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.

Comments

Old keyboards

[Mike Schiraldi]

I'd pay big bucks for an old IBM AT keyboard in good condition.. I still have my IBM PC XT's keyboard even though it unfortunately won't work with modern computers (though the very next generation IBM made, the aforementioned AT keyboard, is very similar and does work with modern machines)

You know these things:

• good solid click when you type
  
• the ` key next to the ' key
  
• the \ key on the left, mirroring the / key
  
• the * key near the ., so it was easy to type stuff like "*.txt"
  
• Ctrl on the left, Caps Lock way the fuck out of the way where you could never accidentally hit it
  
• Esc next to 1
  
• Function keys on the left
  
• Only one set of arrow keys
  
• A gigantic spacebar that goes all the way from Alt (which is where Left Ctrl is on modern keyboards) to Caps Lock (which is where Right Ctrl is nowadays)
  
• Oh, that wonderful solid click when you type. I have to mention it again.
  

I've been collecting for a number of years now

[Simon Brooke]

There are an aweful lot of machines which were produced for quite short periods or in quite small numbers in the seventies and eighties; many of them were of interesting or influential design. I started actually hunting for specific machines to add to my collection about five years ago. Some of my machines have been tracked down through contacts, some have been donated by friends, one or two have come through interested antique dealers. But the majority now come through eBay.

I believe these old machines are important parts of our history. They are certainly rare and there aren't going to be any more produced, so they may well be good investments. But if we, as geeks, don't conserve our own history no-one else is going to.

Oh, first post, by the way.

Oddly valuable items....

[HamNRye]

I have long been a collector of old computer equipment. Not in the as a hobby thing, it just seems to keep piling up. I was selling alot of it on e-bay and found this:

Old (I mean pre 1975) monitors are at a premium. Many of these exhibits have working machines, but no terminals or monitors. (Note: This means you'll get up to 1,000 or so for verrrrrry rare ones.)(Yeah, it ain't much, but it ain't a kick in the teeth either.)

Anyone still got an Altair?? Some of the old Commodores? Nostalgia carries a premium.

Oddly enough on a side note, I sold 8 PDP7's, with terminals and keyboards (To the tune of 48 working sets) and only got 300$ And noone even wanted the old Sun INP. (SunOS 3.5 not good enough?) Heck, that thing even has an Apple I model processor from Motorolla.

I have also had good luck with front bezels and name plates in good condition, power supplies, etc...

Finally, the expansion boards. There things sold for 5K and up initially, and will still go for that if you're paitent. Post a web page with all of the names and model numbers and a contact addy. Someone will search the net and hit your page and buy that board. I have sold video boards for 8K, comm and memory boards have gone for as high as 12K.

I find that the old washing machine hard drives aren't worth the shipping, so strip em and sell off the parts. Same for most other large equipment.

Now, would anyone like to place a bid on 25 IBM 8585 models?? Featuring a 386/25 processor and a full 4MB of Ram... I think they'd make great doorstops. (Unless you already have an Apple IIci)

~Hammy

Re:router

[IAT]

I just refreshed and got a page full of stories from 1999!

Old Computers

[humblecoder]

Actually, I've got a (small) collection of old computers. I do it mostly for the nostalgia factor. Most of the machines I have are things that I used to play around with when I was growing up during the 80's. I even got a working Atari 2600 with a whole slew of games. Playing Pitfall on that old thing brings back lots of fond memories!!

I wouldn't be surprised if the market for old tech toys takes off in a couple years. It seems like everything from my youth, from those metal lunch boxes to Star Wars action figures, is collectable nowadays. If I had only saved some of my junk...

If you are interested in buying old computers, don't bother with eBay. I found that most of the stuff on there is overpriced. You get the best deals from thrift stores, flea markets, Salvation Amry, etc. Also, being able to repair stuff really comes in handy. If you have a little bit of knowledge, you can turn a non-working computer into a working one without much effort.

Paper IS long term!

[mwillems]

I used to install telephone switches in the 80s, in the Libyan desert. These were loaded in 30 minutes using paper tape. I know what "pathcing" really means: the platic pastch tape you stick over incorrect holes or over breaks.

Point being, these things no doubt still run. Papertape is very durable in adverse conditions. Like deserts with sand storms and 120 F temperatures.

Re:is there a place...

[dario_moreno]

I suppose you have a printer...just print those files with a large Courier font, in case everything goes wrong, you can always OCR them with on my opinion the same reliability as paper tape readers from the fifties. Darn cheap and durable backup for, say, less than 100 kb

Re:Apple Never Changes

[leereyno]

You're thinking of the computers that Steve Jobs takes credit for creating, the Macs. You are right, they are overpriced and underpowered. I wouldn't call them junk, because most are well made from an engineering standpoint (hardware that is).

The Apple II series on the other hand, were wonderful computers. I've still got the II+ that I got way back in 1978. It's in my closet, wrapped up in plastic, but it still works. The II's were great because they were an open architecture (unlike the macintoy) and anyone could create accessories and cards for them. I remember back in the late 80's my high school had a IIe with a SCSI hard drive and CDROM, not bad for a design originally created back when Starsky and Hutch was still on the air. It didn't have internet access, but who did in 1987?

In many ways the modern PC is an example of what can happen to a unimpressive platform that has enough money thrown at it. The original PC was no better than the Apple II. The first "five slot" pc shipped with 16 to 64k of memory, no hard drive,a mono text only video card (no bitmapped graphics), and a cassette interface of all things, the floppy drive for it held 160k and was an option. By the time the "eight slot" XT had come out a couple of years later floppies were standard, the motherboard could hold up to 640k, 4/16 color CGA graphics was available, a ten meg hard drive was a common option, and the floppies would do 360k. The platform continued to grow and expand from there because it was popular and IBM kept trying to improve their "branded" PC to keep up with the cloners.

So don't forget that your Athlon/PIII/P4 can trace its roots all the way back to a metal box with an 4.77Mhz 8088 processor and 16k of memory, which itself was influenced in no small way by the open architecture of the Apple II. The PC was a radical departure for IBM, up until then everything had been closed and proprietary and done in house as much as possible. With the PC they used off the shelf parts and created an open and viabrant design that hit the ground running, just like the Apple II did.

Lee