> Provided they have an EPROM blower (not everyone does...), and you give
> them a hex dump of the firmware. Even then they don't get things like the
> oriignal DEC label for the EPROM.
Maintaining original labels is going to be hard to do,
as the EPROMs age. I've already had to refresh some
EPROMs from equipment as recent as 1982.
> > > But for common, still-easy-to-get parts, I'd rather buy them new than
> > > strip them out of a classic computer.
> >
> > Some things aren't worth preserving, like the RRD40.
>
> I beg to differ on that point. I cna't think of a single piece of classic
> computer equipment that isn't wanted somewhere by somebody. I've obtained
> some very rare items with the comment 'I am supprised anyone would be
> interested in _that_'.
That may be true, but one person replied that I could
have stripped an IBM PC-compatible SCSI controller to
get the same SCSI IC I got from the RRD40 adapter. Why
not preserve all those, too, as one day someone will
consider those parts classic as well.
> You can bet there's a collector who is trying to get one of every model
> of DEC storage device or something who will want an RRD40.
That may be the case, but where do we draw the line?
Of course one man's trash is another man's treasure,
but will everything be worth keeping? And how do we
justify what we restore and cannibalized? For instance,
the MVII I am converting to a PDP-11. I've had good
feedback on the conversion, but nobody has said to me
that I should keep the MVII intact and sell it complete
and buy a complete PDP-11 or all the parts. For the
RRD40 drives, I offered them, with the controller board
thrown in, but the drives in no way require the controller
board to operate. The drives were normally sold to be
used with the RRD50 controller; the SCSI adapter boards
were just a kludge to get the drives to work with SCSI
controllers. I took them out of the Infoserver 100 and
replaced them with compatible SCSI CDROM drives so I
could have a functioning system. Should I have kept the
Infoserver 100 pure instead? That would have meant the
Infoserver 100 would have been a paperweight for me,
when instead I could use it in my network. I was also
able to use the three socketed ICs to restore some other
classic equipment. Sure, I could have bought the parts
I needed, but I had them available in a socketed board
that I would otherwise not have used, so using the parts
made sense.
I don't believe in cannibalizing special or rare items.
Otherwise, I would not have preserved the Burroughs
E6000 system complete that I have, which I've already
found someone willing to retrieve and restore. You
can bet there's a lot of gold in that system, but I
would rather have it preserved than scrapped.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman_at_dittman.net
Received on Tue Apr 24 2001 - 14:57:12 BST