Slashdot Mirror
Cashing In On Antique Computers
mwillems writes: "The Economist
posts this story this week about how old computer hardware can be worth money. At the Vintage Computer Festival East, a lot of old hardware was seen, swapped and admired. An industry is emerging, it seems: an Apple One apparently fetched $25,000 at auction. Time to dust off my Ohio Scientific OSI Challenger 4-p!" These festivals sounds like a lot of fun -- can anyone offer some first-hand reports from the Boston one? Hmm. The local thriftstore has a working Mac IIci for $1.98 -- maybe I should put it on eBay as a collectable.
I'm still too sentimental to my C64 to sell it :)
I have to laugh when I hear people saving Mac SEs and Stinkpads, thinking they'll become collectible. Not a chance in the world. These were mass produced by the hundreds of thousands, and have zero chance of becoming collectible. Scarcity means value, and these machines are too plentiful to be worth anything even as salvage.
On the other hand, I own a Sol-20, which is a true collectible. Now I just wish I could find a buyer, since it is supposedly now worth around $1000-1500.
Don't bother with a nasty old IIci.. Get yourself a nice SE/30! Pump it up with 32MB RAM, a big HD, and etherhet, and you'd be hard pressed to find such a powerful, small, nearly fully capable UNIX machine. A/UX is neat, but NetBSD is great on those things..
Funny you should mention that .. in lieu of an old IBM keyboard, i use a Gateway Anykey. One of the ones that actually has a right Ctrl (the newer ones don't; they decided that a second windows button was more important than right ctrl) but not one of the really old ones, where you could just press Program Macro instead of Ctrl-Program Macro.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Sorry, but I was messing around and making robots with my KIM-1 way before Apples came around. you could do more, you actually could interface the thing, and it spawned more creativity than any apple did in that time. Granted, the Apple was not sold as a hobbyiest computer (it was apple's nightmate to have people tinkering under the hood, while the KIM-1 told you how in the manual.) Sorry, if you want vintage home computers, you have to go farther back than apple.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ok, I'll admit that I collect old computers. I've even got a little site documenting my collection of 'home computers' (you remember, the little all-in-one console-style machines that hooked to a TV). I like these machines because they represent the original path 'home' computers were on before the incipient 'beige-dom' of PCs overwhelmed the market. These little guys were sold in department stores (you know, like furniture) and some featured quaint pictures on their packaging of housewives entering recipes into them (for storage on audio cassettes). Hmmm, those were the days.
Sure there are lots of common ones like the C64 and Ataris but there were dozens of different kinds of fascinating machines from less known manufacturers all around the world. What's cool is that many of them were so unique in terms of shape, design, peripherals and OS. I even have a couple of little home computers from Russia. While I have about 70 different machines now, there are lots that I don't yet have and have only heard of. I know there were many unique models made and sold in South America and Arabic countries in the eighties. I have one machine designed and built in Yugoslavia in the early '80's called the Pecom 64. It's based on an RCA 1802 processor.
You can see my collection at: www.homecomputermuseum.com. Stop by and drop me a line if you also collect these kinds of machines.
--- Mark
I remember a couple of years ago the guys at l0pht set up an Apple ][ web server, just because they could.
Hobbyists do many things more for the joy of doing it than for the practical application.
Piston heads often will spend FAR more time and money on a car to customize or restore it than they could ever make off of selling it when finished.
Gun Collectors will sometimes spend twice as much on a gun and the parts to customize it than that gun will ever be worth.
Geeks will do things the long, and hard way with the computer(s) only because they want to be able to say that "I did this". Even if it would have been cheaper, easier and faster to just buy it that way.
What's the big deal? If it makes you happy, go for it.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.