Looking for a good home for my PDP-8/L (working)

From: Charles <charlesmorris_at_direcway.com>
Date: Fri Aug 29 20:34:00 2003

I no longer have the time or interest to play with my "University
Computing Company" 4K PDP-8/L. It's a box and front panel but no
cabinet - can't tell if it was a rackmount or tabletop. After
replacing almost all the 7440's and a few other IC's, it seems to
be fully working and "talks" with my ASR33 (desktop, no stand).
Many panel bulbs were bad so I have replaced them with
LEDs/resistors - glows red instead of orange/white but doesn't
burn out!

The only problem is intermittent read errors from the tape reader
that prevent me from reading in a long tape like FOCAL or PAL. RIM
can be toggled in and it reads BIN successfully.

I also have a homemade NVRAM DF32/DS32 128K emulator (you may have
seen the posts this winter) which also appears to be working but
may need some modification to work with DEC software. It stores
and reads blocks of data, anyhow, and is a 99% complete emulation
of the huge rackmount DF32 + 3 DS32 assembly. The interface is the
standard five-cable posibus and I had my own "paddle" connector
boards fabricated to use with standard 40 pin ribbon cables. I
will include the (Eagle format) schematic and board files and
hopefully someone can complete the project.

Emailed pictures available. I'd like to sell the whole works (8/L,
TTY and disk project) to a good home ;) otherwise it goes on E
bay.

-Charles
Received on Fri Aug 29 2003 - 20:34:00 BST