value of RK05

From: John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com>
Date: Sat May 6 02:54:28 2000

On Fri, May 05, 2000 at 08:11:08PM -0400, johnb wrote:
> No, that's going-rate collector prices.

You live in a different reality from the rest of us. If you manage to fleece
the collector types who buy PDPs as trophies which they will never use or
understand, more power to you, they certainly deserve it. But just because
someone, one time, paid $X for something, doesn't mean that that something
is officially *worth* $X from now on. The rest of us have been doing trades
and freebies with people with similar interests, and plan to continue to do so.

> And, no, I don't know anyone who has
> ever *paid* for any license for any old DEC equipment for personal use.

You do now.

Re RL01/02 drives being worthless, maybe to collectors (non-users) but those
guys live in a fantasy world anyway. I just got a request this week from
a commercial user (in Russia) who was desparate for spare RL drives, and it
sure isn't the first time. Meanwhile, no one is looking for RS64s or RS11s
or RP02s as replacements for their commercial systems, because those drives
are inherently unreliable at this point. So again, the fact that one or
two rich kids wanted to buy an RK02 so they could build a shrine to the early
career they want to *pretend* was theirs, doesn't mean that those drives are
genuinely more desirable than the workhorses that real users have *actually*
relied upon for 75% of the PDP-11 line's history.

John Wilson
D Bit
Received on Sat May 06 2000 - 02:54:28 BST

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