What? Show our hands? Seriously, I have spent some big bucks for some computers and radios. That B1900 on EBay cost me about $2K when all was said and done (mostly shipping). A string of 3330 drives is costing me about $500 a pop. Sometimes the rarity commands the price. One purchase was insanely expensive. However, you aren't going to find out how much... William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

--- Chandra Bajpai <cbajpai(a)comcast.netmail.net> wrote: This is already happening. I was made aware of several cases of this being reported in the community that specializes in collecting old Sierra On-Line software. rich __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good. http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com

--- Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote: This comes to me 2nd hand, so take it for what it's worth.... About 6 months ago I had offered up some fairly mint Sierra games (mostly Kings Quest versions) via eBay. This stuff was still in the shrink wrap. I'd had good luck in the past moving Sierra stuff, so I figured it would fetch a pretty good price. The stuff wound up selling for alot more than I had figured it would though (some titles upwards of $100). I didn't think much about about, chocked it up to good fortune. The buyer paid immediately via PayPal so everything was cool from my end. A few days later I got an email from a guy I had sold some Sierra stuff in the past saying he was in on the bidding for many of these items and was hoping to get them but the prices just got too insane and he had to pass. He asked some questions about the winning buyer. When I asked him why he was so interested, he said that the Sierra community was tracking a known conterfeiter of Sierra merchandise. Apparently they had caught someone dealing in bogus merchandise. This guy claimed that the counterfieter had changed names, addresses (actually moving to CA from Israel at one point) and that he had multiple aliases, addresses, and eBay ids that he was using to obtain product. He also claimed that the guy was using stolen credit card numbers for most of his purchases and had months where he spent upwards of $8000 on stuff. The community suspected that my buyer may have been their counterfeiter and were trying to keep tabs on this person. I'm not sure if my buyer was "the guy" or not (or even if the story is true!), but that's how it was explained to me. rich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote: Maybe. Try the Vintage Computer Marketplace instead to avoid any fees: http://marketplace.vintage.org -- 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 Tue, 28 Dec 2004, Tom Jennings wrote: <mode="evil genius"> That might be a fun way to kill the market. Flood eBay with dozens of countefeit versions of highly sought after games like this. Put something on either the disk label or in the documentation that can identify it as a fake but not be obvious, or perhaps put a data marker on the disk somewhere. Sell them for a BuyItNow price of $4.95, but of course insinuate in a very weird way that this is not an original version. Once enough bogus versions are out there it should kill the urge for people to pay unwarranted sums for old software. Or it might backfire. I don't have enough time to even consider such a plan so if someone actually does this it's not me. </mode> -- 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 ]

I don't recall where I read it now... (somewhere in a newsgroup) but it seems to be fueled by Japanese vintage (read tube) stereo collectors. The original service and repair manuals spec that particular kind of solder and there seems to be a belief that the modern equivalent is not mixed (alloyed, whatever) correctly. So if you pay big bucks for a tube stereo but it is repaired with the "wrong" solder, you still don't get the "magic" sound you're looking for, hence you'll pay several hundred bucks for an old spool of solder. Apparently, they'll even have working units that appear to contain "incorrect" solder disassembled all of the "bad" solder removed and then reassembled with the "right" stuff.

It always makes me laugh when I see one group of lunatics say all the OTHER groups are lunatics. :) Whether we collect computers, radios, typewriters, televisions, telegraphs keys, telephones, mathematical tools, hand tools, or whatever -- we're all basically doing the same thing. --- Vintage Computer Festival &lt;vcf(a)siconic.com&gt; wrote: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ===== Tell your friends about the Computer Collector Newsletter! -- It's free and we'll never send spam or share your email address -- Publishing every Monday(-ish), ask about writing for us -- Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all -- W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news(a)computercollector.com -- 628 readers and counting!

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: So what would your definition be of folks who turn this 'battiness' into huge fortunes - selling 'specific alloy' special silver teflon-coated RCA cables (...eeeww!) for *hundreds of dollars a freakin foot*!!!! And all the other "audiophool" quackery, for that matter. Hey, I just wish *I'd* had the foresight (and total lack of professional scruples) to be one of the guys selling CD anti-vibration rings and gold-alloy digital interconnect ribbons - to 'improve the sound' of your machine... gahhhh! Cheerz John

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: The trick is though, to make the 'results' so utterly subjective that there's no possibility for a claim of fraud. TV psychics, fortune cookies, mutual funds, that sort of thing. Now a diskette that lowers spreadsheet typos, or a mousepad that improves accuracy of my clicks -- THAT I'd be willing to pay for!

No more so than people who think that running a game on a real Apple ][ makes it run any better than running it on an emulator. Emotional biases _aren't_ rational, almost by definition. Besides, I'm not sure they're wrong. *I* certainly can't hear the difference. But I've never been able to hear the difference between tube and transistor, either, and that doesn't mean I can't accept that a lot of audiophiles can. Indeed, I know one who tells me that if I were to actually do a flip-between-them comparison, I would hear the difference. (He might even be right for all I know - only one way to tell for sure.) It's just plausible enough that the exact alloy used in the solder affects the way the metal-to-metal junctions react to current flowing through them that I don't dismiss it out of hand. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: Well, two things I thought were totally batty -- and in the audio field, no less -- turn out to be not so simple. One, carbon composition vs. film resistors. It's not unreasonable, it turns out, to be able to hear the difference between them (in early stages). Voltage rating. Carbon Comps (CC) handle HV (600 VDC) well, films not so well. Likely near max V all sorts of microvolt-level wierdness begins in the film jobs, plus micro-arc-overs, leakage paths, etc. CC's are noisy, and noise injection is complex, but may have dynamic characteristics that are simply not spec'd. Hell, human HEARING is complex and not linear. Someone (John L.?) was discussing audio recordings of teletype gear, how system X did a poor job vs system Y. At issue was the fact that the human ear is an *active* device -- when hearing the repetitive, high-impulse noise of teletype printing, you brain/ear *anticipates* the sharp >>WHACK<< of the print hammer and pulls back on the stirrup in your inner ear! Futzing with dynamic range etc messes with *that*. Two, power wire quality. The issue is the poor band-stop of power supply filters for higher frequencies, even with zillions of uF's. Anyone who's worked with RF knows about this. In a home stereo there's limits without running bussbar back to the street, but in a studio you'll end up with 100's of feet of signal path, and with a quiet system things Do Add Up. All of this stuff has particular subtle contexts. I seriously doubt you could hear the diff between film and CC 100 ohm cathode resistors in a driver amp, and the idea that one gold-plated power cord improves anything but profitability -- I'll believe anything with sufficient evidence, but solder alloys in a solder joint sounds like total crap to me -- unless I had a lot of rolls to offload on fools with more money than I ... :-)

Maybe if I sprayed some the mountain of vaxstation 3100's hiding in my cupboard in imac colours. I could make a fortune selling them. Reserve bid ?3000 Utra rare 3 hard drives 4x the speed of the original vax Authentic BNC connection. Original cdrom drive (see my other auction for caddies ?200 each) Runs Linux How many do you think I'd get rid of ? Dan

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 19:52:11 -0500, 9000 VAX &lt;vax9000(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I've never tried it, but I thought it at least booted. Dan

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 20:11:06 -0500, Bob Lafleur &lt;bob_lafleur(a)technologist.com&gt; wrote: If the circuit board is defective, you might want to find another ST3390N and replace the circuit board. Other than that, I have no idea how a hard drive could be repaired. vax, 9000

On Wed, 2004-12-29 at 19:02 -0800, Jim Arnott wrote: I tend to use a pan of icy water on top of the drive rather than the freezer trick. I'm kind of wary of putting a drive in the freezer where it can attract moisture... Sometimes I've had luck the other way too; pre-heating the drive using a hairdryer. Another bonus last-resort trick is to pull the lid on the drive and get the platters spinning 'by hand' - just don't touch the data surfaces, and there's no guarantee as to how long the drive will keep going (don't run the drive open obviously - in fact some drives won't even run up to speed when open). Copy data off, then chuck the drive. Someone told me of a drive they ran completely open for a couple of weeks for giggles before it finally crashed.

Bob; Please don't beat on the drive! The heads on these old-timers would sometimes stick to the platters and not spin up. You can usually break them loose without damage if you know what you're doing. This is a little hard to describe so bear with me. You need to remove the drive from the computer. Hold it with your hand on the bottom next to the circuit board. Rotate the drive quickly by twisting your wrist, stopping short at the end of your range of motion. In other words, get both the platters and the drive rotating, and then stop the drive suddenly. You can usually hear the platter rotating for a second or two after the stop if you are successful. Replace the drive and see if it works. Be prepared to make a backup of the drive before you turn it off again -- that may be the last time it works. Once they start doing this, things only get worse. Paul Pennington Augusta, Georgia

Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can get an oldish MIDI sequencer (like Performer, or Vision, or something) that will run on a Powerbook 150? Gordon.

I'm just happy that my Wizardry Mordor Charge Card at least has the minimum $5.00 bid on it now. :D

Electronics World ran a series of articles called " capacitor sound " from July 2002. -Discussing how capacitor construction can affect the sound of a hi-fi amp. The author , Cyril Bateman , also did a few articles on loudspeaker cable sound , but I can't find those at the moment. Geoff. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" &lt;vcf(a)siconic.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 10:31 PM Subject: RE: Speaking of eBay Festival ---- http://www.vintage.org mputers ] http://marketplace.vintage.org ] -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.8 - Release Date: 03/01/05

Seem to me that these are just crummy, underrated film types. Composition resistors also are not stable. They drift over time. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

Not really true. The manufacturing process and resistor structure is fundamentally different. Film resistors are generally an insulating core, with spirals of the resistive stuff (thickness, width, and material depend on the resistance of course) around the core. Then there's a protective coating and marking around the outside. There are a few applications where the spiral structure has undesired inductive effects. But then there are different varieties of metal films, some specifically low inductance. If you price out new carbon composition resistors, you'll know they're different than metal films. Quarter-watt metal-films are less than a penny each in quantity (1000 or 5000 typically). Carbon compositions are twenty-five cents each in quantity. I get the impression that the metal-film manufacturing process has seen all the benefits of manufacturing technology over the past few decades, while the carbon composition process has had no improvement for like fifty years. Mass-produced 0.1% metal film resistors are cheaper than 10% carbon composition units. All resistors drift over time :-). I will admit that carbon compositions are much more drifty with respect to just about everything (time, temperature, heat cycling, humidity, phase of the moon, etc.) Tim.

William Donzelli wrote: It is quite common (seen it with my own eyes, too) for a 40 year oldcarbon comp resistor to drift over 20 percent, and that even includes the five percent versions. That makes sense. Well what about your 40 year+ eyes drifting too. Hey look a blond in a swimsuit. :)

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004, Tom Jennings wrote: Weird. Why not e-mail some of the buyers and ask them to take the quiz below? -- 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 ]