It seems the classic computer gods have been smiling on me this week...
Yesterday I went to a scrapyard I hadn't been to in a while, was thinking
same stuff as before, then I saw some MicroVAX II's.. Not terribly exciting,
but new... And then I turned around, and nearly peed my pants: A TI 990 with
a TI FD1000 floppy disk system! And then I found a 2nd one... Both are
990/5's, one in the 5-slot chassis and one in a 13.. And I found 2 more
empty chassis that will need some help, but are definetly rebuildable... And
I paid less for all 4 and the 2 FD1000's than one empty chassis sold for on
Ebay! Once I got the stuff unloaded, I was feeling brave, so I plugged in
one of the CPUs and turned it on.. and... IT WORKED! Anyway, today I went by
another surplus place I frequent, and they said "Oh, we have a bunch of DEC
docs for you" So I walked back and there were 4 racks of PDP-11 stuff.. 3
DECDatasystems (11/23-based), each with dual RL02s (one rack may have
RL01's), a 4th rack with an RL02 and a Fujitsu M2312K, 32 disk packs,
including a pair with RSX-11+ 4.0 on them, manuals for a DECmate (VT278),
all the software for the DECmate, the manuals for the DECdatasystems, and
some handbooks... Also when I was at the scrapyard on Monday, a guy who saw
me load my car asked me about the stuff, I told him about my museum plans,
and he gave me his business card and told me to call a person at where he
works and he said that "they could fill my pickup" with minicomputers! I now
own 10 minis with blinkenlights.. and only 1 of them is DEC! YAY!
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Received on Tue Jun 26 2001 - 22:23:10 BST