Alto II (was Re: PDP-8 prices

I wrote: Tony replied: The condition is as-is. What part of that is suspicious? When you buy stuff at a surplus store, how often do you get it under terms other than as-is? The reason it is as-is is not because there is anything known to be wrong with it, but simply because there is no easy way to tell whether is functioning perfectly. Al probably knows more about Altos than anyone other than the actual Xerox engineers that developed it. He's not trying to make a killing selling off stuff known to be broken junk, if that's what your worried about. And if it weren't for Al, there wouldn't be 1/20 of as much information about the Alto on the web. I'll repeat what I said before, because it evidently didn't sink in: Someone else brought up the Xerox 6085 (Daybreak). Compared to the Alto, these are so common as to be almost ubiquitous. You can hardly walk around without tripping over them. Alright, so I exaggerate a bit. But they used to be in Weird Stuff all the time. Xerox sold tens of thousands of them. How many Altos did the sell? AFAIK, rounded to the nearest unit, exactly zero. I'm not trying to convince people that they should buy Al's Alto. Heck, I really want one but I don't have $5000 to spend. I just think Al's been getting a bum rap in Classiccmp for no good reason. IMHO it is not appropriate for people who aren't interested in buying the machine (due to price, or as-is condition, or any other reason) to take a sour-grapes view and try to convince everyone that there must be something wrong with it. Thought experiment: If you had an Alto II, and decided that you were willing to part with it, how much money would you ask for it? Bear in mind that it was the world's first mass-produced personal workstation, and that it was NEVER offered for sale.