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Another Apple 1 Headed to Auction with $125,000 Estimate

OK, so the working one was $375,000 and this one is $125,000 because it's not working.

So buy it, get AppleCare and then resell for a $250,000 profit. :p:D
 
Seriously (I skipped almost the entire thread so far as it's been pretty light)...

So in this case (well, not the inauthentic plastic case (yes, I've seen a real Apple I back about 1986 or so...), is a fixed Apple I worth more than a "pristine", but non-functional one?

A unit such as this may have a long-dead EPROM in it. Or maybe not.

I used to make EPROMs back in the late '70s (as a product engineer, that is), and while the spec for data retention was generally for only 5 years, the test results indicated that the ones that met the basic spec would have flawless data retention many times that. Of course, "now" (~35 years later) would currently be 7 times the original spec.

FYI, we did some calculations, and determined that the number of electrons in a single floating gate of a 2708 EPROM was on the order of a million electrons (not all that many!).

I will further note that the EPROMS I made (2708, 2716) were N-channel EPROMS, and worlds better then the predecessor P-channel (e.g., 1702) EPROMS that might have been used in an Apple I.

Yes, I read (and think I may still have a copy of) the seminal ~1973 paper by Dov Frohman-Bentchkowsky. ;-)
 
I guess if you really wanted it, and had 125K sitting around, then this would be the relic for you, haha!

Or just a very avid Apple fan, either way.
 
philryan said:
$666.66 to $80,000 in 36 years, is only growth of about 15% per annum. I know, I know, with stocks and real estate being a bit of a crap-shoot, this is still good money... but how many of us are hoarding lots of useless, let's face it, crap, in a forlorn hope that it will be worth something some day? The chances of that old laser printer or Mac SE being worth anything significant in 20 years time are closer to nil than your chances of winning the lottery.
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Even as an investment, it isn't all that impressive. It just goes to show how one should consider computers as expenses, not investments.

Sales of the Apple-1 were discontinued on September 30, 1977. Let's say that instead of buying the $666.66 computer on the last day of its availability with the hopes that it would end up as a collectible item, you bought shares of a well-known blue-chip stock instead (rather than something dangerously speculative). Let's use General Electric for this example.

Today, that GE investment would be worth $396,567.
 
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You know someone's a real fanboy when he buys a broken Apple I for $125,000.
 
Milquetoast said:
A unit such as this may have a long-dead EPROM in it. Or maybe not.
Click to expand...

Good thought.

I used to make EPROMs back in the late '70s (as a product engineer, that is), and while the spec for data retention was generally for only 5 years, the test results indicated that the ones that met the basic spec would have flawless data retention many times that. Of course, "now" (~35 years later) would currently be 7 times the original spec.
Click to expand...

In the early 1990s we had just made a new 68000 based multi-layer board computer. To everyone's dismay, it refused to boot. Every circuit trace was checked and rechecked, and yet it failed. The company had millions in sales hinging on the device working.

So I went into the office / factory over the weekend and taught myself how to use our new logic analyzer. As I stepped through the boot process, everything worked until the CPU went back over already-read code addresses. Then it failed. I checked and the EPROM data was incorrect.

Aha. That EPROM must be bad. Okay, burn another. And another. Same thing kept happening. Then I realized that it was erasing the code as it read it, so the second time junk came back. What the heck?

Finally it hit me that we had just gotten in a new set of EPROMs and were using those. I broke into our stockroom and grabbed some chips from a different company. Bingo, they worked, and thus the board worked! Hurrah!

Turned out that our EPROM programmer was designed for the first type of EPROMs and was low by a few millivolts from correctly programming the newer model chips. So they burned and verified, but then failed quickly.

Once we got an updated programmer, all was okay.
 
Beezzy said:
Prob like a 65mhz cpu with 1mb of ram, 325mb of storage haha
Click to expand...

Not even close. You estimates are over 10 times to high. The computer I owned at that time ran at 4MHz and we though it was fast. this was closer to 1MHz. We measured RAM in Kilobytes back then.

I remember an IBM computer, a model 360. This was in about 1976. It has a full 1MB of RAM. The RAM fit inside an 8 foot cube. It was divided into 8 sections each abut 1 foot wide and 8 square. The sections were on wheels so it could be pulled out the repaired. This was at UCLA in about '76. This is also wet I first saw the "Internet" but back then it as "darpanet" and only connected a few computers.

You numbers 65MHz and 1MB are also WAY above the specs of the first IBM PC.

But you know what? Those machines were not slow. THis used different software that was suited to the power available.
 
Whether or not you have it (and a lot of us do), this is a completely retarded way to spend 125k. Assuming that the Apple hype dies down in ten years, which it probably will, will it even be worth 125 then after inflation? There are certain things worth spending 125k on as historical collectables, this is not amongst them.
 
Hmmmmm

I have a mint Atari ST Mega4 computer, whopping 20MB HD (huge), and the original display. And lots of SW for it. I was gonna take it to the recycle place but I think I'll hang onto it. Might be worth $50 some day....;)
 
Will YouTube run on this?

How much RAM is supported?

What is the latest version of Mac OS X that I can run on this?

Will it blend?

These are the questions that haunt us all... :eek:
 
Worked with an old valley engineer in my early career out here who was a member of the "Cupertino Homebrew Computer Club." He showed me the newletters he collected during the 70's and the UNASSEMBLED Apple I kit that he never put together. I can only imagine what that is worth.
 
Don't wanna be a party pooper, but seriously... they would have to pay ME to drive that garbage to the recycling yard. Or, in fact, I will drive it to recycling if one gives me a Raspberry Pi for it, i.e. something useful.
 
So, if that's not the original box does that mean it's the Apple 1 1st or 2nd Generation? or can we just call it the Apple 2...actually I think we know how this ends...
 
I wish I had bought an Apple 1 or 2 back in the days and kept it in a locker till today - too bad I was just a kid back then. Nothing today I can buy and keep for 30 years and get rich... or maybe the "surface" could be one day ?
 
sicn said:
Don't wanna be a party pooper, but seriously... they would have to pay ME to drive that garbage to the recycling yard. Or, in fact, I will drive it to recycling if one gives me a Raspberry Pi for it, i.e. something useful.
Click to expand...

Wow, you must get cheated all the time, given your inability to recognize that things have value to other people, even if they don't to you.
 
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