17 Oct
1999
17 Oct
'99
5:47 a.m.
Hello all -
About a week ago I put a bid on a Micro PDP-11/23 on ebay. I was top
bidder until the end. Of course the end was when I was asleep (3 AM)
this morning (serves me right for sleeping). Got up and was very
disappointed. Since the recent discussion about collectors vs.
enthusiasts I thought I would share this with the group. As a new
collector, I have been reading alot about sources and establishing
networks but they are not in place yet so one of my main venues is ebay
at this time. I plan to start contacting scrappers, universities, and
friends in companies soon. But, alas, today a PDP-11/23 flew by.
Randy Kaplan
17 Oct
17 Oct
11:42 a.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
About a week ago I put a bid on a Micro PDP-11/23 on
ebay. I was top
bidder until the end. Of course the end was when I was asleep (3 AM)
The bidding doesn't start until the end on most items. I prefer not to bid
at all until the end so I don't "show my hand" on higher priced items.
Either bid at the end, and I mean well within the last minute if not the
last 10 seconds or so, or bid the full amount you are willing to pay for
the item.
12:51 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
On Sun, 17 Oct 1999, Mike Ford wrote:
Ahh, the time-honored practice of "sniping". Yes, it works rather
well...some people scream about it, but the fact remains that it's the best way
to get what you want on eBay. People seem to forget that what makes it "fair"
is that it goes both ways. Snipers get sniped as often as non-snipers.
If you're bidding on something that you really want, be prepared to be awake
and in front of your machine when the auction ends. Everyone learns this after
a while.
-Dave McGuire
About a week
ago I put a bid on a Micro PDP-11/23 on ebay. I was top
bidder until the end. Of course the end was when I was asleep (3 AM)
The bidding doesn't start until the end on most items. I prefer not to bid
at all until the end so I don't "show my hand" on higher priced items.
Either bid at the end, and I mean well within the last minute if not the
last 10 seconds or so, or bid the full amount you are willing to pay for
the item.
1:54 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
Either bid at
the end, and I mean well within the last minute if not the
last 10 seconds or so, or bid the full amount you are willing to pay for
the item.
If you're bidding on something that you really want, be prepared to be awake
and in front of your machine when the auction ends. Everyone learns this
after
a while. 
7:56 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
Dave McGuire wrote:
Ahh, the time-honored practice of "sniping". Yes, it works rather
well...some people scream about it, but the fact remains that it's the best way
to get what you want on eBay. People seem to forget that what makes it "fair"
is that it goes both ways. Snipers get sniped as often as non-snipers.
If you're bidding on something that you really want, be prepared to be awake
and in front of your machine when the auction ends. Everyone learns this after
a while.
Sniping is the art of ignorance on the value of something. Putting in an
early bid is IMHO not a wise idea since there is always someone pushing just
to see if they might get it. The wise bidder bids their maximum bid at the
latest possible time. FWIW, sniping can be compared to a sealed bid.
9:46 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Marvin wrote:
Huh? No, man. Sniping is a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less.
Not entirely "nice", not entirely what the eBay designers had in mind, but
extremely effective.
Ahh, the
time-honored practice of "sniping". Yes, it works rather
well...some people scream about it, but the fact remains that it's the best way
to get what you want on eBay. People seem to forget that what makes it "fair"
is that it goes both ways. Snipers get sniped as often as non-snipers.
If you're bidding on something that you really want, be prepared to be awake
and in front of your machine when the auction ends. Everyone learns this after
a while.
Sniping is the art of ignorance on the value of something. Putting in an
early bid is IMHO not a wise idea since there is always someone pushing just
to see if they might get it. The wise bidder bids their maximum bid at the
latest possible time. FWIW, sniping can be compared to a sealed bid.
Yes, I do agree.
-Dave McGuire
10 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Dave McGuire wrote:
I'd have to agree with Marvin. You don't bid early on something because
you don't want to attract attention to something that might be mis-labeled
or poorly described. If other people don't know what it is, and the
bidding price stays low, you bid in the last 5 seconds and get it for much
less that you would have had a bunch of people been after it.
Myself, I go on eBinges. I might spend a couple of days pouring over ads
for stuff that I've been looking for for a long time. Sometimes I buy
things just to buy them; once I bought an IBM thermal printer for $.25 and
paid $5.00 shipping for it. Recently I got an IBM Fortran manual for a
buck or so, and the guy just sent it without payment. What else...oh yeah,
I picked up a SCSI adapter for an Atari ST for $1.00, because the guy had
it listed only as "SCI Adapter"...total fluke, because I myself misspelled
"scsi" in the search...
I'm certainly no power user of eBay (shallow pockets, too lazy to ship
things), but I find that their format drives me to "snipe" things, but I
look at it, as Marvin said, as a Sealed Auction way to buy. People who try
to be *fair* about bidding there, when their system doesn't cater to the
kind of fairness that allows everyone to have their turn to bid until
the last call, just end up frustrated and disappointed.
My .02,
Aaron
Sniping is the
art of ignorance on the value of something.
Huh? No, man. Sniping is a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less.
Not entirely "nice", not entirely what the eBay designers had in mind, but
extremely effective. 
18 Oct
18 Oct
8:09 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
At 09:56 PM 10/17/99 -0700, you wrote:
Putting in an
early bid is IMHO not a wise idea since there is always someone pushing just
to see if they might get it. The wise bidder bids their maximum bid at the
latest possible time. FWIW, sniping can be compared to a sealed bid.
Ahhh.. yes. It is plain psychology. No one wants to be outbid (for proof
of this, look at all recent posts regarding those low-scum-collectors-
who-happen-to-pay-more-than-myself in this very list... ;-) ).
In most people, this will trigger a desire (most times, it will be
followed-through ) of bidding even higher... even if it is not the
(perceived) right price anymore. This is good for eBay, and its stock
value (or, at this point in time, "rating" is a more appropriate word)
also depends on it. Me, I see that eBay is pushing this behavior even
further; it used to be that if somebody bid on something, and someone else
had set a higher max bid than one's own, the message to the newer bidder
would be something like "sorry, someone has outbid you". Period. Now,
what you get is the following:
``Try again ? someone has outbid you! This means you'll need to bid again.''
Clearest proof so far that they actually try to push prices up. But, on the
other hand, these are just good 'ol classical marketing strategies.
They still work.
Therefore, I agree with the practice of "sniping". Closest thing to
an unbiased, responsible, self-refrained bid.
Carlos.
17 Oct
17 Oct
3:27 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
Probably this is the best advice of all. It si the only way to deal with those
that snipe.
Randy
Mike Ford wrote:
--
Dr. Randy M. Kaplan
publisher, knowldgWORKS News
Subscribe at: knowldgWORKSNews-on(a)lists.webvalence.com
Visit: www.accsys-corp.com
About a week
ago I put a bid on a Micro PDP-11/23 on ebay. I was top
bidder until the end. Of course the end was when I was asleep (3 AM)
The bidding doesn't start until the end on most items. I prefer not to bid
at all until the end so I don't "show my hand" on higher priced items.
Either bid at the end, and I mean well within the last minute if not the
last 10 seconds or so, or bid the full amount you are willing to pay for
the item. 
18 Oct
18 Oct
8:23 a.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
There are programs written specifically for ebay that do your bidding for you,
not proxy bidding like ebay has but sniping programs. you can configure it to
place your bid at say 5 seconds before the auction ends, placing the bid only
high enough to win the auction. Someone on this list complained that he was
outbid by only $.01, the winner was most likely using one of these programs.
pbboy
Mike Ford wrote:
About a week
ago I put a bid on a Micro PDP-11/23 on ebay. I was top
bidder until the end. Of course the end was when I was asleep (3 AM)
The bidding doesn't start until the end on most items. I prefer not to bid
at all until the end so I don't "show my hand" on higher priced items.
Either bid at the end, and I mean well within the last minute if not the
last 10 seconds or so, or bid the full amount you are willing to pay for
the item.
12:07 p.m.
New subject: EBaying; howling after an auction
pbboy wrote:
There are programs written specifically for ebay that do your bidding for you,
not proxy bidding like ebay has but sniping programs. you can configure it to
place your bid at say 5 seconds before the auction ends, placing the bid only
high enough to win the auction. Someone on this list complained that he was
outbid by only $.01, the winner was most likely using one of these programs.
That is not necessarily so. First, the maximum bid is kept private.
Secondly, five seconds is not enough time to inch up to find out what a
persons maximum bid is. Winning a bid by $.01 is only a co-incidence and can
only result when the persons maximum has not been reached.
17 Oct
17 Oct
12:33 p.m.
Hello all -
About a week ago I put a bid on a Micro PDP-11/23 on ebay. I was top
bidder until the end. Of course the end was when I was asleep (3 AM)
this morning (serves me right for sleeping). Got up and was very
disappointed. Since the recent discussion about collectors vs.
enthusiasts I thought I would share this with the group. As a new
collector, I have been reading alot about sources and establishing
networks but they are not in place yet so one of my main venues is ebay
at this time. I plan to start contacting scrappers, universities, and
friends in companies soon. But, alas, today a PDP-11/23 flew by.
Well I was the person who outbid you. By the way its an 11/73,
I don't think the person who is selling it really knows the
configuation. If I recall correctly, I was the first person
to bid on it when it first appeared on eBay.
There were several reasons why I was interested in it:
1) Its in the same country that I'm in, and reasonably close,
so I save a lot on shipping and customs. Not all of us
who bid on eBay have "deep pockets", so when I see a system
where I can save more than $100 in shipping and customs I
bid more aggresively. All the complete systems I've bought
on eBay have been located in Canada for just that reason.
2) I use these systems to host vintage graphics displays. I
have an E&S PS390 arriving this week, and I need a host
for it. I don't intend to leave it in a corner as part
of a "collection", I intend to have it up and running.
3) Cheap systems are hard to come by in this neck of the
woods. There were not a large number of PDP11s shipped
to Edmonton to start with, and many of them ended up
in process control systems. Unfortunately, these machines
were typically scrapped when the system was upgraded. I
have contacts within a number of the companies where they
are still used, and I hope those systems will eventually
come my way. But, I don't know when, and I can't be sure.
About a month ago I was offered two PDP11/44 systems, but
I was called a few hours before going to pick them up, the
deal was off. It turned out that the company found another
use for them, but they promised I'd get them when they
were finished with them.
Basically, eBay is still cheaper than going to resellers
to get stuff. For those of us who want working systems
and aren't in Silicon Valley or on the East Coast, there
aren't too many other choices.
--
Dr. Mark Green mark(a)cs.ualberta.ca
Professor (780) 492-4584
Director, Research Institute for Multimedia Systems (RIMS)
Department of Computing Science (780) 492-1071 (FAX)
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada
3:02 p.m.
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text
Size: 945 bytes
Desc: not available
Url :
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/19991018/53379e25/at…
5:20 p.m.
2) I use these
systems to host vintage graphics displays. I
have an E&S PS390 arriving this week, and I need a host
for it. I don't intend to leave it in a corner as part
of a "collection", I intend to have it up and running.
Hmmm... IIRC the PS390 is a pretty powerful machine in its own right --
there's a 680x0 (68020?) in there and a lot of bit-slice and ASICs. It
also has its own local mass storage (although this might be only floppy
drives). I wonder if it can run 'standalone'? It appears to be a very
impressive display system...
I've never heard of one being hosted on a PDP11, but I don't see why it
would be impossible. There were systems disks for DECnet or TCP/IP comms
I think, using Ethernet or (presumably) an RS232 port (ethernet was an
option I believe).
5:58 p.m.
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text
Size: 2356 bytes
Desc: not available
Url :
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/19991018/2e0de33b/at…
6:35 p.m.
New subject: PS 390 (was OutBid)
I changed the subject line to something more relevant to
the line of discussion.
The PS300 series was an interesting piece of hardware. The last
gasp for vector displays. It stored its display list locally,
I hate to tell you this, but the PS390 is a _raster_ display using a
conventional colour monitor (the European ones seem to use a Fimi unit, I
have no idea what was used Stateside).
I'm pretty sure the entire PS300 line were vector displays. Here
in North America is was definitely advertized as a vector display
and they made quite show of the special tube they had produced
that allowed them to do colour. I remember playing with one at
Pixar around 1986, it didn't have any of the aliasing effects
that raster displays of that generation showed.
A number of the vector display manufacturers retrofitted their
vector displays with raster backends in the 1980s. Megatek
was very big on this. They claimed that they could drive both
vector and raster displays from the same graphics engine. Maybe
E&S did the same thing. The people who had used this display
claimed it was vector, and they know their graphics displays.
I'll check it out when it arrives.
The PS 300 line was the end of the line for E&S in the off the
shelf high-end graphics market. SGI basically drove them out
of the market (I still have one of the original SGI workstations
2) I use
these systems to host vintage graphics displays. I
have an E&S PS390 arriving this week, and I need a host
for it. I don't intend to leave it in a corner as part
of a "collection", I intend to have it up and running.
Hmmm... IIRC the PS390 is a pretty powerful machine in its own right --
there's a 680x0 (68020?) in there and a lot of bit-slice and ASICs. It
also has its own local mass storage (although this might be only floppy
drives). I wonder if it can run 'standalone'? It appears to be a very
impressive display system... from 1984, but that's in the lab, not at home).
There's a lot of interesting hardware in the box that attempts to
anti-alias displayed lines (and thus you don't get visible staircasing).
E&S claimed that this was a raster display that looked like a vector one.
Actually not all that strange for that time. There were a number
of similar graphics languages, none of them were widely known.
There are standalone applications for it. The RS232 connection
was slow enough to encourage people to develop standalone apps.
Most applications downloaded as much as they could into the PS300,
and then just handled interaction and transformation matrices at
run-time. This resulted in some very strange systems.
--
Dr. Mark Green mark(a)cs.ualberta.ca
Professor (780) 492-4584
Director, Research Institute for Multimedia Systems (RIMS)
Department of Computing Science (780) 492-1071 (FAX)
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada
and all the graphics processing was done locally.
There is
the possibility to run applications locally, but most were
connected to host computers. This was the way they were intended
to operate.
Oh, sure. The local processing wasn't _that_ impressive (although the
built-in programming language looks _strange_), but I suspect they _can_
be made to run standalone.
18 Oct
18 Oct
10:36 a.m.
New subject: PS 390 (was OutBid)
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text
Size: 1361 bytes
Desc: not available
Url :
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/19991018/7f7b5426/at…
9039
days inactive
9041
days old
16 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
af-list＠wfi-inc.com -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cem14＠cornell.edu -
mark＠cs.ualberta.ca -
marvin＠rain.org -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
mikeford＠socal.rr.com -
pbboy＠mindspring.com -
rkaplan＠accsys-corp.com