David Williams wrote: It was listed on the ebay auction at item http://komodo.ebay2.com/aw-cgi/ItemISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=652305230. I just checked and the listing is still there along with the person who bought it. I have one but have nothing in the way of docs, manuals, or software and I was bidding on it primarily for those things. I suspect the price would have gone higher but the seller shut down the auction early with only 1 hours notice (that is his right!). At the time it happened, ebay was having a problem and decided to add 3 days to all auctions, hence a number of people held off bidding. But as I told him, it may have saved me some money :).

On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, David Williams wrote: AuctionWeb is ridiculous. While there are some great finds there, I've realized that whatever I bid on I will end up finding a week or two later locally for a tenth or less of what I bid. The prices for stuff on there are horribly inflated. Here's a trick that I know most everyone has figured out already and is a big reason why online bidding is a sham: Don't bid on the item. That is, not until the last 5-10 minutes of the auction. This serves two purposes that ultimately benefit you. 1) If you bid early, it gives someone a chance to come in and outbid you early, then you will counter-bid, then he will, then you will, etc. You get into a bidding war. 2) If you bid just before the auction is over, you avoid 1). You'll get in with a low-ball bid and hopefully nobody else will get a chance to outbid you in the last remaining minutes, although I've had some close calls. I once bid on an item (forgot what) at the last minute and some character tried to do the same but his bid was late. In the same token, I've had that happen to me where I was just too late. The problem is, if you try to bid just before the auction ends (like within 1-2 minutes of closing) there are about 14 other dweebs like you trying to put in last minute bids. The record in the database for that item becomes so locked up that nobody can make a bid, and your effort is futile. This is the problem with online auctions like AuctionWeb. Its too easy to abuse. The seller usually comes out on the short end of the stick. Bidders wait until the last possible second and put in a bid that's not necessarily fair market value. In real life, the bidding keeps going until one person concedes or passes out. These onlines auctions need to instate some similar format. My idea for improvement would be that anyone who bids in the last few minutes, or perhaps the last 3 bidders, go into a second phase of bidding where they are then pitted against each other and the bidding will go on as long as those participants are willing to keep raising their bids. I was thinking about mandating this on a few items I put up for bid on AuctionWeb, but once I saw that my items (some old common computers and video game systems) were going for far more than I had anticipated, I didn't bother, not caring what bidder ended up with whatever high bid. I just realized this message is horribly off-topic but I just had to complain about something today. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Attend the First Annual Vintage Computer Festival See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!

On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Greg Piper wrote: Oh yeah...like anyone wants someone like this to stay. :-/ Anthony Clifton - WireHead Prime

Sam Ismail wrote: I am starting to find the pricing for *some* of the older computers far more than I had imagined. My suspicions are that the value of the older computers is starting to rise as more and more people starting (finally!) thinking about the history of these things. For instance, I had no idea the Sol would go for the price it did although it seemed very complete. The Old Computer Auction Web had some pricing that I thought high, but I am seeing the same type of thing in other places. I still get given quite a bit of stuff, but it is declining as I see more and more people looking at the 386 as old :). One thing that does deserve some special consideration is the documentation and advertising literature of the 70's and 80's. The other night, I got what appears to be the first Radio Shack advertising brochure for the TRS-80. THIS is the type of thing that is being thrown away without any thought and we need to build some awareness that this stuff is equally a part of history. I have talked to a number of people who told me they cleaned out their files and got rid of this stuff <sigh>.

On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Marvin wrote: While at WeirdStuff today I was talking with the owners. They told me that most people are not willing to pay enough over scrap value to make it worth their time and effort to sell old machines. If you call them looking for specific parts or machines, they will sell them to you, but they scrap old stuff pretty quickly. As soon as the demand becomes great enough to make it worthwhile for stores like WeirdStuff to sell old machines, the prices will be at a level where collecting will become expensive. More machines will be saved from the landfill and scrapers, but then again I won't be adding as many to my collection each year. --pec -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saved From The Dumpster Collection: http://www.crl.com/~pcoad/machines.html

On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Robert Kirk Scott wrote: If everyone thought like that there would be no more System/38's in existance. The point is not to have a room-sized 8088, but to have a System/38, one of the most forgettable systems (it seems) in the history of computing, so that it will be preserved. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Attend the First Annual Vintage Computer Festival See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!

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People are abandoning System/36 boxes like crazy these days. If you search, you should be able to find a deskside system for free in little time. You do have a valid point, IBM does things weird. The chips are far from off-the-shelf. The solution is to build up spares from donor machines. For my RS/6000s, I saved some extra motherboards (planars, as they call them). For System/3x stuff, there seem to plenty of machines in the scrapyards that can be picked apart. IBM tended to cram lots of stuff in a small CPU box, situated inside the normally spacious cabinet. Pulling an entire CPU should pose no problems. Even if one had a big machine, like a 3081 (a water cooled monster, probably not too collectable), the actual meat of the system (the TCMs - Thermal Conduction Modules) would fit in a small carton. While the pre-VAX DECs are very easy to hack and repair, do the later ones not also suffer from the custom parts problem? I just packed up a module set for a VAX 11/750, with all of those VLSI gate arrays. The best thing for repair is to get donor boards. And even some of the standard chips on the boards can be bears to find (looking at the F100K ECL on the disk controller - how many times have you seen F100K glue logic available?). Schematics, I agree, are a problem. I remember seeing some ads in some 1970s era issues of *Electronics*. I have never seen one, I suppose very few made it overseas. William Donzelli william(a)ans.net

It seems I can not shut up tonight... Anyway, while sorting stuff at the old homestead, I came across a small stack of M6800 programming reference cards, published by Sphere sometime around 1975. Sphere was a very early micro company, and amongst the first to sell a microcomputer as a complete system (CPU with video!). Apparently, they did not last long. The cards look pretty cheesey (the printing is not great), but then everything I have seen by that company has looked cheesey. It appears that I have two extras, and am willing to mail them out to interested people just for postage. All you need to do is give me a good reason why you need a card - serious or goofy. Just do not say "I want one". Of course, bribes from people bearing equally unimportant paperwork from DEC, IBM, Sun, SGI, Cray, etc., will be considered! William Donzelli william(a)mfs.uu.csn.ans.net

David Williams wrote: I just checked the Old Computers Auction Web this morning and found it both updated, and the auction date extended until Monday.