"Mark Metzler wrote:
I was in WalMart last night, and I swung by the Electronics area. I was curious as to how much a replacement drive would cost me for my PC at home, which has a 17gb drive in it. They had a 80gig drive sitting on the shelf next to the surge suppressors for $70. Never mind that it comes with the software to copy everything to the new drive. So I stood there trying to do the math on what it would cost to equate that volume of storage with ST506 drives at $1995.00 a pop. My head started hurting, so I rounded the ST506 to $2000.
It would take 16,000 ST506’s to reach the memory of the drive in WalMart (again sitting on the shelf, not behind a locked cabinet).
At $2000.00 a pop, it would cost me $32,000,000.00.
Now that would have been a nice sale, but would have been stolen by Jim Scharffe or Mike Daniel.
Here is another perspective. If stacked on top of one another, they would be as tall as a 667 story building.
If from sea level, they would stack high enough to top the tallest building in Downtown Denver.
If sold with a cabinet and power supply, Josef Rabinowitz would be retired. "
"Ohmigod! I'm reminded of when I worked for Heath Kline at Priority One Electronics in Chatsworth...and before that for Galaxy Computers in Woodland Hills when the Commodore 64 was introduced! We thought it huge compared to the Timex Sinclair...."
"We both have been into computers since 1970's & currently own 6 OSBORNE's in working condition. Although we use DOS now, we miss cpm & how actually FAST it was compared to Windows. We miss dBase. Append as well instead of Access now. We still have data on 5 1/4" discs we need to put into the dos machines we use now.
Sorry to hear you are leaving the business - we certainly hope you find a buyer who will keep the collection intact!
Best to you & your wonderful efforts!"
DONATE YOUR OLD
SYSTEM WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR VINTAGE COMPUTER SYSTEMS
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DONATE TO
THE FREEMAN PC MUSEUM
MITS Altair 8800b
First shipped by Altair in March of 1976. The 8800b was an improved version of the 8800. Here is a quote from Ed Roberts founder of MITS. "By the time the first IMSAI's appeared the 8800B was in production and was a significant improvement over the earlier designs in a number of ways. For some reason the A and B seems to have gone unnoticed in the history of personal computers even thought there were close to 30,000 of the B's manufactured. The Altair 680 and its variants also have disappear into history even though there were well over 10,000 of these models produced." this quote from website www.imsai.net. This computer was used in the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley". This computer is now in a new museum and not part of our collection.
SPECIFICATIONS:
NAME
Altair 8800b
MANUFACTURER
MITS
TYPE
Business Computer
ORIGIN
USA
YEAR
1976
LAST RUN
1979
QUANTITY BUILT
30,000
OPERATING SYSTEM
Hexadecimal/Octal program with front panel sitches
