Trash or Treasure?

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire_at_neurotica.com>
Date: Fri Sep 22 17:16:37 2000

  Sounds like a control computer for a GenRad automated pc-board
testing system. They used various pdp11 machines to run their board
testing machines. I'd say it's a pretty nice score.

     -Dave McGuire

On September 22, Joe wrote:
> A couple of weeks ago I found a box in a scrap yard with a half height 8"
> floppy drive it in. The box was marked "Gen-Rad" and looked like part of a
> old piece of test equipment. I picked up the box just for the floppy drive
> and brought it home. Today I started to take it apart and found that it was
> made by Scientific Micro Systems and has a number of DEC cards in it as
> well as a Maxtor XT-1085 hard drive. My question is what is it and weather
> it's worth keeping or is it just good for parts?
>
> Here's the details; It's marked "Gen Rad 2295 Central Station" on the
> front. The back is marked "Scientific Micro Systems" "model MDX01170".
> It's about 9" w x 11" h x 17" deep. On the back it has eight DB-25m ports
> on the back. They're marked "TZ0" through "TZ3", "LP0" and "TT0" through
> "TT2". Inside it has a DEC M7957 quad board, a half size board made by
> Sigma Information Systems Inc (connected to the TT* and LP0 ports), a half
> size "Q RAM 11" board made by Clear Point (memory?), a DEC M 8186 half size
> card, and a half size SMS card (1002001-0001/0004220-0001) that is also
> connected via a jumper to the last card, a full quad size SMS card
> (1001939-0001/0003770-0001). The last card has ribbon cables that connect
> to the floppy and hard drive.
>
> Does anyone know what it is? Is it worth anything? FWIW I haven't tried
> to connect a terminal to it yet but it appears to power up and boot.
>
> Joe
Received on Fri Sep 22 2000 - 17:16:37 BST