<> In a recent auction on eBay, a MITS Floppy Disk Drive was auctioned off a <> $565. "WOW!" you may say, but that unit cost $1300 when new, and that wa Aas someone that placed that order asap back when, that was several months savings! the new ford truck (F250 4x4 pickup) was only $2700. and it would take weeks to make it do something. later more money to replace the damm S4Ks with 88MCDs and again with seals 8k static. <Which may very well prove one point being brought up, that some people are <not collecting to use or preserve, but merely to display and trophy. or worse they havent a clue what is important save for a few names. <> When I bought my first pair of 8" floppy drives they cost $675 each. Th <> last pair I bought cost $470 each in 1981. In 1980, it seems to me, a <> typical S-100 CPU cost $250. A floppy controller cost about the same, an <> terminal cost $750. When? In 1977 it's was more like(8080 or z80/2mhz) $399 by 1979 it was 299 and 4mhz z80, 81 a cpu board had z80b ram, rom serial and floppy at $599. hard to compare apples and oranges. <Yeah, but today I can get a 3.5" floppy drive that holds more data and is <faster, for $35. I can get a Pentium-II CPU at 350Mhz for certainly less <than $250, and a floppy controller is built into the motherboard I buy for <under $100. So how does your price comparison stand up now? cost of technology has dropped without question. My first SRAM was 1uS 1101 part (256x1) at $9.95, a bargan then. Later it would be 2102 at $16.00 a pop. Now 16mb is $16! the funny twist is if I wasted to make a s100 card around said 16mb dram it would still cost $$$. Allison