Mark-8 boards on ebay

[falter]

Yeah I think we'll definitely be making some clone boards, one way or another. I actually had double sided copper clad on order and was going to attempt the challenge of making these boards straight off the plans. Probably will still do it for fun, but I will give serious thought to sending the originals for a scan to make it easier for others.

Excellent!! Certainly went for less than I thought they would. Think you got a pretty good deal there.

I like Glitch's suggestion too. You could get a set of boards made up which you could use to build a machine and keep the originals in their untouched state. Of course, if you wanted to make several boards, I'd certainly buy a set

Cheers,
Dave

 

[dfnr2]

Congratulations. I honestly had not imagined them going above $1k. Shows how much I know.

Everyone's perspective is a bit different on the hobby. Personally, I appreciate the machines for the stories behind them, and the ingenuity and grit underlying their design. All that comes to life when they are built, maintained, repaired. If I keep a non-working machine, it's only because I entertain some hope of fixing it down the line. I wouldn't hesitate to build this up, but personally would have accurate Gerbers prepared from them first. For me, the dollar value of the boards is just the hurdle that must be overcome to obtain them. A set of unbuilt boards would be an itch to be scratched.

Thanks glitch! Yeah, it's been a pretty good year. I still want an Altair, but I might postpone that a while longer to absorb this (and preserve my marriage).

I'm curious though -- with the original artwork available (ie. via Bryan's site), why not just use that to reproduce boards, exactly as would have been in done in the day by those who declined to purchase them? I had some suggest to me doing something similar with my TVT boards, but I went with using the original artwork because to me that got closer to what the hobbyist would have done, and represented the actual work of the article's author. I'm a little nervous too about sending these away and risking them being lost. Doesn't happen very often but I tend to be lucky that way.

The benefit of using Mile High, or some other service, in additon to the actual scanning, is in the laborious cleanup of the data before and after converting to gerbers, drill hole placement, etc. Further, the art in the magazine has already been reproduced and may be subject to small distortions, and was then scanned to a TIFF, with further distortion by the scanning process. Mile high uses a special calibrated super high-res scanner that minimizes disortion, so their scan from the PCB will be truer to the original art, and so will the gerbers. Also, it's possible the production version may incorporate some fixes not present in the magazine artwork, with is likely the earliest Rev. Having true gerbers made from the PCB is a kind of archiving.

If you are at all willing to have Gerbers made from them, I would be willing to pitch in on having these boards scanned (which will not be cheap by any stretch). Perhaps we can get several members to sponsor the cost of scanning 1 board each, then free the gerbers for all. That would be sweet.

At any rate, I am looking forward to seeing you build up these boards (they deserve to be built), and sharing your experience with us here on the forum!

Dave

 

[glitch]

Yeah, Gerber scanning was my way of getting over using a really rare OSI board. I could've laid out something more modern with probably equal effort but far less expense, but I like working with the old single-sided OSI 495 copies anyway.

W.R.T. Mile High Test's process, you actually get pretty clean Gerbers, not a bunch of basically Gerber "pixels". Even a huge board like the OSI 495 didn't crash KiCad or OrCAD on import. And as already mentioned, it's much higher resolution than consumer devices can produce -- IIRC 4000 DPI. I was going to photocopy-clone the OSI 495 until I figured out how much time the *drilling* would take, it was much easier to have the board fab'ed in China, and being as how I was able to bill the hours on day-job contract work rather than running a drill press, I probably saved money.

If you're thinking about having them scanned, just heavily insure the package going out and send it via a fast service. Carriers seem to take better care of items with high insured value/high priority status. I'd imagine you can cover the cost of scanning by selling a few sets of blank boards. That's what I ended up doing with the OSI 495 boards. I haven't released the Gerbers since I'm not sure of the legality behind it, OSI is defunct but it may be that someone still owns the IP and would think about a troll defense. Shouldn't be a problem with the Mark 8, since the layouts were released to the public years ago.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Everyone's perspective is a bit different on the hobby. Personally, I appreciate the machines for the stories behind them, and the ingenuity and grit underlying their design.

Indeed--and that's why I value engineering documents, schematics and design reports above real hardware. Paper allows me to crawl into the designer's head to a certain extent and discern his intentions and thought process. A hunk of iron is, well, just a hunk of iron. Lights blink, stuff happens, but it tells me nothing about the human intellect behind the item. Sadly, it's the ephemera that tends to hit the dumpster when an organization is closing up shop.

Let's not forget that all this glorious hardware came out of the squishy wet stuff between someone's ears.

 

[dfnr2]

Indeed--and that's why I value engineering documents, schematics and design reports above real hardware. Paper allows me to crawl into the designer's head to a certain extent and discern his intentions and thought process. A hunk of iron is, well, just a hunk of iron. Lights blink, stuff happens, but it tells me nothing about the human intellect behind the item. Sadly, it's the ephemera that tends to hit the dumpster when an organization is closing up shop.

Let's not forget that all this glorious hardware came out of the squishy wet stuff between someone's ears.

+1, Well said!

 

[falter]

Really?

I mean, I'm an auction addict and I watch stuff on ebay all the time. I'm beginning to think ebay is just too disjointed and random to be a reliable indicator. I see run of the mill ELFs (Netronics, etc) go for $500-900 all day long. Even high serial number A2S1s pick up $800+ sometimes. I thought original, untouched boards from the 3rd (?) microprocessor based computer ever offered to the public, examples of which exist in fewer numbers than Apple Is, would almost certainly go above $2000. I mean, how many 'computers' put you in a club where there's only about a dozen or so other owners including museums? I didn't think bare boards would outprice an original completed system, but I would have thought original Mark-8 stuff would be way, way up there. Makes no sense to me. But whatever, I'll take it. The seller, as it turns out, was ecstatic. He's going to sell the OSI boards next. I am all over that backplane board, just FYI.

I'm kind of partial to the idea of building them.. seems kind of a sad fate to end up just sitting on display somewhere doing nothing. But once built.. that's it. Unless there are more out there somewhere waiting to be found by accident.

I would be more than happy to cover the cost of scanning the boards -- I realize this is a one-off opportunity. What do they typically charge? And I would not expect anything in return for sharing them. My only hesitation is that I have lost stuff with couriers on occasion. I don't care about the money -- but losing the boards themselves.. ugh that would suck!! But you know, I'm almost tempted to have the seller ship them to Mile High right off, and then have Mile High boot them up here. They're gonna have to be in transit anyway.

My other thought was to just do what I did with the TVT plans and try with the published ones. See how close I get and compare to original. I was told the original produced boards have errors on them that were uncorrected from the plans. I could ask Bryan to ask Jon about the differences. Definitely there would be some distortions -- I ran smack into that with the TVT and really had to play with the scale to get it to come out right. And it's not perfect at all.

Congratulations. I honestly had not imagined them going above $1k. Shows how much I know.

Everyone's perspective is a bit different on the hobby. Personally, I appreciate the machines for the stories behind them, and the ingenuity and grit underlying their design. All that comes to life when they are built, maintained, repaired. If I keep a non-working machine, it's only because I entertain some hope of fixing it down the line. I wouldn't hesitate to build this up, but personally would have accurate Gerbers prepared from them first. For me, the dollar value of the boards is just the hurdle that must be overcome to obtain them. A set of unbuilt boards would be an itch to be scratched.



The benefit of using Mile High, or some other service, in additon to the actual scanning, is in the laborious cleanup of the data before and after converting to gerbers, drill hole placement, etc. Further, the art in the magazine has already been reproduced and may be subject to small distortions, and was then scanned to a TIFF, with further distortion by the scanning process. Mile high uses a special calibrated super high-res scanner that minimizes disortion, so their scan from the PCB will be truer to the original art, and so will the gerbers. Also, it's possible the production version may incorporate some fixes not present in the magazine artwork, with is likely the earliest Rev. Having true gerbers made from the PCB is a kind of archiving.

If you are at all willing to have Gerbers made from them, I would be willing to pitch in on having these boards scanned (which will not be cheap by any stretch). Perhaps we can get several members to sponsor the cost of scanning 1 board each, then free the gerbers for all. That would be sweet.

At any rate, I am looking forward to seeing you build up these boards (they deserve to be built), and sharing your experience with us here on the forum!

Dave

 

[mwillegal]

This is a super rare item that is relatively easily reproduced. Over time, I changed my thinking for these sort of super rare items, which used to I used to think should be made to run. For something so rare, I would NOT build them, but use them to make clone PCBs. Building a clone will give you nearly the same experience without risking damaging or reducing the value of the original boards.

If you decide to build it up, no matter how you approach it, it will never be quite the same as a unit built in the mid-70's.

regards,
Mike Willegal

 

[Corey986]

This is a super rare item that is relatively easily reproduced. Over time, I changed my thinking for these sort of super rare items, which used to I used to think should be made to run. For something so rare, I would NOT build them, but use them to make clone PCBs. Building a clone will give you nearly the same experience without risking damaging or reducing the value of the original boards.

If you decide to build it up, no matter how you approach it, it will never be quite the same as a unit built in the mid-70's.

regards,
Mike Willegal

100% agree with Mike, I would also be willing to go in on a set of scanned boards from these. Don't bother with trying to reproduce them from scans of the original articles when you have access to the real boards to send out and be converted to gerbers.

 

[Chuck(G)]

If you decide to build it up, no matter how you approach it, it will never be quite the same as a unit built in the mid-70's.

How so, Mike? One can still find vintage TTL and other components if one looks hard enough. 60-40 solder is still the same stuff it was in 1950. PCBs can still be fabbed the hard way. So what's different? Heck, people still build relay computers.

One thing is that is different is the experience of the observer. Something on the order of "You can never hear Bach's music the way Bach did--there's been too much water under your bridge--you've heard music that Bach never did and it has affected your perception".

I don't think that you can fix that.

 

[Corey986]

Well the difference is in the bring up process.

In the 70's when building a machine, the odds on having a chip tester and logic analyzer for the home builder was not really an option. This makes it much easier to bring up the machine. When I built my Scelbi replica, I used a roll of solder from the 1970's, chips from 1974 or earlier and even wired the chassis with NOS wire from 1973. However when troubleshooting a problem with the 8008 CPU and the clock, I was able to put a 16 channel logic analyzer on the CPU and record the entire process of a program running to figure out my issue. This would have been something a hobbyist in the 70's would have needed to use a scope on and a lot cigarettes/beer.

Cheers,
Corey

 

[falter]

Good points all around. Rest assured nothing will happen to these boards for the forseeable future.

It's such a tough call. Building a Mark-8 from original boards is something I doubt anyone else will even have the opportunity to do in the forseeable future. But building them means they are never original again. I went through this whole debate with my MDS keyboard for my TVT project - I was hesitant about painting it to match the prototype because it couldn't be undone. But in that case I already knew another had surfaced months before and I figured probably one would surface again. Further, an MDS keyboard without the machine is useless anyway. Mark-8 boards though.. I don't know how likely we're going to come across unbuilt ones like these again. Probably not any time soon. But then I've said that and been proven wrong repeatedly about other rare items.

I'm actually finding replication to be preferable to acquiring originals. I have a few very vintage, original systems in my collection, but I feel like I have no rapport with them because I never had the experience of building them. Plus, I get cagey about firing them up because sooner or later something's going to blow.

There are four RAM boards among the Mark-8 boards I've bought.. maybe I build a replica and build just one of those to give it a little cheekiness.

I was reading on Bryan's site that an estimated 7500 plans were sold and that Jon Titus estimated that 1000-2000 machines were built. But he also said only 400 board sets were sold. So presumably.. somebody out there built these without original boards.. wondering if any examples of totally homebrew Mark-8s have surfaced anywhere? And would they be worth what one with a commercial board set would be?

 

[mwillegal]

Even if you manage to find all circa 1974 components, including hardware (screws, nuts, wire, connectors and whatever), if you went to sell it, it would be a Mark 8, built with vintage components in 2016. It will never be the same as a Mark 8 built in 1974, because it doesn't have the history of a unit built in 1974. Just the way I would look at it.

regards,
Mike Willegal

How so, Mike? One can still find vintage TTL and other components if one looks hard enough. 60-40 solder is still the same stuff it was in 1950. PCBs can still be fabbed the hard way. So what's different? Heck, people still build relay computers.

One thing is that is different is the experience of the observer. Something on the order of "You can never hear Bach's music the way Bach did--there's been too much water under your bridge--you've heard music that Bach never did and it has affected your perception".

I don't think that you can fix that.

 

[Chuck(G)]

In a blind A-B test, a board assembled from vintage components yesterday would be very difficult to tell from a board built 40 years ago. So no objective difference.

But then, I'd consider that a skillful clone of the Mona Lisa would be just the same as the original, objectively.

I'm not a big believer in ghosts. I've seen too much fakery with people claiming history that didn't happen--especially with "this widget belonged to someone long dead" claims.

 

[falter]

True enough. Plus.. we've established the street value of original Mark 8 boards is $1500. So I'm not sure I'm all that worried about collector value, unlike with an Apple I. Frankly I've never cared about provenance.. if I can get essentially the same machine and it wasn't owned by X so it's worth less.. bonus!

 

[Chuck(G)]

Now, an original MCM/70 might be worth having...

 

[snuci]

Now, an original MCM/70 might be worth having...

I've been looking for one of those since I started collecting mainly because of it's Canadian lineage.

 

[dfnr2]

I would be more than happy to cover the cost of scanning the boards -- I realize this is a one-off opportunity. What do they typically charge? And I would not expect anything in return for sharing them. My only hesitation is that I have lost stuff with couriers on occasion. I don't care about the money -- but losing the boards themselves.. ugh that would suck!! But you know, I'm almost tempted to have the seller ship them to Mile High right off, and then have Mile High boot them up here. They're gonna have to be in transit anyway.

I would call the Mile High Test guys and talk to them. I got a quote for about $250 for an OSI 505 board, which I thought was a bargain. The OSI board is about double the size of the Mark 8 boards, so perhaps we're looking at $150 per board. For sure, with a near-perfect reproduction, you will be a lot less tempted to build the original set, philosophy aside.

Dave

 

[Chuck(G)]

Anent the MCM/70...

I find the thing fascinating, not only because of its early introduction (with the 8008 CPU), but that it implemented a dialect of APL. Pretty impressive. Might also qualify as the first portable computer, since it did have an option for battery power.

 

[falter]

I would call the Mile High Test guys and talk to them. I got a quote for about $250 for an OSI 505 board, which I thought was a bargain. The OSI board is about double the size of the Mark 8 boards, so perhaps we're looking at $150 per board. For sure, with a near-perfect reproduction, you will be a lot less tempted to build the original set, philosophy aside.

Dave

Oh. I didn't realize it was quite that much.. Yeah I'd be happy to do that but it'll be a while.. other priorities.

 

[falter]

I'm thinking more about this debate regarding collector value, and just playing Devil's Advocate here.

We've postulated that the boards should not be built into a system because it will harm value. But will it?

It's not like the boards are worth $10000. At $1500, I have a hard time believing anything short of destroying them would reduce their value. If they're festooned with vintage parts and assembled into a working computer, I gotta think the end value is more than the boards alone.

Further, from a collecting standpoint, I've been on both ends of the transaction. There's only a handful of Mark-8s known to exist. They aren't something you can reliably wait on to appear on ebay. The last one to sell was almost a decade ago. If you're a collector living in the now and a period correct 2016 built Mark-8 comes up with original boards -- maybe you value it less than a 1974 one, but who's to say there isn't a bidding war regardless? Buyers have to weigh originality vs. the likelihood of seeing another, better one come up.

And then there's the experience of building a Mark-8 with original boards. What's that worth? Should I care more about what some stranger thinks about value or should I place the emphasis on my own enjoyment?

Not saying I'm leaning this way.. just talking it through.