Estimated Price Of A "Classic" PDP-8?

From: Jim Davis <jimmydevice_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Mon Jan 26 03:15:42 2004

William Maddox wrote:

>I believe it was just a bare CPU. There was some discussion of a few months
>ago.
>I caught the tail-end of the discussion just as I joined the list. I
>believe it was actually
>someone on the list who bought it!
>
>The 8/S is actually very rare machine. Although they had a good run
>(comparable
>to the Straight-8), the performance was very poor, unlike the Straight 8
>that held up rather
>well in performance (though not price) against its successors. There
>weren't too many of
>them saved. From some pictures I saw, it appeared to be an excellent
>specimen, too.
>Certainly if your interest is "DEC collectibles" rather than a nice running
>setup, this machine
>would be a valuable one to have. Why do people value the Straight-8 so much
>when the
>8/E was the pinnacle of the family in terms of the kind of system it would
>support?
>Certainly, if you just want to run an 8, you'd be best advised to avoid the
>Straight 8.
>
>
><snip>
>
>
I didn't know that the 8/s was that rare, I do know that it was the
economy model and had a horrid
serial architecture that resulted in it's so-called performance.
The straight-8, on the other hand, was a lovely machine, with it's long
toggles and incandecent lamps.
I suspect that my fingers still know how to toggle in the dectape
bootloader from memory.
Damn, Now I want one, and with the Tek 8002, dectapes and a swap drive,
just like the OMSI 8, Beep.
If I did get an 8, it would probably be a 8/E. the straight-8 is a pain
to debug, but with a drawer full of
transistors and discretes, always repairable. Maybe not that one in the
basement :-(
Jim Davis.
Received on Mon Jan 26 2004 - 03:15:42 GMT