On 10/20/99, at 1:08 AM, Bryan Moss wrote:
>I'm planning on starting a little collection of all the computers I really
>wanted to own and can now afford due to obsolescence (although I imagine
>the Connection Machine will still be quite costly, I've found some NeXT
>computers between $200-$1000). Hmm, what about old Cray supercomputers?
>Surely there'd be people willing to *pay me* to get rid of them, being so
>big an' all.
Had I but known.... When I worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we scrapped a CDC 7600 supercomputer to make room on the floor for a Cray-YMP. No one wanted it; the cost for electricity and maintenance was too high. I have a souvenir memory board on my mantle. It was large enough you could have turned it into a small bedroom.
I want an Elecom 100. It was the first minicomputer, selling for $100,000, when the only alternative was in the millions. One of my grandfather's inventions. His company was undercapitalized, failed, and was bought by Univac.
On a humorous note, some years ago a PC company offered to accept any computer as a trade-in towards one of their computers. They received all sorts of things, but lots of the small, wedge-shaped Timex-Sinclairs. Someone (John Dvorak?) was curious as to what the company did with these puny machines they had received in trade. So he asked. Answer: Doorstops.
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