Ahoy, DECmate II the little PDP-8 that could

In the flickers:

→ [https://starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=144]

Does anyone know what that characteristic smell is DEC equipment has? It's different from the characteristic smell of (for example) Sun equipment. Rainbow's smell like VAXen.

> It started at $27,000 [in 2026 dollars about $282,000], a surprisingly low cost for the era, and about a thousand were sold.

To give you a sense of scale, in 1963 when the first PDP8 was launched at $27k, here in the UK the very first JCB 3C backhoe loader was launched at around £2500 - roughly a quarter of the price of a PDP8 in real terms, or about three year's salary for its driver.

So think in terms of how much "You know what? It'd save us so much time and money to just buy ourselves one of *these* things" you could buy yourself with the money :-)