Are these really worth keeping?

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_odin.phy.bris.ac.uk>
Date: Wed Sep 24 04:29:26 1997

> >IMHO collectors will want early genuine IBM PC bits in the future. Just
> >like some people will pay for Altair bits today.
>
> Interesting... the thought, though, reminds me of the whole "genuine"
> Altair discussion. The same way that an Altair chasis may contain Compupro
> or other S-100 cards, an XT chasis could contain cards from Hercules, AST,
> Quadram, or any number of other manufacturers.
>
> Will this make these systems any less desirable/valuable in the future? Or
> will people just want to pay lots of money for matching IBM logos on the
> monitor, CPU, and keyboard? (Oops, almost forgot the logos embossed on the
> drives. :-)

Well, I'd prefer genuine IBM cards, if only because they can be trivially
kept running. And IBM keyboards are much nicer than most clones :-)

I personally think an IBM box with all IBM cards is a somewhat rare
machine these days. It may be worth a little more in the future.

And then there's the historical aspect. The original set of IBM cards
(CGA, MDA, Floppy controller, memory card, etc) were the _first_. The
PC/AT serial/parallel adapter was the card that defined the 9-pin serial
port pinout on a DE-9 connector. The Hercules card defined that standard,
etc. So those must have a historical interest.

>
> <<<John>>>
>
>
>

-tony
Received on Wed Sep 24 1997 - 04:29:26 BST