360/50 microcode listing

Jon Elson elson at pico-systems.com
Thu May 7 20:57:14 CDT 2015


On 05/07/2015 01:02 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
> On Thu, 7 May 2015, Jon Elson wrote:
>> Just a curious thing I've noticed.  Given the historic 
>> significance, and the large number of machines produced, 
>> I'm kind of amazed at the incredibly small number of 
>> 360's that apparently exist.
>> Yes, I know, any would-be collector could drag home a PDP-8
>
> Sometimes by simply physically dragging it out of dumpster!
> (And then not having a place for it at home, and leaving 
> it out in the back yard to rot naturally)
>
> Were 360s owned by the customer, or LEASED?
> If leased, then they didn't go into "dumpsters" when 
> "decommissioned".
> Wow!  I'd like to see a dumpster that size.
>
>
Lots of 360's were owned in the later days.  All the ones I 
knew of, with the possible exception of Washington 
Universities' first 360/50 were owned (and bought used).  
So, they went on lease, then somebody upgraded, and we 
bought them used.
There was a HUGE market in leased and off-lease 360 and 370 
machines in the 70's and 80's, some brokers got insanely 
rich on that trade. Some of those lost it all when the 
market collapsed.  The smart ones knew to not keep too many 
machines in inventory.

Jon


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