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New Appreciation for Old Computers
Reuters ^ | Wednesday, January 1, 2003 | Richard Chang

Posted on 01/01/2003 2:06:42 PM PST by Willie Green

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yesterday's computers, so often dumped for the next new model, have finally come to be treasured as historical artifacts.

And techies, known more for their skills than sentiments, are waxing nostalgic for vintage models from Apple to Zenith -- and paying good money for them.

"Most collectors are geeks, from kids to people who've retired, who share an interest in technology," said Sellam Ismail, a computer historian and consultant who owns more than 1,500 models and runs the semi-annual Vintage Computer Festival (http://www.vintage.org). "Some people do collect for money. People are trading them actively worldwide."

Prices are generally still low -- $5 to $100 for computers that originally cost thousands of dollars from 1971 to the early 1990s. These include the popular Tandy Radio Shack laptops, Kaypro desktops and "transportables" (which could weigh more than 35 pounds), and most personal computers.

However, on eBay (http://www.ebay.com) 125 items showed up in a search for "vintage computers," with asking prices as high as $1,999. Values are steadily climbing and rare ones can be worth a fortune, especially if they are complete, in working condition, and come with related accessories and software.

For example, the Apple 1 -- designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in a California garage and sold as a kit in 1976 for $666.66 -- fetched $25,000 at an auction in 2000. The sale included manuals, marketing literature, BASIC computer language on cassette, and other collateral material. Of the 200 Apple 1s made, so far only 31 have been identified by Ismail.

Prices soared during the dot-com boom, when high-profile collectors like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen competed fiercely for scarce items, some of them intended for museums.

At an auction in 2000, Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold paid $70,000 for a relay rack, or a set of vacuum tubes, that belonged to one of the first digital computers, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). The gargantuan mainframe computer, designed during World War II to compute bomb tables, is regarded as the great-grandfather of American computing and only remnants of it remain, scattered in different parts of the world.

Since the dot-com bust, prices have fallen back, with another Apple 1 selling online for $14,000 last April. But values remain high for historically significant models, and soared in the past year when the only price guide of its kind, "Collectible Microcomputers" (Schiffer, http://www.schifferbooks.com), went from manuscript to print.

"There's limited data to draw upon, so it takes only a couple of sales to change that," said computer journalist Michael Nadeau, who wrote the book. For example, an IBM 5100, a 50-pound microcomputer released in 1975 with a proprietary operating system, sold recently for $3,000, far above the previous range of $300 to $1,000.

Other breakthrough machines such as the Altair 8800 by MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) are worth $2,000 to $3,000 in good condition. In 1975, the computer cost $439 for a kit and $621 assembled.

Sphere I, the first desktop computer designed for businesses, is worth $1,000 to $1,5000 in good condition, compared with $1,345 (assembled) in 1975, Nadeau said.

However, common machines are worth much less, even if they are landmarks. The first IBM personal computer in 1981, the 5150, set the microcomputer standard for almost all manufacturers. But it is worth only $50 to $150 for the early 16K motherboard version. All later versions are valued at $18 to $65.

"People are concentrating on what they know. That drives a lot of prices now," Nadeau said. "The average collector won't pay a lot. They want it out of nostalgia or they work in a technical field and like to tinker with the systems."

Trading is active on the Classic Computer Mailing List (http://www.classiccmp.org), an online community that has steadily grown since 1997 from the United States and Europe to include the rest of the world.

As for future values, any computer with an unusual configuration or the early run of a new model could be collectible. These include certain portable systems, and hybrid notebook and pen-based systems that are coming out now.

Apple Macintoshes have an almost cult-like following, and the revolutionary Apple iMac, with its adjustable flat-panel screen perched on top of a hemisphere, is already an icon.

"There will be thousands around, but they changed the industry. You have to look at how likely it is that people won't hold onto a computer, and in 10 to 20 years what kind of impact it has made," Ismail said.

(This column appears every other week. E-mail any comments to richard.chang@reuters.com).


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Technical
KEYWORDS: buggywhips; technojunk
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1 posted on 01/01/2003 2:06:42 PM PST by Willie Green
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To: Willie Green
the Apple 1 -- designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in a California garage and sold as a kit in 1976 for $666.66

Interesting price...I always knew that Steve Jobs was the devil, but Woz too???

2 posted on 01/01/2003 2:10:06 PM PST by evolved_rage
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To: Willie Green
Still lhave our old Apple 2C sitting around collecting dust.
3 posted on 01/01/2003 2:11:12 PM PST by OldFriend
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To: Willie Green
Wish they's come pick up all my old dead printers and monitors so I wouldn't have to sneak them out to a secluded dumpster some night.
4 posted on 01/01/2003 2:12:43 PM PST by Semper911
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To: Willie Green
I still have the originial 128K Macintosh I purchased in 1984. I've had many computers since then, all of which I've sold, but I will never part with that original Macintosh. I don't care about the monetary value, which I'm sure is negligible. Its got sentimental value to me. Back in those days, getting that Mac was really special. Nowadays, computers are practically throwaway items, but not back in the mid-80's.

Incidentally, from time to time I turn it on and boot up System 1.0 and MacWrite. It still works, and I could still compose a letter on it.
5 posted on 01/01/2003 2:30:24 PM PST by Astronaut
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To: Willie Green
There's probably a lot to be learned by studying the evolution of The Machine.

As for me I still have in working order and sometimes use:

At least one greaycase COCO with RGB monitor, periphs and TONS of software.
An Apple 2c
A Mac SE - On the desk in my bedroom. It has a Grateful Dead stix on it's side, and I still use it for word processing and a few other apps. I am considering taking it apart and using the shell for one of those new ITX mini boards.
A couple of TRS80 8088 asnd 8086 machines in various states of neglect but would boot up.
a couple of Time-Sinclairs - Actually they're MIA most likely buried under the COCO software in my closet.
And of course the usual assortment of MB's, game consoles and other parts a geek like me holds on to way too long.

FWIW some of my fav software was for the old Tandy machines including ROXANNE.EXE - a nekkid gal done (poorly) in ASCII and WEFAX which could read sattelite weather info and display it on a monitor. Oh and some BASIC horse racing game Wife and Kids and I typed into the COCO. It had graphics and let you bet on the horses. We spent many hours of family time on that one and had lots of fun.

prisoner6

6 posted on 01/01/2003 3:37:56 PM PST by prisoner6
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To: Willie Green
I guess this means I should've hung onto the old 16KB Atari 400, with cassette drive and ATARI BASIC cartridge, not to mention PacMan and Star Raiders.
7 posted on 01/01/2003 3:50:42 PM PST by Marauder
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To: Willie Green
Meet my first computer:

Visual Commuter 8088 4.77MHz CPU:

Couldn't have made it through grad school without it!
8 posted on 01/01/2003 4:00:23 PM PST by martin_fierro
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To: Willie Green
I still have my TI-99.
9 posted on 01/01/2003 4:01:48 PM PST by Vince Ferrer
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To: RadioAstronomer
ping ;)
10 posted on 01/01/2003 4:12:22 PM PST by general_re
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To: Willie Green
thanks for posting...
I think I have a few "vintage computers" that I'll hold onto...for awhile!
11 posted on 01/01/2003 4:12:36 PM PST by VOA
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To: Willie Green
I have a bunch of old 'puters setting around. Maybe I can get some money for them now. LOL
12 posted on 01/01/2003 4:22:38 PM PST by Fiddlstix
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To: Willie Green
I have two TIMEX-SINCLAIR computers. Sold as the "every man" computer in the early 80s under $100. One still in the box w/nomenclature. Next stop...E-BAY!
13 posted on 01/01/2003 4:39:17 PM PST by jaz.357
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To: Willie Green
I still have my IMSAI 8080 computer which I bought in 1975 in a box in the garage. It should be a real kick to fire it up at some point in the future.

Each of the four 8kbyte memory boards cost $300. Gee, if I had invested that money in MS stock, I would be retired already. Oh,well...

14 posted on 01/01/2003 4:56:12 PM PST by William Tell
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To: William Tell
I miss my C-64. There were games on that computer that have never been matched for the PC--SPACE TAXI! That was so cool. Seven Cities of Gold! Maddening that the power supplies, encased in epoxy resin, were so prone to overheating, and were not repairable. There probably aren't that many working C-64s around anymore. How far we've come since using a cassette tape to store data!

My dad built us an H-89 when I was a young'un and I spent many an hour glued to Wumpus Hunt and Zork....


15 posted on 01/01/2003 5:45:09 PM PST by ChemistCat
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To: ChemistCat
There probably aren't that many working C-64s around anymore.

I've got a box buried somewhere in the bowels of my workshop with ten C-64 power supplies (I threw out the C-64 boxes after cannibalizing them but kept the power supplies for some reason). I bought them as a case lot at an auction a few years ago. All of them still work (confirmed with a meter).

As others have noted, it might be time to do the EBay thing ...

16 posted on 01/01/2003 5:50:01 PM PST by strela
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To: strela
Heck who wants DOS? I hated that black screen with the creepy blinking cursor waiting for you to type something. And no help menu, no clue how to get about to work on it!!!
17 posted on 01/01/2003 5:52:58 PM PST by goldstategop
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To: Willie Green
Willie:
I still have a couple of Amstead computers, and they both still work. Wait, one of them is a word processor. In fact I still have some of the disks for them too, and they were of a odd ball size. My second computer was an IBM 5100 with the tape drive. Long time ago.

The very best to you and yours.Semper Fi
Tommie

18 posted on 01/01/2003 5:57:08 PM PST by Texican
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To: goldstategop
Your reply set me to thinking a bit. I started with a homebuilt MITS Altair (the plans were in a Popular Mechanics magazine in the 70s), and now have a system I can use to watch DVDs and TV programs, listen to and store music, scan print and fax documents, communicate with darned near anybody else on the planet, and play games with graphics that would have looked like something out of Star Trek to anyone 30 years ago. Any one of the computer chips in my car has more memory than my old Altair.
19 posted on 01/01/2003 6:01:29 PM PST by strela
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To: Astronaut
I have a 512 from 1985, plus a couple of early powerbooks.
20 posted on 01/01/2003 7:09:42 PM PST by razorback-bert
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