DoveBid Phoenix, AZ (4x) PDP 11/04 $1700, Ends Thursday 11/29/07 10:36 AM PST

[Ethan Dicks]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 05:10:05PM -0600, Jay West wrote:
> Richard wrote...
> >>Looks like noone else wanted to pay that much either.  I don't know
> >>where they came up with a price like $1700 for 4 11/04s ($425 ea?),

It's more than _I_ would want to pay for a bare 11/04 in unknown
condition.
 
> To which Pat replied...
> >An 11/04 is somewhat more desirable of a machine than the 11/03 is (it's
> >UNIBUS instead of QBUS), but you still lack the MMU, and only have a
> >calculator-keypad frontpanel instead of a full lights and toggles
> >frontpane, and it's relatively slow.  So, it's not generally all that
> >desirable to people, compared to something like an 11/83, or even an
> >11/10, or 11/34.

It's a fine RT-11 box, but so is an 11/23 (which is much more common
and about the same physical size).  If you had some Unibus peripherals
you wanted to play with, you could drop a couple in there, but ISTR
there's a small number of empty slots after you install the CPU, memory,
and a console.

I'm not saying it's an terrible machine - I have one myself.  There are
just other machines which might be easier to find and can do similar
(11/23) or identical (11/34) things with.

> 11/04's seem a bit rare to me. And for "curb appeal" no different than an 
> 11/34.

Agreed.
 
> >I'd guess that if they were actually complete, and mostly working (but
> >without any interesting I/O boards), $150-$250 ea wouldn't be too far
> >out of line. 

Sure.

> I/O boards could dramatically raise the value of the
> >system, though... eg, if there were a SCSI controller or something in
> >the systems.

Not impossible, but very unlikely.  I wouldn't think that someone would
have ever spent that kind of money on a controller for an 11/04 in the
past - perhaps a hobbyist might stuff one in there for fun, but for the
era of the machine, an RX11 or RX211 or RL11 would be much more likely,
or a cable to an RK11.

> More to the point, I don't think the auction is a fair indicator of the 
> worth of an 11/04, because he bundled 4 of them at a high (total) price. 
> Perhaps few people want to buy all 4 and spend $1700, but perhaps there is 
> someone out there that would jump at buying one at 1/4th the price.

Someone?  I'm sure there are people out there who would find ~$400 an
acceptable price for a bare 11/04, but, like Jay, I am not one of them.

-ethan

(the one I have used to be a bench-test machine, so ISTR it has 16K of
MOS and never had any mass storage - our test software was shoved down
the serial console into ODT - all standalone MACRO programs - no OS).

-- 
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S     Current South Pole Weather at 29-Nov-2007 at 23:40 Z
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Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov            http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html