Hugo Holden
Veteran Member
Ok, maybe call it something like "About DEC Computers"
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DEC units on ebay
- Thread starter Hugo Holden
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Hugo Holden
Veteran Member
The 621-TS was Mid-war effectively. About as close as possible to a pre-war set. I have one too, I have attached the pre & post restoration chassis photos of my 621.
All of my pre-war sets have been restored in the same manner with a complete strip down and re-build and new electroplating to eliminate all rust. Luckily the Meissner Set had a good coat of black crinkle paint.
I also built the Argus TV, which is essentially made from pre-war and wartime parts, but I improved the chassis design. It contains many of the famous red EF-50 tubes that enabled Britain to "Win the War" with the aid of Radar This is talked about in the Argus's article. Images attached.
I did up articles on them all:
www.worldphaco.com/uploads/THE_MEISSNER_5_INCH_KIT_AND_THE_ANDREA_KTE-5.pdf
www.worldphaco.com/621TSARTICLE.pdf
www.worldphaco.com/uploads/HMV__904_ARTICLE.pdf
www.worldphaco.com/uploads/ARGUS.pdf
Attachments
NeXT
Veteran Member
Can I ask the mildly-offensive questions of "whats so special"?
8's always sell for considerably more than 11's and 8's and 11's with a colorful front panel as opposed to the basic control/LED input panels often sell for thousands more. The only thing I can tell is that the full-console models were slower and more often discrete logic machines. So are these basically being bought to brag or is there more behind them?
8's always sell for considerably more than 11's and 8's and 11's with a colorful front panel as opposed to the basic control/LED input panels often sell for thousands more. The only thing I can tell is that the full-console models were slower and more often discrete logic machines. So are these basically being bought to brag or is there more behind them?
thunter0512
Veteran Member
For me the PDP-8 family is attractive because it is an early minicomputer and unlike later stuff I have a realistic chance to fully understand how they work, fix them and keep them going longer term.
The "blinkenlight" front panel also gives more direct insight into the operation of the machine and is very useful for both hardware and software debugging but also helps in understanding the detailed operation of the machine ... plus it looks nice.
So there is a little more to these machines than to "brag", but no doubt that some cashed up Ebay buyers are motivated by this.
A modern laptop is infinitely more powerful, but for me it is a tool I use every day and I don't have any desire or chance to fix anything other than maybe replace the battery (if I am lucky and the manufacturer doesn't make even that impossible).
DougIngraham
Veteran Member
I don't see this as even a little offensive.
The PDP-8 was the second computer I used. The first was an NCR Century 100 using Fortran where they would run our punched card jobs at night and hand us the output the next morning.
The PDP-8 on the other hand was interactive. This particular 8/e ran TSS/8 and I was able to run BASIC and assembly which I found and to this day still find to be my favorite way to talk to the machine. Assembly on the PDP-8 is wonderful in its simplicity. Those two computers were what I used in high school as a senior in 1974. My dad was getting his MBA at Syracuse University at the time and I was able to play with APL for a couple of hours using his account one evening. Very strange and wonderful language APL.
When I got to college I took the Minicomputers course and we used the Straight 8 I own today. So for me it is pretty much nostalgia. I can't speak for anyone else.
So to answer your question directly. "Whats so special?" Pretty much nothing at all. If I had to do something useful with a computer today I certainly would not choose one of these machines. But getting them to do things is a challenge and a lot of fun. In some cases just getting them to run is huge! My Straight 8 when originally purchased in 1967 was configured for data collection and was used in the summer for thunderstorm research. I would like to find a data collection task to use it for again someday.
AK6DN
Veteran Member
What is so special about folks restoring and running old cars? Or old motorcycles? Or old airplanes?
Like just about everything else, its a supply vs demand thing.
To start off with, you have what economists call "inelastic supply." DEC just isn't around anymore so don't look for any new hardware. Even if somebody did, even if DEC came back from the ashes and started making new machines, there would be separate markets for new vs old. So there is a finite number of these machines out there in collections, barns, landfills,......
So a finite, probably unknowable, number of machines being sought out by an unknowable number of people for an equally unknowable number of reasons. But we can see what people are willing to pay for them even if we can't see why.
Watch ebay.
For all the rocks thrown at it, some of them by myself, ebay is a relatively transparent place where just about anyone can sell just about anything. Likewise just about anyone can bid just about anything they want on anything they want, "excepting Alice*", for any reason. You might be able to find a better example of what an economist would call a "market", but ebay comes pretty close.
* Sorry, Arlo!
reinhardtjh
Experienced Member
Roland Huisman
Veteran Member
So it was not sold and relisted...
NeXT
Veteran Member
Didn't sell at $4000 and dozens of bids.
Bumped the price to $9500.
Do you see why I'm so confused and resentful? Dude's in it for the money and nothing else.
Bumped the price to $9500.
Do you see why I'm so confused and resentful? Dude's in it for the money and nothing else.
Roland Huisman
Veteran Member
Yeah... But to be honest, if you are selling your stuff to a stranger at the other side of the world, wouldn't you want get the maximum out of it? To me the 4K for the set sounds very reasonable, but I have seen a single 8/L CPU box being sold for more... I'm glad that I've started early enough in this hobby. There is a lot of stuff that I would not buy any more for the current prices... And I expect prices of vintage stuff to drop drastically in the near future. Hobby is some sort of luxury on which people will cut back in a financial crisis. Mortgage, rent, food, gasoline, energy are more important then some sort of old dusty computer...
Hugo Holden
Veteran Member
Well there is no need to be confused and resentful.
What happened here is that the seller failed to understand one thing:
Anything is only worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it. So perhaps they should contact the high bidder (who obviously put in a very sensible offer) and beg them for forgiveness and plead to complete the deal.
The trouble is people get greedy.
Somebody put "ideas into their heads" about what something will sell for, the dollar signs flash in their eyes and they are blinded to reality.
For something like this DEC computer, it would take a lot of work from a dedicated enthusiast interested in the preservation of vintage computer technology, so as to get it restored and up and running (if not it is about as interesting as a concrete garden Gnome that you could get for $10 at any hardware store).
I could restore it I'm sure, as I'm good with hardware and I could also afford to buy it too, if I wanted.
But, nobody likes being taken for a Chump.
It doesn't matter if its $100, $1000, $10,000, $100,000 etc,, there still is some expectation that what you buy should be acceptably priced. If it is not, it makes the seller look like a con man, and the buyer look like an idiot.
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thunter0512
Veteran Member
Before listing on Ebay the seller (Charles Marlow) was asking around in a couple of DEC related Facebook groups about it where silly people gave him an inflated idea of the value. He was clearly clueless about the machine and seemed to have picked it up from a deceased estate for little or no money. Most of his other sales are clothing, shoes, handbags, toys and occasional techno junk - likely all from deceased estates. Quite likely he has picked the machine up as a curiosity item, plugged it in and after the expected loud bang hosed it off, then made a few photos and then started his inquiries on Facebook.
It is one thing to spend a lot of money for a machine sold by a fellow collector after getting a fair assessment of its state. Buying from "anything goes" junk dealers is extremely high risk and the price should reflect this. The top bidder got it approximately right in my opinion.
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I think it's a mischaracterization to say the seller raised the price after the item didn't sell, they just changed it from a hidden amount (reserve) to a publicly-visible amount.
I'm not at all sure $10K is unreasonable. It happens to be more than I'd pay, sure, but there are plenty of other things I'd like if they were cheaper, so no help there.
I've seen plenty of dumber stuff sell for way more money (NFTs anyone?), so no help there either. Come to think of it, I've personally recently bought a thing for more than that that is less rare and arguably less cool, which makes me either more or less qualified to comment, I'm not sure which. Both I guess.
It's a way to run OS/8 and other cool stuff (scope control) on a PDP-8/L and includes the L, one setup like that out of perhaps a dozen or two in the world?
I'd feel way better about that price if the cables got repaired and the machine was running, but whatever, I'm not the buyer or seller.
Just because it didn't sell for $10K also doesn't mean it won't given some more time and a wider audience. Given time the commodity will find a price point that will determine it's value at hat precise time, and even that won't be a particularly useful or enduring marker since it's a rare and small-market collectable. Certainly if he'd asked many of us, we would have said it was worth less than $4K and clearly that would have been incorrect.
A well-off collector or museum is the target audience, with an increasing secondary audience of investors rather than someone who thinks it would be cool to have.
I wonder how many pieces of are are owned just because they are rare and valuable, I know it accounts for a lot of the high-end apartments in New York. I'd rather the investor market went away, but there we get back in the weeds of unhelpful in this context.
In the cheap seats? Then it's time to buy/build/download an emulator. Want a genuine switches-and-lights artifact? An IMSAI is usually still only $1-2K I think, you can often still find a Sw./L. PDP-11 for similar money, and the PDP-8/E/M is also a lot less than $10K for more capability.
I'm not at all sure $10K is unreasonable. It happens to be more than I'd pay, sure, but there are plenty of other things I'd like if they were cheaper, so no help there.
I've seen plenty of dumber stuff sell for way more money (NFTs anyone?), so no help there either. Come to think of it, I've personally recently bought a thing for more than that that is less rare and arguably less cool, which makes me either more or less qualified to comment, I'm not sure which. Both I guess.
It's a way to run OS/8 and other cool stuff (scope control) on a PDP-8/L and includes the L, one setup like that out of perhaps a dozen or two in the world?
I'd feel way better about that price if the cables got repaired and the machine was running, but whatever, I'm not the buyer or seller.
Just because it didn't sell for $10K also doesn't mean it won't given some more time and a wider audience. Given time the commodity will find a price point that will determine it's value at hat precise time, and even that won't be a particularly useful or enduring marker since it's a rare and small-market collectable. Certainly if he'd asked many of us, we would have said it was worth less than $4K and clearly that would have been incorrect.
A well-off collector or museum is the target audience, with an increasing secondary audience of investors rather than someone who thinks it would be cool to have.
I wonder how many pieces of are are owned just because they are rare and valuable, I know it accounts for a lot of the high-end apartments in New York. I'd rather the investor market went away, but there we get back in the weeds of unhelpful in this context.
In the cheap seats? Then it's time to buy/build/download an emulator. Want a genuine switches-and-lights artifact? An IMSAI is usually still only $1-2K I think, you can often still find a Sw./L. PDP-11 for similar money, and the PDP-8/E/M is also a lot less than $10K for more capability.
Hugo Holden
Veteran Member
Normally in the housing market, at an auction, the buyers set the final price and the "market" decides the value.
This DEC computer has multiple bids and a lot of publicity too. So I think the high bidder set the price for the unit/s and essentially the seller's reserve was unrealistic.
Still, there could possibly be somebody out there, not in the cheap seats, who has the funds, with the enthusiasm and the motivation to buy it for more, or maybe after too many glasses of Chardonnay, and perhaps they were unaware of the first auction because they don't frequent Facebook , Ebay or this forum. So it is more than possible that this computer could, in the future, sell for more than the high bidder offered, but if the seller was sensible he would have accepted the high bid, considering the numbers of bids involved. That is if he really wants to sell it sooner than later.
This DEC computer has multiple bids and a lot of publicity too. So I think the high bidder set the price for the unit/s and essentially the seller's reserve was unrealistic.
Still, there could possibly be somebody out there, not in the cheap seats, who has the funds, with the enthusiasm and the motivation to buy it for more, or maybe after too many glasses of Chardonnay, and perhaps they were unaware of the first auction because they don't frequent Facebook , Ebay or this forum. So it is more than possible that this computer could, in the future, sell for more than the high bidder offered, but if the seller was sensible he would have accepted the high bid, considering the numbers of bids involved. That is if he really wants to sell it sooner than later.
I don't disagree that the seller would have been smart to contact the high bidder and try hard to work something out, but I do also see a lot of the higher-dollar DEC stuff sit for several months until either the right buyer comes along or the seller and buyer(s) slowly revise their expectations until some meeting is found.
In this case, I didn't bid because I expected it to go higher. I really don't need another 8/L, but even at $4k (or perhaps a bit more) would have bought the package intending to sell the CPU and keep the expansion box. I'm relieved to see it listed at a price I *can* walk away from.
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What is your "X" worth? If you need cash like yesterday it may be one price. If you don't really want to part with it and somebody is nagging you to sell it to them it will be another. If you want to insure it for replacement value to be able to replace it after some disaster it might be another.
But then, there's "market price." Market price sounds like something concrete but can be as squishy as nailing jelly to a tree. A Thinkpad laptop coming off of lease, with a hundred similar units up for bid, is easy to "price." A PDP9 or Apple 1? Not so much.
But the market price is generally thought of as a price agreed to by a willing buyer and a willing seller in an open market, It helps if they're both knowledgeable about the item being sold, but as Alan Ableson used to say, "You buy a stock because you think its going to go up. But you're likely buying it from someone who thinks its going to go down. The difference is information."
Information that one can gather from various places, including this forum.
But then, there's "market price." Market price sounds like something concrete but can be as squishy as nailing jelly to a tree. A Thinkpad laptop coming off of lease, with a hundred similar units up for bid, is easy to "price." A PDP9 or Apple 1? Not so much.
But the market price is generally thought of as a price agreed to by a willing buyer and a willing seller in an open market, It helps if they're both knowledgeable about the item being sold, but as Alan Ableson used to say, "You buy a stock because you think its going to go up. But you're likely buying it from someone who thinks its going to go down. The difference is information."
Information that one can gather from various places, including this forum.
Down to $8500 already, which suggests the seller isn't the type to hold out for years. Perhaps over the next month or two we'll see what the price equilibrium is.
Vintage Rare Digital DEC BM08 #101 M27 + PDP 8/L - 2919 - Very Clean Inside! | eBay
No further history is known on these units. You can see that the cables that connected them together have been cut. I know there is ways to create IDC type couplers or replace the cables in their entirety.
www.ebay.com
thunter0512
Veteran Member
Apparently it sold for $8488. Good luck to the buyer.
Likely it is someone on this forum.
Likely it is someone on this forum.
DougIngraham
Veteran Member
I think that is not an unfair price for a BM08 by itself due to the rarity. What clouded the issue was being paired with its 8/L. And while this combo is what you really want (with intact cables) the inclusion of the 8/L portion seems like it should not be priced that high because the 8/L part is not really that rare (although I don't have one). If it had been advertised as "Extremely rare BM08 memory expansion for PDP-8/L." And later in the description "Includes the matching 8/L". Would that make any difference? It would to me.
I wish the new owner well and hope it is restored to operation.
I wish the new owner well and hope it is restored to operation.