• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

DEC units on ebay

I used to be on it. But too many flame wars for me.
I't mostly quiet these days. There are still the occasional marginally-relevant-at-best discussions, but even those have been pretty civil lately. What disdain has been expressed lately has been mostly directed toward Paul Allen's sister, since the fate of LCM is still unknown.
 
I can understand that. I too have some disdain. My big 8i was sold to that museum and now no one seems to know the future of the stuff there.
 
Interesting? PDP8/A

I saw this one. Looks like a pretty normal 8k core equipped 8/a but it is missing the floppy controller. And I wonder what that quad card with the white handles is. And then there is the question of why it has an M8655 card since the console is normally on the M8316 option 1 card. But the whole thing looks to be in really good shape. Also, I've never seen that style of card guide. To me this does not seem excessively priced for what is there and how clean everything looks.
 
I wonder what that quad card with the white handles is.
It's a 3rd party (Monolithic Systems Corp) Omnibus RAM memory card. The M8655 (KL8J) could be for a serial printer or possibly a communications link.
 
Last edited:
I had a long discussion with the seller on the phone today... this was connected to the DWII (listed in another auction) as there's a plug hanging down very clearly labelled "LA36", that would explain the second serial interface:
1684551968895.png

-Chris
 
Interesting? PDP8/A
That is a very nice machine, but with 5 days to go I suspect it won't sell at the current reasonable price.
Either way shipping to Australia is a show stopper for me.
 
That is a very nice machine, but with 5 days to go I suspect it won't sell at the current reasonable price.
Either way shipping to Australia is a show stopper for me.
Yeah, the price appears to be fair to me - I (over?)paid nearly half that for a VT52 terminal alone recently (incl shipping), but I think it's more-so that nobody wants to pay the logistical costs to get it shipped to them (that would be thousands by itself) and they most likely don't have space to store something like this. The buyer also would have to hire a rigging/crating company to get it in condition to actually ship (palletize, etc). I just can't see too many other people willing to outlay that kind of money.

I've got a number of PDP-11 machines, but no PDP-8 machines at this point. There's something really charming about a desk-based computer and this would look nice next to my WANG WCS-20 and Philips P330.

If there's no action on this, I'll buy it from the seller and get it shipped to my place... not my first rodeo :)

-Chris
 
One these days I'll win the lottery , but that means I would have to play first! LOL. A man can dream though.
 
That is a very nice machine, but with 5 days to go I suspect it won't sell at the current reasonable price.
Unless you have one of Roland's bootloader boards or the ability to burn your own boot code into the boot ROMS on the M8317 board this is a difficult machine to get running. There is a RIM loader on the boot board so you could feed code in through the console port but this is not very handy. It would be better if it still had the floppy controller. At least then you would just need to find some boot media. And lots of people could make that for the buyer.

If I didn't already have three 8/a machines I would bid on it.

I hope it finds a good home.
 
Back
Top