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What's the rarest thing you have/had? How much is it worth?

The item in my collection that is worth the most? Either the NeXT Turbo Dimension Cube with N4005 21" color monitor, N4000a 17" monochrome monitor setup in dual head, NeXT Laser printer and NeXT SCSI Color printer. Or the BeBox Rev8 Dual 133. Both seem to sell on ebay for around a grand.

Thr rarest item is either the BeBox (around 800 produced) or my Canon object.station 41 (no production figures released by Canon) with Canon monitor, mouse and keyboard plus all OS and driver disks OEM'ed from Canon.

Canon won't even admit to making the object.station.
 
The rarest thing I probably have is a motherboard that says "Manufactured By Lockheed Missile and Space Company" on it. I have never seen that before. Wow, a company that makes ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) also made a 386 for some reason...

-Vlad
 
vlad said:
The rarest thing I probably have is a motherboard that says "Manufactured By Lockheed Missile and Space Company" on it. I have never seen that before. Wow, a company that makes ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) also made a 386 for some reason...

-Vlad
Click to expand...

Probably for a mil spec computer. The US armed forces can't purchase a generic mobo for <$100. They probably paid Lockheed >$1000 for the exact same thing. You know, from the days of the megabucks hammers and toliet seats.

Still a cool collectable!

BTW, Vlad, I have all your stuff gathered up. I just need to bubble wrap it and weigh it. Then you can pick your favorite freight mangler.
 
Blackcube said:
BTW, Vlad, I have all your stuff gathered up. I just need to bubble wrap it and weigh it. Then you can pick your favorite freight mangler.
Click to expand...

Ok, E-mail me when you have got all the info!

-Vlad
 
I was given (says much about it's value lol) an IBM 5100, but the only thing that might have helped it's value was that it was complete with all possible extensions on it, the 3 feet high dual 8" floppy tower (bigger than most small fridges) and a 17" printer with that ball typing thing, not a daisy wheel...

that's about it for the rare stuff lol.
 
I searched for the word "Excalibur" on here and not one mention!

So I guess it must be rare the 1980 "Excalibur 64" - a Z80 CPM based KIT Computer you built your self with a $99 backup to fix your ham fisted stuffups.

Upgraded to Basic when Bills source code was debugged and made to actually work.

About 500 KITs and 1000 full builds completed and sold before closing the doors.

The Melbourne (Australia) Excalibur users group actually lasted to about 1986 well into IBM/intel territory.
 
agrajag said:
So :
1) What do/did you have that is rare/worth a lot?
2) Where did you get it from
3) How much did it cost you.
4) What item would you love to add to your collection.

Ok...Love to hear from all of ya's!
Click to expand...

The best thing I've got to get free in my collection was:

Commodore Kim 1 with case
Osborne 1
Motorola Monoboard (i don't remember the number of the board right now)
Sinclair Zx Spectrum 148K
IBM 5120 set
Memorex 512

Bargains:

Sinclair Zx 80 for 10 Eur.
Commodore 610 & 710 for a good value (I have more of them to be sold)
(they are "new" and in the original box)
Oric 1 for 10 Eur.

I know there are a lot of other things which I got for a bargain...

Located in Belgium

If any interest in Commodore 610/710 contact me (Won't sell for cheap as they are new in the box!)
 
Extremely old stuff

Extremely old stuff

I have a IBM 701 electrostatic memory CRT/tube. Circa 1952.
It held 2048 bits of memory. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA
has one also that I gave to them.

A friend of mine has an electrostatic memory tube that was on the JOHNiac
at Rand corp. before it was converted to Core memory.
 
I'm not really sure as far as my work and home collections - for work, probably the Quantum Q2020 8" hard disk drive (with a clear plastic cover over the platters so you can see the head action) and Motorola 6800 demo kit from 1976 (their first microprocessor!).

At home I have a decked-out TRS-80 Model 2000 - DOS 2.1 on the 20MB drive, 80186 CPU, 14" color monitor, and ARCnet adapter. The only thing I'm missing is the keyboard!
 
Masscomp?

Masscomp?

Ref: Masscomp stuff!

I use to work for Masscomp in the 80's and I've been looking for some Masscomp spares / systems don't surpose you would be willing to part with your Masscomp or do you have any spare you would sell or swap?

I have a 5450 and parts of a 5500 also has some OS and app floppies...

Ta,

Andy.

CraigLandrum said:
Big house, huge basement, tons of junk. Some of the major stuff I've collected in the 30+ years I've been programming:

Two IMSAI's complete with dual double-density 8-inch drives, 64K RAM, and (later) additions of 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. 4Mhz Z-80 in both. Both boot and run CP/M 2.2, Wordstar, MBASIC, Tiny-C, ZORK, etc.

Altair 8800 with Altair 8 inch hard-sector disk drive, 64K RAM, Serial I/O, Parallel I/O, all original MITS boards, 2Mhz 8080 (in the process of being restored)

The original 128K Mac with carry case, external 3.5 inch floppy, Imagewriter-I, and (only one I've ever seen) - a Micron Eye digital camera that used something called "optical RAM". Tons of software such as Smoothtalker, music programs, games, etc. Boots into Finder 1.0 and runs perfectly.

O'Dell word processor - a 12 inch CRT and dual 8-inch floppies running multibus boards and an 8085 processor. Boots and runs CP/M 2.2. Only one I've ever heard of.

The only working Genrad Futuredata I've ever seen or heard of. Used to develop software/firmware for virtually any 8-bit CPU, this one was used in the late 70's early 80's to develop firmware for Z-80 based multibus boards. Dual 8-inch floppies. Complete with OS, editor, compiler, linker, and debugger. Boots and runs fine. I have a second unit that lacks only
memory.

Original IBM-PC with 5.25 inch floppy, original IBM keyboard and monitor.
Boots and runs PC DOS fine.

Cromemco S-100 Z-80 based CP/M turnkey system. Boots and runs.

Via Video S-100 based Cromix system. Future restoration project.

Masscomp 68010-based Unix box. Boots and runs Masscomps Real Time Unix. Used in the development of the US Patent Office backfile scanning system.

TRS-80 Model I with 16K RAM. Powers up and runs Basic.

TRS-80 Pocket Computer with 16K RAM and attached miniature 4-color pen plotter. Runs BASIC. Still works!

Morrow Z-80 based portable computer with dual double-density 5.25 floppies and built-in amber monitor. Boots and Runs CP/M 2.2. Very nice CP\M machine.

Numerous Apple Macs of various vintage.

Numerous old S-100 cards by IMSAI, MITS, SD-Sales, Solid State Music (nice RAM cards), Cromemco, others.

I also collect and restore old keyboard instruments such as pipe organs, pump organs, and player pianos, but that's another story :)
Click to expand...
 
DOS-Master said:
it is a lisa 2
Click to expand...

Well, that makes all the difference between a $500.00 system and a $10,000.00 one...

(My friend, Mark, has one of the originals, but he doesn't have the parts to convert it back to the Lisa 1 (drives, faceplate, etc))

--T
 
No, but if it had been a boxed Lisa 1, that's its approximate value. Still, if it boxed and truly unopened, maybe it would bring in more than the typical boxed, but once used Lisa 2?
 
Up till today I had a Micom 2000. It's now boxed and shortly on the way to a major collector. Free except for considerable shipping costs because of its metal casing.

I sent the system disks, manual, and other docs previously to a canadian museum.

The founder of Micom, Stephen Dorsey, had started up a company in Montreal, AES, which made the first programmable word processor, !973 perhaps.

He sold out his share in AES in 1975 and founded Micom with the proceeds and another partner Louis Miller.

Alto marketed as a word processor it was an 8080 computer and later had a MSDOS Basic version on it
which used the full capabilities of the 8080 chip.

To put this into historical perspective. Here's some stuff from The Computer History Timeline:

March (75)
Fred Moore and Gordon French hold the first meeting of a new microcomputer hobbyist's club in French's garage, in Menlo Park, California. 32 people meet, including Bob Albrect, Steve Dompier, Lee Felsenstein, Bob Marsh, Tom Pittman, Marty Spergel, Alan Baum, and Steven Wozniak. Bob Albrect shows off an Altair, and Steve Dompier reports on MITS, and how they had 4000 orders for the Altair. [185.110] [266.104] [301.55] [346.18] [353.200] [346.257] (April [208.67] 266.39)

Stephen Dorsey, founder of Automatic Electronic Systems, sells his 25% of the company for $135,000. [615.98]
Stephen Dorsey and Louis Miller found Micom Data Systems, in Canada. [615.90]

July (75)
Bill Gates and Paul Allen sign a licensing agreement with MITS, for their implementation of the BASIC language. [299.8]
Bill Gates and Paul Allen ship 4K and 8K version of BASIC v2.0. [123]
Dick Heiser opens Arrow Head Computer Company, subtitled "The Computer Store", in Los Angeles, selling assembled Altairs, boards, peripherals, and magazines. This is the first retail computer store in the USA. [266.185] [684.41]
Micom Data Systems ships its first product, the Micom 2000 word processing computer. [615.99]

September (75)
IBM's Entry Level Systems unit unveils "Project Mercury", the IBM 5100 Portable Computer. It is a briefcase-size minicomputer with BASIC, 16KB RAM, tape storage, and built-in 5-inch screen. Price: US$9000. Weight: 55 pounds. [9] [197.xi] (Price over US$10,000 [203.10])
The first issue of Byte magazine is published. [9] [266.159]

March (76)
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs finish work on a computer circuit board, that they call the Apple I computer. [46]
By the end of its first year in business, Micom Data Systems ships 180 Micom 2000 computers, worth $2 million. [615.99]

Among it's customers Micom had at least 100 units at NASA taking load off the mainframe. It was used by many big corporations such as Boston Gas, and serious printing companies to do their Linotype setup.

Yet it is little known. Besides obviously eclipsing the much-told glory episodes of the Steves of Apple fame Dorsey was well ahead of his time. He later went on to do major developments in world communications.

The Hyperion, a canadian computer made big inroads in the Insurance company market in Canada. Many have suggested that is why IBM issued the very unsuccessful IBM 5100.

But then again Americans want US heroes. so the Teslas, G.A. Bells, Banting and Best who developed insulin, or Einstein who spent his last years in the US, the Watt group and the other incredible computer people who came out of Waterloo U. and other canadian universities are ignored.

Some of the supposedly great American inventors such as Edison who stole many of his inventions from Tesla were frauds. Henry Ford was a Hitler supporter.

There are many Americans I admire enormously, both my parents were born in the states, but possibly the collector community has to broaden it's scope to include such as Dorsey and Sinclair into it's pantheon. Even the admittedly sleazy Sam Tramiel founded Commodore in Canada.

Lawrence
 
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