Products > Vintage Computing
What's the highest cost vs computing power ever asked?
TerraHertz:
Here's a PDP 8/S with a buy-it-now price of $45,000.00 OK, it is SERIAL NUMBER ZERO, but still...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PDP-8-S-Serial-Number-0/324054935256
It's in the USA, I have nothing to do with that.
I came across that ebay auction while searching, related to a couple of PDP 8/S I'm restoring:
http://everist.org/NobLog/20181104_PDP-8S.htm
Interesting machines, built entirely of discrete transistors, resistors and diodes. Possibly the slowest computer ever built, since it has a one bit serial shifting ALU.
Also the simplest power supply. Just a transformer, bridge rectifier and filter cap (Two rails.) No regulation needed, because the logic circuitry is so forgiving.
Or is it an Apple I board for nearly a million dollars?
ebastler:
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on February 01, 2020, 02:09:10 pm ---Here's a PDP 8/S with a buy-it-now price of $45,000.00 OK, it is SERIAL NUMBER ZERO, but still...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PDP-8-S-Serial-Number-0/324054935256
It's in the USA, I have nothing to do with that.
I came across that ebay auction while searching, related to a couple of PDP 8/S I'm restoring:
http://everist.org/NobLog/20181104_PDP-8S.htm
Interesting machines, built entirely of discrete transistors, resistors and diodes. Possibly the slowest computer ever built, since it has a one bit serial shifting ALU.
Also the simplest power supply. Just a transformer, bridge rectifier and filter cap (Two rails.) No regulation needed, because the logic circuitry is so forgiving.
Or is it an Apple I board for nearly a million dollars?
--- End quote ---
I guess you would have to go further back in time to find the highest cost/computing power offers. Just one example which I happen to be familiar with:
The Librascope LGP-30, a very successful computer in the late 50s and early 60s, was sold for $40,000 (1950s money, equivlent to $350k .. $400k today). That machine could execute around 500 instructions/second. Even though each instruction processed a 32-bit data word, the Apple I was more than 100 times faster, hence a bargain even at $1M. ;)
gslick:
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on February 01, 2020, 02:09:10 pm ---Here's a PDP 8/S with a buy-it-now price of $45,000.00 OK, it is SERIAL NUMBER ZERO, but still...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PDP-8-S-Serial-Number-0/324054935256
--- End quote ---
That one has been relisted over and over for around a year or so that I have noticed, maybe longer, with the opening asking price of $26,500 never getting lowered. Probably still be listed there at the same price a year from now.
obiwanjacobi:
Early quantum computers? :-//
Probably pretty expensive and the early ones didn't do much...
jmelson:
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on February 01, 2020, 02:09:10 pm ---Here's a PDP 8/S with a buy-it-now price of $45,000.00 OK, it is SERIAL NUMBER ZERO, but still...
Interesting machines, built entirely of discrete transistors, resistors and diodes. Possibly the slowest computer ever built, since it has a one bit serial shifting ALU.
--- End quote ---
Not even close. The Bendix G-15 was seriously slow, but likely not the slowest. The G-15 had a drum memory, and a word rolled off the drum every 55 us (18 KHz) I think. All instructions had the next instruction address in them, so an optimizer could arrange instructions around a drum track so that the next instruction came up just as the current instruction was finishing. But, unless you unrolled loops, you only got one loop every turn of the drum. That REALLY slowed things down. And the drum only held about 2000 words.
But, they managed to get a whole computer to fit in one box the size of a refrigerator, with 300 tubes and 3000 Germanium diodes.
Jon
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