5 Oct
1998
5 Oct
'98
10:44 a.m.
Just for the hell of it, I thought I'd make a list of the Top 10 Holy Grails
of classic microcomputer computer collecting. This is the "Rembrandt in the
Attic" sort of stuff. These are roughly in my opinionated order, but
somewhat randomly ordered:
1. The Altair prototype that was to be the cover photo for Popular
Electronics but was lost in shipment
2. Xerox Alto
3. Mark 8
4. Scelbi 8H
5. Kenbak-1
6. Micral 8008
7. Apple I
8. An unassembled Altair 8800 Kit
9. Busicom Japan Intel 4004-based Calculator
10. IBM 5100
Kai
12:02 p.m.
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12:47 p.m.
On Tue, 6 Oct 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
Tandy Deluxe CoCo (I think one has survived).
If so, somebody should put it out of its misery! I think there's a huge
dinstinction between "rare" and "desirable", and I personally find
CoCo's
undesirable no matter how rare (you also won't find me chasing things like
the C65).
Most of the machines on Kai's list would bring me no joy. I wouldn't want
an Apple 1 because I'd be afraid to power it on. I wouldn't want an
Altair kit because it would be just a paperweight unless I built it (which
would be fun, but when I was done it would no longer be a kit). I
wouldn't especially want a Mark-8 since there was no "official" Mark-8
(sort of like the COSMAC Elf, it was just a magazine article).
Just for fun, here are my top 3 Holy Grails:
1) PDP-1 running SPACEWAR
2) Xerox Alto
3) Thinking Machine's CM-1
-- Doug
6 Oct
6 Oct
5:58 a.m.
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11:12 a.m.
Doug Yowza wrote:
Altair kit because it would be just a paperweight
unless I built it (which
would be fun, but when I was done it would no longer be a kit). I
Tony Duell wrote:
Agreed. If I ever get an unbuilt kit my first reaction
is to build the
thing. Examples of 1970's packaging are not very interesting to me :-)
I disagree. I have three unassembled Cromemco Dazzler kits. I plan to
assemble one. But if I only had one unassembled kit I think I'd leave it
that way. I personally do find the packaging to be of interest.
Eric
11:44 a.m.
Agreed. If I
ever get an unbuilt kit my first reaction is to build the
thing. Examples of 1970's packaging are not very interesting to me :-)
I disagree. I have three unassembled Cromemco Dazzler kits. I plan to
assemble one. But if I only had one unassembled kit I think I'd leave it
that way. I personally do find the packaging to be of interest.
1:50 p.m.
I wrote:
I disagree. I have three unassembled Cromemco Dazzler
kits. I plan to
assemble one. But if I only had one unassembled kit I think I'd leave it
that way. I personally do find the packaging to be of interest.
William Donzelli replied:
The Heathkit people have pretty much set a precedence
with unbuilt kits -
if you build one, your name turns to mud. Then they kill you.
Why would the Heathkit people care whether I assemble a Cromemco Dazzler
kit? :-)
2:12 p.m.
On 7 Oct 1998, Eric Smith wrote:
The Heathkit People can't see very well, they carry hot soldering irons,
and they kill first and ask questions later. Certain areas near Benton
Harbor are *very* dangerous at night. Be carefull out there.
BTW, after getting my H-8 chassis last week, I found a complete H-8 today.
Yet another data-point supporting Rax's "bait" theory.
-- Doug
The Heathkit
people have pretty much set a precedence with unbuilt kits -
if you build one, your name turns to mud. Then they kill you.
Why would the Heathkit people care whether I assemble a Cromemco Dazzler
kit? :-) 
2:55 p.m.
Does this mean in order to find my long sought after deluxe Ohio
Scientific C2-4PMF I really need to set out some bait (like my incomplete
OSI)?
George Rachor
Still looking for 5.25 and 8" OSI systems....
=========================================================
George L. Rachor george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com
Beaverton, Oregon http://racsys.rt.rain.com
On Tue, 6 Oct 1998, Doug Yowza wrote:
On 7 Oct 1998, Eric Smith wrote:
The Heathkit People can't see very well, they carry hot soldering irons,
and they kill first and ask questions later. Certain areas near Benton
Harbor are *very* dangerous at night. Be carefull out there.
BTW, after getting my H-8 chassis last week, I found a complete H-8 today.
Yet another data-point supporting Rax's "bait" theory.
-- Doug
The
Heathkit people have pretty much set a precedence with unbuilt kits -
if you build one, your name turns to mud. Then they kill you.
Why would the Heathkit people care whether I assemble a Cromemco Dazzler
kit? :-)
7 Oct
7 Oct
5:43 a.m.
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6 Oct
6 Oct
3:13 p.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
Then why did these obvious assholes get interested in kits? They
might as well collect old boxes of Macaroni-and-Cheese. If the
packaging is what counts, who cares if weevils ate the pasta?
I get a "new" machine, I look inside to make sure of no obvious flood
or rain damage or other debris. I vacuum out the dust and dirt. I
plug it in. I turn it on. Then if necessary I fix it -- for some
reason a rare necessity in my old Radio Shack machines. As the man
said, only the good die young.
I don't collect kits (though if anybody sees a DigiComp I around, I'll
grab it), but if I did I'd build them. Static displays are for Lenin's
tomb, other cemetaries, and museums. If something does nothing, I've
no use for it, best let somebody else have it who doesn't care. (I do
leave slack for my wife's curios -- she enjoys looking at them and
dusting them, no matter how much otherwise useful space they take up
where computers should go -- I have enough problems with the tons of
science fiction books also taking up space, many of which I _know_ I
won't be rereading anytime soon, but if I sell them to a used-book
dealer, he might sell them to someone else and then it'll be a bitch
finding them when I _do_ want to reread them).
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked me if I had any
firearms with me. I said "Well, what do you need?" -- Steven Wright
> > Agreed. If I ever get an unbuilt kit my first reaction is to build the
> > thing. Examples of 1970's packaging are not very interesting to me :-)
Definitely. I was there. In my "prime" of youth. While I sometimes
wore slightly flared trousers, I never owned a "disco suit".
I disagree. I have three unassembled Cromemco Dazzler kits. I plan to
assemble one. But if I only had one unassembled kit I think I'd leave it
that way. I personally do find the packaging to be of interest.
The Heathkit people have pretty much set a precedence with unbuilt kits -
if you build one, your name turns to mud. Then they kill you.
3:26 p.m.
Then why did these obvious assholes get interested in
kits? They
might as well collect old boxes of Macaroni-and-Cheese. If the
packaging is what counts, who cares if weevils ate the pasta?
Think, please...these people (the vacuum tube era Heathkit people, AKA
Boatanchor types) did not buy their transmitters and receivers back in the
1950s and never build them! Of course they built them! Thousands of
them! Today, nearly all Heathkit type ham gear is fairly easy to obtain
today, all built up. Unbuilt kits from the era, however, are very rare,
and command a BIG price tag. To build one not only rips to shreads any
historic fabric of the kit, but is also finacially a stupid thing to do.
If you have an unbuilt kit, maybe an old Heathkit Mohawk, or maybe an
EC-1, or maybe even an Altair, and really want a working, complete
version, I think you could sell the kit and get TWO complete ones!
My unbuilt Sphere-1 is getting donated to RCS/RI, with the understanding
that the boards will never see an iron.
Of course, anyone can do whatever they want to their machines or kits...I
am just soapboxing.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
7 Oct
7 Oct
6:40 a.m.
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4:09 p.m.
By that arguemnt, a built heathkit (or whatever) has
little/no historical
value. And that's something that I don't accept.
Today, if you build a classic (1950-60s) Heathkit, you really are changing
the piece in a drastic way - probably more so than doing anything else to
it. But building a classic Heathkit back in the 1950-60s _built_ the
historic fabric associated with the kits! And there are _plenty_ of
examples of built Heathkits out there, with all sorts of historic fabric
just ready to be enjoyed - crummy joints, burnt wires, "improvements",
notes from the builder, etc.. Same with Altairs...
The financial arguement is possibly bogus.
Sure, you can get LOTS of enjoyment out of building a kit - so much that
you probably can not put a value on it. From a purely accounting view,
however, an unbuilt Altair, all complete and virgin, would fetch how much?
Would anyone like to guess? My guess would be over $5,000. How many built
Altairs could you buy for that much?
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
5:54 a.m.
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6 Oct
6 Oct
12:20 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Do the auction descriptions ever mention visibly charred traces or
exploded electrolytics or smoked ICs? Since I don't bother to visit
the auction sites, I've rarely (never in the case of an Apple 1) read
the prospectus.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked me if I had any
firearms with me. I said "Well, what do you need?" -- Steven Wright
Most of the
machines on Kai's list would bring me no joy. I wouldn't want
an Apple 1 because I'd be afraid to power it on. I wouldn't want an
You mean a working one is considerably more valuable than a non-working
one? When I've heard about Apple 1s being sold the operational condition
is never specified, which leads me to think that the collector value
doesn't depend on that.
8:59 a.m.
Doug Yowza wrote:
On Tue, 6 Oct 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
Me' I'd love a Tandy Deluxe Color Computer (can anybody give me a list
of the features it was supposed to have?) and my wife would love to have
a TI 99/8. (A friend of mine salvaged one of the three prototypes of
what would have been the next AT&T Unix PC on its way to the dumpster at
Convergent -- 68020, math coproc slot, 16Mb RAM, color tube, etc -- with
debug rather than boot ROMS, and older Unix PCs won't work nohow).
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked me if I had any
firearms with me. I said "Well, what do you need?" -- Steven Wright
Tandy Deluxe CoCo (I think one has survived).
If so, somebody should put it out of its misery! I think there's a huge
dinstinction between "rare" and "desirable", and I personally find
CoCo's
undesirable no matter how rare (you also won't find me chasing things like
the C65).
11:48 a.m.
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12:47 p.m.
Me'
I'd love a Tandy Deluxe Color Computer (can anybody give me a list
I _think_ it was halfway between the CoCo 2 and the CoCo3. It was limited to
64K RAM but had lower-case text (and maybe 80 columns and better
graphics).
2 p.m.
John Ruschmeyer <jruschme(a)exit109.com> wrote:
The little snippets I've seen also indicate a
CoCo3-like keyboard (black
instead of grey) and a big suare logo (instead of the wide one).
When the project was cancelled, Radio Shack sold off the keyboards as
standalone products intended for experimenters. They were never claimed to
work in any Tandy/Radio Shack computer, but in fact they worked great in a
Color Computer 2. Everyone I knew with a CC2 bought one. I wish I still had
the catalog number, but I threw away the packaging.
We assumed that this was evidence that the Color Computer family had hit
the end of the line, but then they surprised us with the 3.
Eric
5 Oct
5 Oct
12:43 p.m.
On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, Kai Kaltenbach wrote:
Just for the hell of it, I thought I'd make a list
of the Top 10 Holy Grails
of classic microcomputer computer collecting. This is the "Rembrandt in the
Attic" sort of stuff. These are roughly in my opinionated order, but
somewhat randomly ordered:
10. IBM 5100
I'd take this off the list. Its really not THAT hard to obtain (I'm sure
there were far more of these than Apple 1's made).
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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