How do _you_ move equipment? What "tools" do you use?

From: Ian Primus <ian_primus_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon Oct 20 19:32:39 2003

On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 07:24 PM, John Rollins wrote:

> LOL... I had an interesting way back when I got my Series/1. Loading
> into a minivan mind you... When it got to the loading dock there were
> plenty of old cardboard boxes around(big ones!), so we piled them all
> up next to the rack and tilted it over... Wham! Once "safely" on its
> side, moved it into position and shoved into the back. Lots of fun!
> Probably not the greatest idea, but that thing was rock solid.
>
> -JR
>
>
Heh, you should have seen how I got my Prime minicomputer home... I
used my dad's Pontiac Bonneville with a Uhaul trailer, and two friends
volunteered to help. Getting it into the trailer was fun. We built a
ramp with an old pallet and some plywood, and were able to shove the
tape drive and the hard drive cabinet up into the trailer. The system
unit was fun, since it was heavier, and strapped to a small pallet. We
used a pallet jack and jacket it up, then shoved the pallet jack up the
ramp. I ended up just taking the pallet jack with me, I only lived a
mile away and they said I could borrow it, so then we offloaded in a
similar fashion. Getting the computer into the basement was fun too. I
have a walk out basement, but there is a pretty good hill going down to
the back yard. I had quite a time running backward behind a Prime 5340
on a pallet jack, trying to keep myself from being run over, and trying
to slow the computer down. All went fine, getting the smaller drive
cabinets into the basement was easy. The system unit, however, was
about a half inch larger than the sliding glass door in the basement,
and very, very heavy. I ended up having to dismantle it into the four
'slices', and carry them in individually. I got everything in and set
up, but at the moment, I don't know enough about the hardware to get it
to boot. The Prime is the biggest computer I have ever moved, but I
would imagine that others have much larger systems... One of these
days, I hope to find a PDP 11 or a VAX, but I have no idea how to go
about moving something as large as an old IBM system. The best thing I
could suggest is to talk to someone that moves refrigerators. and maybe
borrow one of those heavy duty dolly things, I think they are called
refrigerator movers. Good luck with it.

Ian Primus
ian_primus_at_yahoo.com
Received on Mon Oct 20 2003 - 19:32:39 BST