Well, he's not sucking up absolutely everything. I picked up a copy of MS Bob the other day. ;) Gil ...

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005, Glen Goodwin wrote: Maybe. Maybe it'll be useful just to vent at him. Maybe it'll be useful to let him know he's pissing off half the community with his stupid bids. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005, Doc Shipley wrote: When you start to become a problem by bidding 4-10 times what any one particular thing is worth in non-eBay dollars as this Dennis fellow does then I'll be sure to point you out as well. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

You don't set what an item is worth. The highest bidder does. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2005 12:32 AM Subject: Re: Need contact information for dkdkk

Vintage Computer Festival wrote: What's the problem? Someone has deeper pockets? There is always someone who has more money. Get over it snd take the long view. It makes our collections worth more. -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers

'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: Help me understand the problem. How is paying more in an auction being "an irresponsible renegade"? What is the downside of someone paying more for stuff other than raising our own costs. If I had deeper pockets, I'd pay a lot more for thing I really wanted. -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers

Evan, I will l have to just respectfully disagree with you and Sellam. I don't see anything wrong with it, but that is my opinion and everyone knows the old saw about opinions. They usually do stink to everyone else but the owner. Have Fun Everybody, it's Saturday. If you are lucky to be off work, which I am for once in a blue moon, enjoy the day. James -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers

At 01:45 PM 7/16/05 -0400, Evan wrote: Has Dennis "refused" to identify himself or his intentions? Have YOU written to him and asked him??? I'm sure you haven't! I've contacted him and talked to him and I have no complaints. If you had the courtesy to contact Dennis directly and ask him politely about his computer interest I'm sure he would be happy to explain to you but instead you attack him as an "irresponsible renegade". THAT is Dennis's reasons are his own business! No one made you the police of computer sales! Assholes like you are the reason that I quit collecting HP calculators and dumped my entire collection! Joe

Joe, I sent TWO messages to his ebay account, both very polite and spaced a few weeks apart. So take your "I'm sure" assumptions and put them somewhere else... -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Finnegan Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2005 5:34 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Need contact information for dkdkk Joe R. declared on Saturday 16 July 2005 04:15 pm: Ok, since it's clear that Sellam doesn't know how to contact Dennis, how do you expect him to ask Dennis about his intentions? Maybe someone who knows him could post what Dennis's intentions are to the mailing list, which have more of an effect on ending this thread than just bitching about wether or not he's doing the right thing without giving any explanation. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

At 04:34 PM 7/16/05 -0500, Pat wrote: He can use E-bay's system. That's how I contacted him. Go to an E-bay page that has Dennis's user id and click on it and it will open a form that you can enter your message in and e-bay will send the message to him and along with the sender's real E-mail address. Dennis can reply directly if he sees fit. Obviously the complainers have made no real effort to contact Dennis. And no, I will not give out Dennis's name or address without his permission. I'd do the same for any for any of you and I think he deserves the same consideration. I think the only reason that we're having this entire argument is that Dennis isn't a member of this list. I haven't heard any complaints about Al or myself or anyone else on this list over-paying on E-bay. I agree with James Rice, if I see something that I WANT on E-bay NO-ONE is going to outbid me on it! I once paid OVER $500 for a single plug in ROM for the HP-41 and I don't regret it a bit! I don't see that Dennis owes an explaination to this list and I won't speak for him. I've already sent him a message about this idiocy. He can respond if he wants to but personally I wouldn't blame him if he just ignored the whole thing. Joe

Not that I have unlimited funds or even collect the same type of equipment that is causing the debate here, but exactly where is this headed? There seems to be alot of hostility to collectors outside of the list with the same deep pockets a few of you in here have (and use when needed). I am starting to feel that the hostility a few of you mega collectors have against ebay is realy a fear that somebody else can get their hands on equipment that might of ended up in your collections cheaper through contacts instead of a "fair" open market. Is this going to turn into what has happened in the stamp market where dealers were caught price fixing material at auctions for their profit? Will raking some big spender over the coals (because he did not spend "fair market value") realy help out the collecting public at all? Am I going to get bitched at if I find a $200 item for $5 and snag it without paying "the fair market value"?

My personal advice is: chill out. For many years I built most of my life (certainly all my spare time) in an effort to archive obsolete software from certain minicomputer systems. PDP-11's, -10's, DG Novas, etc. I had lots of fun. A small fraction of the world seemed to have some appreciation for what I was doing, and that was enough. But in the past 5 years the "data archiving" world has gone big-business. Defense contractors/aerospace companies are collecting good chunks of a billion dollars for doing nothing. Museums go off and do their stuff and the world never sees the results (if any) publicly. It frustrates me every time I think about it. But what can I do? The world at large doesn't care about sharing the results of old digital archives, and I'm in effect airbrushed out of the picture. So I find something else to do. I've got a day job running a $10 Billion peripheral that keeps me busy most of the time. There's enough frustration and heartache there. (Also some satisfaction, too.) The rest of my time is spent tinkering with complex electromechanical systems for fun, definitely not in any attempt to make the world a better place. I am having fun, for the most part. The most frustration comes when I decide to "look back" and see how nothing that I did made any difference in the end. Oh well, it was fun at the time. Look for that instead - don't focus so much on acquiring/trading/valueing stuff in your case. Tim.

Slamming a collector because they are buying a lot of stuff on ebay is completely inappropriate for this list. Kill this thread. Jay

This is something that annoys me too. Muesums acquire large collections of machines, software and documentation which then seems to be impossible to access. When I used to volunteer at Bletchley, I was not allowed to look at their documentation collection. OK, so I wanted some of the information to repair my own machines, but so what? I was not going to remove manuals permanently, or even temporarily. I was not going to damage the manuals. I just wanted to look something up. On this list there are people who will pull one of their machines apart to check some detail (be it mechanical, like 'which way round does this connector go?' or electronic 'what sort of signal should I be seeing on pin 4 of this chip?' I have never met a museum that will do anything like that. All I can recomend is that you keep on doing it, because most of us here appreciate what you do. Agreed. I fool around with these old machines because I enjoy it. If I've helped one other person get a machien going, if my home-made schematics have helped someone, or if I've just encourages people to have a go, well that's enough for me. But I'll keep on playing around anyway, because it's something I enjoy doing. -tony

Maybe Tony and I have fundamentally "bad attitudes" or something. Even though Tony and I are by no means clones, compared to your average guy off the street we are probably indistinguishable :-). In this case "bad attitude" == knows the technical side of all the things we want the museum to be doing, but does not know the right language/ people to talk to. In my case, it may be worse, because I know several techies that deal regularly with the computer history museum, often they're volunteers in various technical projects, yet my queries to them yield nothing useful. I know it's all "work in progress" but from my viewpoint on the East Coast I don't even see progress (although there is some sign of work, or at least effort!) Tim.

Ex-nuclear astrophysics to be divisive :-). Sure, although I was much heavier on the software and plug-boards- together-to-make-a-system side. See, even though any other person would regard the two of us as twins, I only think of the differences! Tim.

You mean you didn't pull your 9100 apart and work out how it all works inside. Pity. You missed out on what is, IMHO, the most beautiful design ever. To give you some idea how simple it is, there are well under 1000 transistors in there (this is a programmable scientific calculator, of course). IIRC, there are only 43 JK flip-flops and 1 SR flip-flop in a 9100B. An amaszingly small number... -tony

I fail to see the connection. In the case of the museum, I'd volunteered to help out there. I'd spent several days working there. I just asked if I could look at their collection of documentation, in fact my initial request for for a printset for one of _their_ machines that I was working on (I had -- and had taken with me -- printsets for most of the system, but I didn't have them (IIRC) for the tape drive). I was basically told 'no way'. Contacting a relative of a deceased collector is rather different. In that case you are often not know to said relative (I was known to the people at Bletchley). There is also the time problem -- you need to leave it long enough that said relative is ready to deal with the effects of the collector, but no so long that he/she comes to the conclusion that nobody is interested in them. But anyway... I do not like lending out my manuals. Mainly because I am likely to need them myself. That said, if anyone at Bletchley had asked if I had a manual for some machine, and I had it, I would have been happy to bring it up on my next visit and let them look at it while I was there. Which is all I wanted to do with the museum's manuals. I didn't want to take them off-site. -tony

I tend to confuse Bletchley Park with the CCS, so I might be moaning about the wrong lot. But (IIRC) the CCS's method of using its members' knowedge leaves a lot to be desired. IIRC, the membership form asks for up to 4 computers that you have experience of. I had a serious problem with filling in that section. Should I list 4 machines that were relatively common, on the grounds that I'd then get to do something. Or should I list 4 rare machines, which I knew somewhat less about, on the grounds that I might well be the only person to have any knowledge of them at all? There is another problem, best illustrated by an example... Suppose you have a non-working HP9810 calculator (well, it's almost a computer :-)). You have a choice of 2 repairers. A) Worked ofr HP as a service engineer for many years. He's got the official service manual (which is a boardswapper guide), and can follow the instructions which are basically to replace all the plug-in PCBs until it starts working again. The fact that you can't get replacement boards any more is another matter... B) Has never worked for HP or any other computer company. But he was given a broken 9810 a few years back and spent a couple of months working out how to repair it. This guy can connect a logic analyser to an undocumented internal connector and trace the CPU microcode. He's got his own microcode listings and can thus tell just what the darn thing is doing. Now, who do you pick? There's also the problem that somebody having no experience of <foo>, but who is generally clueful about similar stuff might well be more use than somebody who's had a few months user-level experience of <foo>, but who has never gone further on any machine. -tony

Of course... Perhaps I should have re-phrased that question. Who do you pick if all you've asked about is what experience A and B have of the machine. _On paper_, A seems to be the better 'qualified' -- he worked for the company, he's got the official manual. In practice, you'd want B. As indeed I have, several times (not all on the same 9810, I hasten to add :-)) Odd you should pick that one. The CPU control board -- 09810-66513 -- which contains the microcode, is the only logic board I've not had to repair in a 98x0 machine.... Still, I am sure they can fail. Oh, absolutely. Good test equipment is useful, but it's not essential, and it's not a substitute for knowing what you are doing. Many people (not on this list I hasten to add) seem to think there's a magic box you can connect to a brokent <foo> that will tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it. Of course there isn't. I've said this many times, but it's worth repeating. In order to repair something, you should : Make measurements (and otherwise gather evidence as to the problem); Think about what the measuements are telling you; Then, and only then, replace anything. It is often possible to get the evidence you need without fancy test equipment. The person who moans 'I could fix this if only I had a logic analyser (or storage 'scope, or...)' is probably wrong. Not because such instruments are not useful, they are. But becasue even if he had them, he'd not be able to interpret the display. If he had the skill to do that, he could probably manage without the instruments. -tony

Yes, but try convincing a non-technical person of that. Absolutely... OK, a lot of HP9810 info that you probably don't need, but which might interest somebody here (it's better than flaming about E-bay, surely...) The machine is 16 bit, bit serial. The CPU is 4 boards, about 20 chips on each board. Mostly TTL, with some 74Hxxx parts (!). Also 9 small (256*4 bit) PROMs, 7 for the microcode (28 bits wide), 2 for the ALU (its essentially done by lookup tables). Actually, both the '16 bit' and the 'bit serial' are possibly wrong. The CPU registers, etc are 16 bits wide. Data (numbers) memory is 8 bits wide in the hardware, with logic to read 2 locations and turn them to/from a 16 bit word when transfering to the CPU. User program memory (to store keystroke-like programs) looks to be 6 bits wide to the CPU (a keycode is 2 octal digits), as above it's physically half that width, 3 bits. Incidnetally, other machines in the family (9820, 9821, 9830) don't play such shenanigans, the memory is all physcially and logically 16 bits wide. And the machine is not always bit-serial. It is for binary operations, but BCD addition, which has to be done between the A accumulator and the T register (memory data register) is done a digit (4 bits) at a time. The 4 CPU boards are : I/O Interface, Clock (which also includes the I/O control sequencer), CPU control (microcode), Data Path. Those are my names for them, and IMHO are less confusing than the HP names. There are 3 memory control boards that contain the shift registers to convert between the bit-serial CPU data and the parallel memory buses. One board contains the M registers (address), address decoder, etc. Anotehr contains the T register (data), buffers, etc. The last is the timing, control, refresh, etc. RAM is 1103s. Early Intel 1K*1 bit chips. With strange (19V) logic levels and power supplies. There are level shifters all over the place. ROM is HP custom 512 byte chips. At least most of the signals to those are TTL levels, although the select lines are at 12V levels. The display is 45 7-segment digits (!). It displays all 3 stack levels, 10 digit mantissa, desimal point, 2 digit exponent, mantissa sign and exponent sign for each level. It's almost entirely firmware scanned and driven. The I/O interface contains a 16 bit shift register. It provides 16 outputs nad 12 inputs (the other 4 inputs are grounded on the card) For external peripherals, which you plug into the I/O slots on the back, it's 8 data outputs, 8 data inputs, 4 status outputs, 4 status inputs, 4 select outputs (to select 1 of 16 peripherals). For internal peripherals, like the display, selection is done by dedicated lines from the I/O interface, so all 16 outputs can be used for 'data'. In the case of the display, 15 lines are used : 3 to select a particular row of the display (X, Y, Z register display) -- 1 of 3 code ; 4 to select a digit (binary code), 8 for the segment drives (7 segments + decimal point). There is a display strobe line from the I/O interface to the display. It drives monostables on the display board, which ensure that whatever the processor does, a particualr digit can't be left enabled. If that happened the display segment would burn out (the instantaneous current is high, to get adequate brightness). Displays were expensive back then. What all this means, of course, is that 90% of the machine must be working to get anything on the display at all. The CPU must be running the microocde correctly, in order to fetch and execute instructions (some of which hopefully will scan the display). The data path must be OK, to transfer data from memory to the I/O register, etc. The ROM must he OK provide instructions to the CPU. The RAM must be OK too, it holds the stack refisters, etc (not to mention the subroutine stack, scratchpad, etc). Memory cotnrol, addressing, etc need to be OK too so that the memory can be accessed. Of coutrse the display and its drivers need to be OK. And everything depends on a working PSU. And of course, just about all faults result in a blank display. How do you sort it out? Well, start by removing unneccessary bits (the intenral printer, card reader controller, even the keyboard logic connector). It's unlikely to help, but it's worth eliminating possible problems on the I/O bus. Check the PSU. There are testpoints for all voltages apart from +5V on the PSU boards, marked on the PSU cover. The 5V line is marked on the display PCB. Assuming that doesn't help, you're into the logic. IMHO, the best way to continue is to check for the display strobe at the display PCB edge connector. It's very liklely to be missing, but you'd feel a right idiot if you spent hours tracing the CPU operation only to find that the problem was one of the monostables on the display board! Then check the clocks (there are 2, bitclk to clock the registers <n> times between each muclk, which drives the microode. <n> is determined by 4 bits of the current microinstruction). If they're OK (the clock board can be powered up out of the machine, whereupon <n> is 16, for testing), next look at the microcode address lines on the CPU control board top test connector. If they're not changing at all, then either the INIT/ line from the PSU is stuck asserted (it's sourced on the 5V regulator board), or there's a problem with he sequencer. If the microcode is running, use a logic analyser to trace it. You are looking to answer the following : 1) Is the sequence sane? That is, could it occur if the sequencer and ROMs are workin correctly? 2) Is it stuck in the I/O loop (a 2 state loop, I can look up the addresses). When the CPU does an I/O operation, it sets an I/O control flip-flop on the clock board, then sits in this loop until the I/O control system has finished (and therefore clears said flip-flop). This is acually a very unreliable part of the machine, much of the time this is the cause of a blank display. If it is stuck in said look, of course you start to debug the I/O control logic 3) Is it going found the fetch-execute cycle? In particular, is it fetching instructions from ROM? If so, does the memory control system seem to be working? Are you getting reasanble signals to the ROM (and RAM). And so it goes on..... Of course you then may need the 'scope to find out what's up with the PSU drive waveforms, etc... Perhaps I'd better not admit to the time I tried to find out why the local oscillator in a radio wasn't doing that... I spent a long time checking components, and forgot to measure the battery voltage.... I don't think any one instrument will always give you the necessary clues. Part of faultfinding is knowing what an instrument _can_ tell you, and thus whether it's a suitable instrument for the job in hand. And of course, knowing what it's not telling you, so you don't assume something is right (like no ringing on a clock) when the instrument you've chosen (LA) can't tell you that. -tony

I've changed the Subject: line because this has little to do with the original subject, which in any case is best forgotten. I am not sure who does what. I've mostly had dealings with the computer collection at Bletchley Park, whether my problems were due to the actions of the muesum or of the CCS I don't know. Suffice it to say I didn't find the experience pleasant. That;s my view too. They suffer -- bigtime -- from the problem I've already mentioned. They do not seem to realise that there are self-taught hobbyists out there some of whom actually know what they are doing. Informing them of this fact is a waste of time. My experience in a number of cases is that somebody gets to work on a particular machine becuase he worked for the company (what he actually did at said company doesn't seem to matter). For some reason somebody has then mentioned me, and I am asked to advise _far too late_, after damage has been done. Oh well.... Incidentally, there are some good ways of ensuring you do not get help One obvious one ios to ask for a replacement board, or other assembly. Unless the part is actually misisng (and was misisng when you got the machine!), or you need it for an upgrade, you are not going to get it will, encourage board-swappers. A couple of years ago I was asked (not by the CCS or anyone related to them) if I had a spare disk drive unit for an HP9114A. Now, as it happens I do have a few 'in stock', but as I said, I never supply complete assemblies like that. I assumed he needed a head assembly (the well-known dried up greas problem. which causes the upper head to get caught in the disk when you eject the latter, and thus the former gets ripped of the gimbal spring). I offered to fit and align that, but upon inspection the heads were fine. In faxt the problem was 2 or 3 dead transsitors on the logic board which didn't take too long to find. And suitable replacements wrre easily available. By refusing to supply a complete spare drive, I (a) kept the unit more original (fewer parts were replaced) and (b) have kept the spare drive for the time it's really neaded (e.g. to donate a head or stepper to another unit, those parts not being easy to get new). And that basically sums up mu reasons for not supplying modules. I prefer to replace as little as possilbe, in order to keep the machine as original as possible. And I prefer to use as little of my stock as possible, as the other parts can go to repair other machines. If a PCB contains half-a-dozen custom chips, then a spare board can be used for just one repair if you wap the whole board, but possibly up to 6 repairs if you change just the defective chip, and if all chips have equal chance of failing. The second wat to not get help from me is to ignore my advice, particularly concerning what to do the first time you power up an uknown machine. If you don't like my methods of testign the PSU on dummy load, fine. Yoy don't have to follow them. But if you just apply power and see what happens, don't expect me to help with parts and advice if something goes wrong. [On that matter, I was appalled by comments at Bletchley on some of the exhibits that they were brought to the museum, plugged together, and worked first time. Any group claiming to be preserving computer history should, IMHO, take rather more care than that!] In which case I suspect you'd probably be listed as having experience of no machines. That was exactly my view in the end. I was battling against people to get thtings done, I was donating my time and expertise free-of-charge, and getting no recognition for it, and I wasn't enjoying it. And I had enough machines of my own to repair, docuemnt, etc. The outcome was, alas, obvious. For the record, I am more than happy to share my repair tricks, as I have done to several people round the world on just this machine.... Indeed. There aren't that many ways to do a particular thing (although HP, in particular, seem to have used all of them at least once :-)). More than that, though, somebody who has general experience is likely to be able to understand a mew circuit/program/whatever after a little time, and is not likely to do the totally wrong thing before he's worked out what the right thing to do is. -tony

Of course I should have realized by now that attachments don't get sent to the list. If I had read the introductory material I might have even been told that. <blush>. Here's an URL for the image in question: http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/Whazat.html TIA, Gil

Ethan> On 7/19/05, Director <csmuseum at cse.uta.edu> wrote: Ethan> At 1/4" thick, there's a chance it's a DF32 platter. I don't Ethan> remember how large the hub hole is, but at first glance, and Ethan> with the PDP-8 suggestion, that's what I'd have to guess. Ethan> I have never seen an RF08 platter, so I don't know how Ethan> physically similar they are. Is the RF08 like the RF11? On second thought, that may be more like it. I forgot the size of the RF64, but I don't think it was 16 inches diameter. (I though 8 inches was diameter not radius...) For the RF11 that sounds just right. I haven't ever seen an RS03 or RS04 platter; that's probably about the same size as the RF11. I don't think the RF11 had a ritation sensor. It had a clock/timing track which encoded, among other things, the start of track mark. There was a gap at that point. When reformatting the timing track (if you replaced the platter, for example) you'd adjust a knob on the timing track formatter until its indicator lights showed that the gap length was within the required range. paul

At 10:40 AM 7/19/2005, Director wrote: Based on the size, that's a RF08 platter. It's too big to be a DF32 platter. (Assuming it did come from a PDP-8 connected drive.) It's probably not useful outside the drive it came from unless you reformat it on the new drive. There's very little chance the heads will line up on any other drive. -Rick

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 13:05:16 -0400 "'Computer Collector Newsletter'" <news at computercollector.com> wrote: It almost sounds like the label 'irresponsible renegade' means this person isn't in collusion with a group of bidders. And didn't we have a long discussion about the unethical practices of colluding bidders awhile back?

'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: Actually I wouldn't care if the cost jumped suddenly. I over paid for lot of my items. Example: I paid over $1100 for my dual 133 BeBox. I bought it during the "dot comm" era and a lot of people (including myself) with too much money were buying toys. Do I care that I can only get half of my money back? No, it's not for sale at any price. I paid twice as much as current value for my Turbo Dimension NeXT cube. Same result as the BeBox. I really don't care. I like them, I wanted them and I'm still satisfied with my items and my purchases. So they are still worth the original cost to me? Yes, they are. Eventually they will be worth as much as I paid or more. I probably won't sell then either. Would I stop collecting if the price suddenly jumped? Probably. I would slow down my purchasing but that's the only result. Who knows I might take advantage of the new value of my collection and make some money for a change. I'm sorry if the tone of my original message was misunderstood by some. I'm not cutting Sellam or anyone else down, just pointing out the world market place will determine price, individuals always determine the ultimate value of things for themselves. James -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers

'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: ... ... Paraphrase: when I do it, it is OK, but when the other guy does it more than me, it is wrong. As has been pointed out, the price is set by the 2nd highest bidder, so DK isn't to blame. If DK makes lower max price bids but which are still high enough to win, it won't drop the price of auctions one whit. The only way to get the average price down is to ask him to lose more auctions. Do you think he'll agree to it? Besides, haven't we seen this a number of times before? fdbruce is selling all sorts of "interesting" (to me) machines on ebay for the past few months. A year or two ago he was one of those deep pocket buyers. He got tired and now they are getting injected back into the system. No harm done. Well, other than he is currently selling a "in need of repairs" Sol-20 and separately a microcomplex 80/64 video mod board which obviously originally was part of the at modified Sol-20 (without this board, that Sol won't do anything). DK's intentions are not our business. I doubt he is using them to test a grinding machine. These machines will appear again. How many people on this list have systems, most of which will sit in a pile somewhere until they get resold on ebay or traded for some other system? Isn't this a waste? How is it much different from DK's presumed "sin" of hoarding?

As far as I know, there is no Ministry of Classic Computers that sets what each item "should" sell for. The value of an item in a market is, by definition, what the seller pays. And since this dkdkk is buying via ebay, in an auction format, it's not like dkdkk is saying "you have this item listed at $25, I'll pay $250". There are other bidders involved who are willing to pay something very close to, but not quite, what dkdkk ends up paying. So dkdkk is not singularly responsible for "high prices" of items on ebay. I interpret Sellam's point as being all this really interesting equipment is going into a "black hole" and disappearing. It's the same problem in any field with rare antiquities - some valuable (in the information and research sense) items disappear into private collectins, where they can't be studied by others in the field, or appreciated by the public. Whereas on this list I've seen people post a question like "I have a tape in X format, but no reader - can anyone help", and the one known person with that obscure tape reader will offer to read the tape and convert it to a more usable format. Jeff

Teo Zenios wrote: Exactly!!! If it is worth the effort of placing on ebay, VCM or any other venue, then that is doing the hobby a service regardless of ultimate price. If percieved value of an item falls below the cost of placing it up for sale, it becomes not worth the effort and will result in more equipment sent to the land fill or to the scrapper. As for the hoarding issue, sometimes I collect several examples of one machine. Sometimes it's for spare parts, for display of a different version of the OS, for development or for future trade/sale to finance my own collection. The ones I do have multiple examples are mostly older Macs and Mac clones that have no "real" current value but I couldn't stand to see a perfectly good box being dumpstered, or NeXT slabs - not exactly rare but they will get that way eventually and so will be good trade goods or resale items in the near future. As for manuals, I think they should be scanned into pdf's for furture availability as downloads. James -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005, 'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: And any such short term gains would be quickly lost as the over-inflation becomes obvious. Did anyone learn ANYTHING from the dot-com bubble? That's not confirmed at all. Or tell him he's pissing off a lot of people. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

At 01:21 PM 7/16/05 -0400, Evan wrote: He's not speaking for me! I respect Sellam but I think he's wrong here. I know Dennis (and I know his last name) and I see no reason to complain about what he buys on E-bay. It's a free country and he's free to buy whatever he wants and can afford. You don't know Dennis or what his reasons or goals are and you and Sellam have no more right to complain about him than you do about someone like Al Kossow who ALWAYS gets what he goes after on E-bay. He is pointing out that our hobby suddenly has this guy who is That is not only ridiculous, it's also slanderous! You know NOTHING about Dennis and it's completely irresponsible of you to make such a statement! Say, for example, that some rich person Vince isn't the only one that knows Dennis. I know him and I've known him for a couple of years. I didn't speak up sooner in the hope that this rediculous thread would die on it's own but when I won't stand by when you start slandering people that you don't know! Joe

'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: Just to set the record straight, an acquaintance of mine claims to have met him through their mutual connections to the Computer Museum. I don't know any more than this, but it would seem to indicate that Dennis has an interest in computer history rather than simply being an "investor" who heard something on NPR, etc. --Bill

Tony Duell wrote: Neither do I Tony. It's not an investment, my retirement fund or anything else but a hobby. I collect what I do because I like unique hardware or operating systems and I like to figure out what makes them tick. There is a thrill in owning a system that used to cost megabucks but I managed to get for a few dollars. James -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers

----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2005 10:17 PM Subject: Re: Need contact information for dkdkk for Some of the earlier 68k Macs used to cost $10K a pop, and can be had for a few dollars today. Maybe oneday when I can afford a warehouse I might get into larger machines. Anyway ebay is one source for things along with newsgroups, friends who have old equipment at work, hardware forums, garagesales, scaptlots, etc. Talking to people who used to use the stuff is half the fun.

At 11:33 PM 7/16/05 -0500, James wrote: That's definitely a problem. I used to have six good sources in this area and now I'm down to two. The only good part of that is that one of them is picking up a lot of the business from two of the former ones and I have this one "trained" to watch out for the kind of stuff that I'm interested in so I'm a LOT of good stuff from him lately. I'm not having to do nearly as much running around and I'm not having to deal with some of the other loonies. You just have to find the recyclers! With the mountains of PCs out there now every town has as at least one. They may setup to deal only with PCs but they all get occasional S-100, HP and other worthwhile computers and since they're not part of what they deal with they'll usually sell them CHEAP. As an example, I really miss Yeah there was a trift store in the area that used to be THE place for people dropping off computers. I got a lot of good deals there but they got out of the computer business :-( Joe

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 19:03:10 +0100 (BST) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: I started thinking that way (I consider it a 'metaphysical approach') years ago, starting when the only 'direct' access I had to a computer was the dial-up ASR-33 connection to a timesharing system from a math classroom in High School. It's been a long, long. journey to go that direction with even a small subset of the hardware out there.

Bob Shannon wrote: Actually, in eBay it is the next-to-highest who does. -- Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez Universidad Autonoma de Manizales, Manizales, Colombia ---- "I don't know a lot necessarily about the business or the industry, but I know how to kick butt. That's what I do." Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric's CEO, to executives of GE's daughter company MSNBC.