On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 10:08:58PM -0400, Teo Zenios wrote:
> Well if you guys started collecting back in 97-98 you probably got quite a
> few expensive computers for next to nothing, which is allot harder to do
> today when there are more people in the hobby. I didn't start until 3 or so
> years ago, but I don't go for the rarities anyway.
I started so long ago, some of the machines were new (Quest Elf, PET, C-64,
VIC-20, Amiga) and some of the machines were still in somewhat common usage
(PDP-8, Qbus PDP-11, PC-XT...) For example, I bought the Elf kit and the PET
in the late '70s, new, the VIC-20 and C-64 in the early '80s, new, and several
Amigas in the mid-to-late '80s, also new.
My first PDP-8 was in 1982, and two years later, I got a five or six-year-old
PDP-8/a for free (and then spent thousands of dollars of upgrades for it - RL8A,
KT8A, MSC8-DJ (128KW)). I was buying PDP-11s to use for contract work in the
mid-1980s that were between five and eight years old to write software for
the 11/73 w/Fuji Eagle that my customer just paid many thousands of dollars for.
I just didn't throw them out when I was done (11/23 w/RLV11, 2xRL01 + borrowed
RL02, LPV11, LA180, DLV11-J, VT220, etc.) I rescued several VAXen from my
former employer when they closed, and continued to provide (paid) support for
our customer base for almost two years. Many of my DEC purchases have been
commercially motivated, not hobby motivated, but when the job was done, I still
had the toys.
I did pay a bit of money for one elusive model - a PDP-8/S (but I know several
people who picked them up 20 years earlier for $50 or less).
What has changed over the last 25 years for me is that some machines I could
never have afforded new have come to me for free, and some machines that I
never would have considered owning when they were new, were cheap enough that
they were worth playing with for a bit before moving on.
I guess I didn't come into the collecting hobby - it kind of fell on me.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 17-Jun-2004 02:30 Z
South Pole Station
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Ethan.Dicks_at_amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
Received on Wed Jun 16 2004 - 21:50:11 BST