As of recent any 80's and early 90's machines or parts seems to have sky rocketed, as many people have thrown out or scrapped good working bits, so people now think that the stuff they have is worth a lot of money.
Granted that's a nice example of a clean machine but I wouldn't pay any more then £20 UK for it and then factoring in postage, simply because its a 486.
We know what the prices of parts are but joe public thinks it's old so it's worth a load of money.,
yeah, eBay isn't the best judge of those things though, especially those listings. I've seen plenty. It's actually sort of interesting... the old PCs are split into two categories: (1) the cheap ones, which are probably missing some expansion slot covers, or some case plastic, and are in kind of crappy condition, and they're the tower alone. Most often listed as, for example, the brand and the original operating system, or maybe the CPU. (e.g., "dell windows 95," or "compaq pentium"). (2) Then there are the "shiny" ones (reminds me of Apple, in a way). They're usually in nice clean shape, with a fresh install of the O/S, and include keyboard, mouse, speakers, manual, Microsoft® Windows™ COA with "GENUINE" CD, gamepad, other useless peripherals, etc. And then they're titled as like "*VINTAGE* 486 DOS GAMING PC, MUST SEE!" It always bothers me as the slight perfectionist instinct of my computing interests always makes me look at them. So clean and shiny. :P
I guess at any given time, computers 10-14 years old are the cheapest available, after which they become much less common and split into these categories. But right now something like a P3 1GHz, *should* be really cheap. Except people still consider anything that runs XP "new," so, maybe not. Have you seen those OptiPlexes, the slim ones, PIIIs on eBay? Sometimes they're listed for as much as a P4 full tower :P
actually the old OptiPlex SFFs aren't too bad now. I wouldn't mind one of those, they were kind of nice. Kind of like this one; it's only $20, and that's a 2.2 GHz Celeron. Wow, these lower-end P4-era machines are really on the end of the value line... (time for me to buy ALL of them )
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Bargain.
Seriously though, your best bet is probably a flea market or local goodwill store. Pick one up for $5. Either that or trash pick one.
Granted that's a nice example of a clean machine but I wouldn't pay any more then £20 UK for it and then factoring in postage, simply because its a 486.
We know what the prices of parts are but joe public thinks it's old so it's worth a load of money.,
I guess at any given time, computers 10-14 years old are the cheapest available, after which they become much less common and split into these categories. But right now something like a P3 1GHz, *should* be really cheap. Except people still consider anything that runs XP "new," so, maybe not. Have you seen those OptiPlexes, the slim ones, PIIIs on eBay? Sometimes they're listed for as much as a P4 full tower :P