VAX 780 on eBay

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 1, 2022, at 1:46 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On 1/1/22 1:40 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>>> On Jan 1, 2022, at 1:12 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> This:
>>> 
>>>    https://www.ebay.com/itm/275084268137
>>> 
>>> The starting price is expensive, but probably not utterly unreasonable,
>>> given that:
>>> 
>>> - the 780 was the first VAX, and thus historically important
>>> 
>>> - 780's are incredibly rare; this is the first one I recall seeing for sale
>>>  in the classic computer era (versus several -11/70's, /40s, etc)
>>> 
>>> - this one appears to be reasonably complete; no idea if all the key CPU
>>>  boards are included, but it's things like the backplane, etc (all of which
>>>  seem to be there) which would be completely impossible to find now - if any
>>>  boards _are_ missing, there's at least the _hope_ that they can be located
>>>  (780 boards seem to come by every so often on eBait), since people seem to
>>>  keep boards, not realizing that without the other bits they are useless
>> Interesting, but the argument for why it's not tested is implausible which makes me very suspicious.  I suppose there might be a few American homes that  have only 110 volt power, but I'm hard pressed to think of any I have ever seen, and that includes really old houses.
> 
> Having 240 in your house does not necessarily mean you have
> 240 outlets anywhere and not everyone is capable of doing
> their own house wiring.

True.  But if you're trying to get > $5000 for something, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that investing a bit in getting an extension cord run to the location of the machine would be a good idea.  The absence of that effort makes me wonder if the owner knows what the outcome of such a test would be and doesn't want to have to report it.

	paul