On Fri, 7 Nov 1997 18:23:51 -0800 (PST), Mr. Ismail remarked: You seem to hint that I was whining about the language, which is simply not the case. The way one uses language states a lot about who they are - and yes, sometimes this requires profanity. However, let's save the "heavy language" for times when we really need it (like when you drop a mini on your foot :-) ). In this case, the man has a valid point - from one perspective. If one takes that perspective to an extreme, however, we find that ENIAC wasn't relevant (only one ever built), none of the Zuse machines amounted to anything, the ABC was meaningless, and the IBM 360 was unimportant. There's more to a machine that makes it historically important than how many were sold or produced. Was the STRETCH important (a half dozen or so)? How about the PDP-10 (under a thousand)? Mass marketing is not the gauge of importance, especially in a social context. Remember - the individuals who designed the machines that _were_ mass marketed were brought up knowing about computers, and those machines most certainly weren't mass-market devices. Whether Novas are "wanted" is immaterial to the argument. Folks are now virtually unaware of a piece of history, and an important one at that. It's also a piece of history that's fast disappearing, which is a rotten shame. Do multi-thousand dollar speculative prices on Altairs make them more "historic" or "valuable" than a PDP-5 (predecessor of the -8)? There's more to be calculated into a "value" than the current market price, which all too frequently is out of line with reality. Nope. Nobody did. That's one of the reasons I have respect for the man. He knows machines worth saving, and is willing to take the time and (not incosiderable) effort to do so. He is realistic about it - I've chatted with him about it privately. He realises fully what moving that amount of gear means. So do I and another chap out East who are moving a good quarter-ton all the way across a continent. Do you know who I'm speaking of? Hint: he designed one of the early mass-market computers that you prize so highly. Put bluntly - shock value. I used that list as a calculated way of getting folks' attention, and perhaps, just perhaps, of getting them to "smell the coffee". To reiterate - it takes more to make a machine important than how many copies were sold. Cheers. ______________________________________________________________________ | | | | Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston | | Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA | | mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com | | | http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 | |________________________________________________|_____________________|