one time and all seem to have vanished too. I found an RML advert in an old comp magazine at Bletchley of a pair of cream 480Z's along with a *white* 380Z at the weekend. I'm assuming it was a mock-up as I've never known of a white 380Z before. cheers Jules