Ali Babas cave

From: Hans B Pufal <hansp_at_columbia.digiweb.com>
Date: Wed May 13 22:50:22 1998

William Donzelli wrote:
 
> In a desperate effort to get on topic, I dug this out of the pile...

Yes, on topic messages were getting rather thin on the ground ;-)
 
> French minicomputers...hmmm, those sound interesting. I rarely see French
> made electronics here - I would like to see how it compares to other
> things. What was the name of the manufacturer?

Micral, SEA, Bull are three that come immediately to mind. I don't have
access to the inventory yet.

> > Among the DEC machines I saw was a complete PDP-9. How rare are these?
>
> You may never see one ever again!
>
> The 18-bit DEC machines were never a really big hit (they were odd ducks,
> mostly made for process control), and really did not survive well at all.
> I would venture to say that there are probably less than ten of the 18 bit
> machines in captivity today, and that includes PDP-1s, 7s, 9s, 9/Ls, and
> the various 15s.

That is good news (for us). Do you have contact details for anyone who
has one?

Are you connected with the Rhode Island group? If so I would appreciate
some pointers on how to operate such a group. We have this huge
collection here gathering dust in a storehouse but plans are in place to
move it to a location where some, hopefully many, of these machines will
be restored to working state.

Regards,

Hans B Pufal
Received on Wed May 13 1998 - 22:50:22 BST