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Pricing for a SOL-20 and related hardware

R

rbgrn

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Hey guys, I know this isn't the trade/sell forum but I'm looking for historical sale info here so I can figure out what to do with my SOL-20s.

I have a pair of SOL-20s and a Helios II w/controller cards.

Ideally I was thinking maybe I'd trade one of them for an IMSAI 8080 because I really don't think I need 2 of them, but I'm not sure what I want to do and whatever I do I'd like it to be a relatively fair value trade.

EBay doesn't show results older than 90 days so I'm out of luck there. There is just the one HAM SOL that sold recently for $800 but that seems lower than a typical machine.

Does anyone have any old data for me for either a SOL or the Helios? Both are currently untested but I will be putting them on the bench and restoring anything necessary before any sale or trade.

Thanks!
 
I got mine for $700 but that was about 4 years ago.
I think typically they go for about $1000 or just over.
 
In bad condition. The sol are currently worth about 700-1000. Good condition, 1000-2000. Working condition at least 2k. Could be a lot more if in perfect working condition and cosmetically perfect.

The Helios with cards easily 1000-1500 dead or with replacment non persci drives. Working with original persci drives priceless... Seriously. They are very very rare actually working with original drives. Many 1000's of dollars worth.

So what is your condition?

Cheers,
Corey
 
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Interesting numbers Corey - I'll have to take a look. I'm working on fixing a televideo terminal right now then I'll get the first SOL up on the bench and see what it needs.

I can also open up the Helios and see what's inside as well.
 
You have to be very careful with the Helios. if you don't do a whole bunch of preventative work, it may explode on power up or completely screw itself and it won't be repairable another reason that a working unit is worth so much, it would have had to be serviced after 30+ years.

Cheers,
Corey
 
So you're saying power it up first time with the PSU disconnected from everything and verify the PSU is stable and in spec before moving on to the control logic? I was sort of planning on doing this as I haven't turned it on yet and wouldn't until I had time to do it right.

Do you have any online resources that would be good to read for servicing a Helios?
 
It appears as though I do have the original PerSci drive.

No idea what state it's in, though.
 
SOL-20 sales on ePay, 3/7/13-3/2/14

Item # 131121794017, 3/2/14, SOL-20/Curtis 6000 HAM, good cosmetic condition and storage. Not tested or powered up. $800 + $48.05 shipping
Item # 191006422638, 12/17/13, SOL-20, some chipping on top of console and possible damaged PSU. Not working, not tested. $800 includes shipping
Item # 271228323177, 6/24/13, SOL-20, $1,500 includes shipping
Item # 321165233688, 7/22/13, SOL-20, $1,102.99 + $50 shipping
Item # 161086020053, 8/14/13, SOL-20, $500 + $42.90 shipping
Item # 190814647210, 3/29/13, "SOL-20 with Intel 8080A processor" (SOL System 1?), $2,499.99 + $144.25 shipping
Item # 261188213946, 3/26/13, SOL-20, $1,975.00 includes shipping

(No photos or other details are available for items sold before 12/1/13.)

What a beautiful machine.
 
Helios II sales on ePay, 3/7/13-3/2/14

191037742106, 1/16/14, Helios II Disk Memory System, good cosmetic condition, missing on/off key, powers up. $225 includes shipping
261188229546, 3/26/13, Helios II Disk Memory System, $999 includes shipping
 
FYI: I think I'm the one who bought Item # 161086020053, 8/14/13, SOL-20, $500 + $42.90 shipping. It was a basket case... never ran I think from day one.


And WOW someone got a steal on that helios for 225, I would have grabbed that in a heartbeat... The issue with the helios isn't the having one, it's having one with the Persci drives that work. Even in the day the Persci drives were not reliable, after 35+ years unless the drive was completely rebuilt they are useless.

Cheers,
Corey
 
FunctionalLimits said:
191037742106, 1/16/14, Helios II Disk Memory System, good cosmetic condition, missing on/off key, powers up. $225 includes shipping
Click to expand...

How does one find the price paid through a Best Offer?

I'm guessing the price is dependent on cars that come in the Sol-20? Newbie question: Is an Sol-20 with no additional S-100 cards functional in terms of video and cassette for storage?
 
The cards really don't mean much for a sol. The system is pretty much self contained. Just add generic ram cards. This is also why a working one is worth so much more.

First. They are complex. To troubleshoot one ain't easy and they have a complex booting sequence. My first sol-20 I lucked out on. It only had a bad power supply and a bad 74h00 which took me a while to track down. The $500 basket case required me purchasing a $400 logic analyzer and a 8080 ICE to track down after going crazy for a few weeks.

Second. Unless you get lucky and got one of the few that had anodized chassis. They are a rust bucket underneath. Some of them the covers also rusted if you had the steel vs the aluminum covers. So that may be a lot of work. I must have spent 5 hours alone on one of mine with an airtool and a wire brush attachment removin rust from the chassis.

Third. The keyboard rebuild. They use the most awesome feeling keyboard in the world. A capacitive discharge keytronic. But the foam will deteriate. A replacment set of foam with Mylar and plastic backing can be made (it's a pain) or purchased for about $60-70 and you will need to rebuild almost every keyboard you run across. It can be messy if anyone tried to clean the keyboard with ISP thinking it's a traditional keyboard. The ISP melts the foam and makes it a fun job to clean before replacing the foam. Btw. I love this keyboard so much I use one of my sol as a terminal to a raspberry pi so I can telnet into systems at work.

All this being said, The sol-20 is the most beautiful s100 system ever made... It's like a piece of furniture made for the living room. It is also an awesome machine. An all in one s100 system that even includes an s100 bus extender built in. They literally thought of everything.

If PT would have been managed better and would have kept pace with the market by making a z80 version and adding color as standard, I'm not sure apple would have done so well.

Cheers,
Corey
 
One more thing to add about the sol-20 and why working units can command so much more now. We had a sol-20 specific repair session at MARCH about 2 years ago at the Infoage science center in NJ. Lee Felsenstein, the designer of the Sol-20 was there. Even with his help not every sol-20 could be revived that day. So these are very complex beasts. Not saying they are poorly designed. They are not, just complex to put everything onto a single board in an s100 system and have them interconnected unlike let's say an Altair where you could remove cards and use the front panel to start troubleshooting.

Cheers,
Corey
 
Thanks Corey968. That's great information. I do have the possibility to buy a bare bones Sol-20 in the next couple of weeks. I've only seen pictures so far. One picture had some dark spots over the serial number label but it looks like chipped paint and not rust. Otherwise, it looks like it's in good shape but the front black label looks like it's not flat. It looks like the first picture in post 5 of this thread. Is this a reflection or is the front black label very thin and can bubble? I don't know what the running condition is but I'm guessing it's probably not (owner is missing the video cable).

In any case, it is a good representative of historical computing so I'll do my best to acquire it.

Thanks again.
 
The front logo is just a magazine type printed price of paper behind plexiglass. Easy to get a reproduction made. The thing I'd be worried about is that if there was enough humidity to make the paper deform, then you will most likely have to disassemble the chassis and clean some rust. Not impossible just takes time and elbow grease. If it's an aluminum cover sol-20, then the cover should be fine. If the chassis has a gold tint to it, then the chassis should be fine also if there was humidity. You will then just have to just deoxit the sockets and depending maybe tarnX soak some of the chips.

Cheers,
Corey
 
Corey I can't wait until I dive into these machines.. I'll tear them down and show photos so you can see what I've got and what I'm doing.
 
You'll enjoy working on a sol-20. There are a lot of "factory" updates that need to be done with a razor blade and jumper wire. Even factory built units can be interesting in that regards.

Also the sol-20 community are a great bunch of guys. Everyone is very helpful to each other. While we don't really have a section in any of the popular vintage computer websites devoted to us, Jim Battle still maintains sol20.org a very useful site for documentation and programs. Also Phil Lord's (Nama) website www.neoncluster.com has good information including artwork to make a new logo strip.

I personally need to add a sol-20 section to my apple-1 website, but then again I actually need to revamp my whole site to add all my non-apple computers. Eventually... But next up for me after finishing bunch of Scelbi stuff for VCF east is to fix my DMA issue on the formerly basket case sol-20 so it can run with my Helios.

Cheers,
Corey
 
Thanks for the links to the Sol-20 resources. I found the front logo replacement images. Is there any significance between the two versions? Looks like this Sol-20 noted above has the Processor Technology logo in it. Is this newer than the older text only logo? Just curious.
 
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