On Tue, 16 Apr 2019, William Donzelli wrote:
Looks like it went for roughly $4k USD. Obviously logistics and storage
cost play into things, but somebody got a deal. Dang. -C
Assuming the innards of the machines were not all rust buckets - yes.
I expected at least twice that, maybe triple.
Huh? Sorry, but I'm not made of money, and obviously, we have different
oppinions about the value of a large system in unknown or mediocre
condition. Sure, we would have been very happy if we could aquire the
system, restore it and have it running and showing it to our visitors.
But more than 1000ยค is not realistic, even with some noble offerings like
Noel's. You have to consider all the efforts and time and space you need
to invest into such an adventure.
I really hope that the buyer knows what he has and that he is capable to
repair and run the system.
I've seen more pictures of the site (thanks to a friend who visited the
site), and everything is dirty and burried under the ventilation system
that fell off the ceiling as well as under debris from the crumbling
ceiling, there must be a humidity problem. The door to the
room goes directly to the street, the house is at least 80 years old and
completely derelict. There is rust in the machines (e.g. I've seen
oxidation on the spindle of the 3340 disk modules sitting on top of
the 3125). There are power supply or whatever modules lying on the floor
in a corner amongst other junk.
But who knows - maybe the seller was not very cooperative, or there
were some other reason why the price remained low.
The seller is an antiquarian and local pickup is within two weeks.
Oh, and with all the traffic this generated on many lists, almost no
one mentions the System/370 in the mix. I think it is the big yellow
box in the pictures.
Yes, but that is about all of the system. There's a hip high "table" with
yellow front and back doors, I guess that was the console, with obviously
missing setup. No peripherals for the 370/125 apart from a
printer-keyboard (from the number list) and a card reader, so no tape or
disk drives. The 3340 drives are missing (some corroded modules can be
seen on one pic).
But after all, I'm not too frustrated because I know where there is a
complete 360/20 and a complete 370/125 (with drives) still running :-)
These systems are already in a wonderful museum.
Christian
