Display units revisited
 

Hi Grant,

A little over a year ago, someone asked you whether you'd be willing to sell just the case and front panel as a display unit (or an enclosure for a modern PC). What's your current thinking on this? I, and I suspect many others, would love to have a piece of nerd nostalgia, but don't have the time for 8080 programming anymore.

Thanks,
Bob Alexander

I suppose the price would go down a little bit. The case and front panel with associated parts make up most of the price.

How do you think it affects the value of the system? If you wanted to sell it in the future on E-bay, do you think a functioning computer
would be worth more?

I'm not suggesting that its necessary to consider selling something before you even buy it, but its something I think about.

Hi Grant,

Thanks for the reply. I'm a little disappointed that there's not much effect on the price. However, if there's a big effect on the labor required on your part, and if a significant number of people just wanted the case, you might be able to produce more, faster.

I hadn't considered the resale value, and I wouldn't venture to guess. Have Altair replicas been sold on eBay? How do their prices compare to original Altairs? If a person is going to put a PC in the Altair case, does he care about resale? After all, every time he upgrades his PC, he'd just take the old components out and put new ones in.

The big question, of course, is how many people would like their modern PC to look like an Altair? The secondary question is, where does the CD drive go? :)

- Bob

Vince Breil came up with this idea a couple of years ago; see: http://www.brielcomputers.com/altairpc.html

The project has been on hold for a while.

He's got a couple of other interesting projects including an Apple I replica and the Micro-KIM. I have one of the latter and it's been a lot of fun for me who missed the original KIM the first time around.