Evil Lurker Won, Gets His Parts

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Wed Jun 28 12:51:26 2000

> It's true the DEC racks don't grow on trees, but their scrap value doesn't
> pay for shipping and storage. Ask anybody who's got them. Likewise, the
> PSU's cost a lot to move and store, but seldom bring benefit proportional
to
> the effort.
>
> What's wrong with letting this guy have what he wants?

See, I'm not a DEC guy, so I really don't know how rare a
MicroPDP-11/73 is (and how different they are or aren't
from a regular PDP-11). On the assumption that they don't
make them anymore and thus are kinda rare, I thought it
worthwhile to preserve/restore a nearly complete and
almost operational system. And let me tell you how clean
this thing was. Since the guy didn't want anything heavy,
I picked up the TS05 tape drive out of the rack last night.
The plexiglass tape door had not a scratch on it, nor did
the rest of the unit. And no discoloration anywhere either.

It had been used at the University of Louisville Medical
School, and they took awesome care of it. I just thought
it an ideal machine to save.

After I looked at it even more carefully at home, I
almost couldn't bring myself to remove the plexiglass
door to replace the broken one on my Cipher F880. My
Cipher isn't in nearly as good a shape. The two units
aren't identical; while the TS05 is a Cipher F880, it
doesn't support the 3200bpi density mine does. But I'll
bet dollars to donuts that the mechanical assemblies
are the same, so now I've got an excellent source of
spares to keep my drive working.

Now if i can just find a Prime 2301 Tape Controller...

-doug q
Received on Wed Jun 28 2000 - 12:51:26 BST