Apple 1 Motherboard Sold for $905,000 | Hacker News Reader

Apple 1 Motherboard Sold for $905,000

bonhams.com

49 pointstilt46 comments

That's a crazy amount of money. But I'll be honest... if I had a ton of money I would buy it too. IMO, this is a part of computing history that is very important. I think having a collection of the history of computers would be awesome.

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View has exactly that. http://www.computerhistory.org It's a pretty cool place to spend an afternoon.

Fry's in Santa Clara used to have one on display on their floor, bur it's gone now. My friends and I would fantasize about Hudson Hawking in at night and stealing the thing, but it was removed from display before we could ever attempt it.

Thanks for the 90's flashback.

It sounds so much better as a verb than Mission Impossibling.

I've always enjoyed the Apple 1 auctions. I probably should have bought the one at the Vintage Computer Festival in 2000 for $5,000 but I couldn't see its value :-). Somewhere out there is my home built Digital Group machine (also with bodged together keyboard and converted tv for a monitor) but Dr. Suding didn't go on to create an influential computer company. But he did have the coolest dual cassette tape system that tried to be a DECTape equivalent.

> Indeed, the story is perhaps just as famous now as the one that inspired the company name: Newton theorizing gravity under the apple tree.

This is incorrect according to Jobs biography - apparently the name was given in reference to Steve Jobs' eating preferences. :)

Two months ago I ordered an original ZX Spectrum 48K, on board series 3B for about $200. It is the same I had as my first computer when I was a kid. I knew I could have it all on the emulator, and, I didn't expect how much excitement and inspiration I had after loading several games from a cassette recorder and playing on a pixel-crawly TV. In fact, had to take sleeping pills after the first time. Now I am thinking to buy myself a C64, a separate small TV, and an Apple ][ with a monitor... will have to buy a separate table for that.

I wonder what kind of condition those large electrolytic capacitors are in after 38 years? They don't last forever.

Did anyone notice this link on that site?

http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21652/lot/188/

How cool, I wish they had put it into production.

There are other books full of photos of prototype devices, especially from the mid to late 1980s.

http://twistedsifter.com/2014/06/apple-prototypes-from-the-1...

The LC with the portrait black and white display was quite common among text-writers in the 90s.

It looks a lot like a Macintosh color classic.

But the most distinctive feature is the monitor in portrait orientation. Apple never shipped an all-in-one like that.

Hmmm.

I have a set of original IBM 5150 (PC/XT I think) technical and operator manuals. Wonder if they're worth anything. Doubt I'd sell them, there's something about opening a computer manual and seeing actual schematics!

I always wondered what a fantastic resale value Apple gear has and always had.

I've got an old MacBook kicking about somewhere. If an Apple I is worth that much I should get at least a million for a MacBook, it's way more powerful.

Don't miss the video of it in operation.

http://www.bonhams.com/video/17458/

Oh man....

10 print "Hello "; 20 goto 10; run

what memories

I'm not sure who won the auction, but this should be in a museum somewhere. Hopefully it will find its way to one.

It was bought by the Henry Ford museum, which seems about right.

http://www.cultofmac.com/300624/museum-pays-record-breaking-...

For a museum, it's especially nice that it's not just the motherboard, but a whole setup including home-built power supply, vintage monitor, and home-built keyboard. That really makes you appreciate the time.

If I had a completely unreasonable amount of money I would buy this, quite a bit out of my price range.

The Apple 1 is open source so you could create this yourself.

And gold is available everywhere, so you could create your own vintage coins.

A modern clone of the PCB has been done: http://www.willegal.net/appleii/apple1.htm

Sourcing all the required components is likely to be difficult.

My old MSX dont worth anything... maybe someday :-/

Rare + unmodified + working = $$$$$

This is why, if you own one of the first FPGA/ASIC Bitcoin miners, you should keep it. They could become historical artifacts of a technology that may end up changing day-to-day trade & finance... Personally I kept my Ngzhang Icarus units, Enterpoint Cairnsmore1 units (one of them is serial# 3), Ztex 1.15y units, Avalon gen1 units (the first commercially available Bitcoin ASIC), and our TAV 105 Gh/s units. Most of them were extremely small production runs: less than 1000 units ever built.

Back in 1976, very few people understood how the Apple 1 and personal computers were about to change day-to-day communication.

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