"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
Rockwell International Rockwell AIM-65 (sys 2)
Rockwell Model AIM-65 (Advanced Interactive Microcomputer) single-board computer introduced in 1976 and produced until 1980. Introductory price was $375 with 1K of RAM (expandable to 4K). Features: 6502 cpu operating at 1Mhz,plus 4K ROM and (5) additional sockets to add more ROM (on one of our systems we have the original ROM set for FORTH). OS: "ROM Monitor" and BASIC, PASCAL, FORTH and assembler/editor were available. Storage required external tape drive or TTY/paper tape interface. Video display: 1 line LED display. Current Loop I/O. AIM-65 had onboard thermal printer (rare in its day). The machine was used for a variety embedded type control applications such as Instrument controller, Navigation controller, Data logger, Power line monitor, Sprinkler controller, Energy monitor, Alarm logger, Data acquisition, Transformer or motor controller, Solar heating controller and Security monitor. The AIM-65 was also used for low volume and small production applications as it was low-cost, easy to use and incorporated more functionality than other computers at the time. Formerly used by Ray Gawronski at Rockwell now donated to our museum.
