A rare "win" for thebugguy: a free 1978 Intel SDK-86

All-

I haven't been spending much time with the e-scrap lately, but I thought I would humblebrag one of those rare times I actually did quite well for myself. An acquaintance-of-a-friend was moving into a new house he and his wife had just built and the wife refused to let him bring along his collection of old electronic junk. One evening this guy pulled up to my house with a pickup truck half-full of this stuff and, with his better-half standing guard against second thoughts, asked if I wanted it. "Sure" I said, "just don't tell *my* wife!"



Anyway, most of it *was* junk (in the sense that it had no re-sale value beyond scrap), but this one board stood out as being kind of nifty. I had never seen one before, and after poking around a bit I learned it was an Intel Systems Design Kit 86, which had recently sold on Ebay for about $50 untested:



Well, up it went on Ebay, but instead of selling for $50, it actually went for about $215, which made for a very happy bugguy! I'm not sure why, unless the date of manufacture had something to do with it- the wiki pages says these things came out in 1979, though this board was stamped 1978:



The ooonly thing that kept me from truly enjoying this one modest score is that I *think* he gave me the metal base and power supply to the board as well ($$$), but not recognizing them for what they were I turned them in at the scrapyard for $0.07 per lb a week before figuring this all out...

Anyway, that's what an Intel SDK-86 looks like, if you ever happen to come across one...

cheers,
thebugguy

that's awesome congrats never come across one before so thanks for sharing so can be on the look out and this is why this forum rocks

That is cool and 1978 what a year!

Originally sold for about $800 and was one of the first home computers!

Yeah,

I had bought a Motorola version of the same microprocessor development board back in '78 or '79. It was for the Motorola MC6800. Used it to make a design project in my last year of engineering--built a big pen plotter. I still have the secondary circuit board I built to run the servo motors but someone got away with the Motorola board about the time I got married. Still PO'ed about that as my younger son is taking Electronics Engineering and has asked about it....

Good score for finding that board and even better, recognizing it for what it was and eBaying it!!

Jon.