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I have for some years been building up an extensive collection of old systems, and I've started the process of documenting them here. It all started around 1990, when my girlfriend (now wife) brought a *thing* home from Cambridge University Chemistry Dept. She said 'they were going to throw this out and I thought you might be interested in it...'. Up until then I'd only ever worked with IBM PC and Mac systems, so this box came as a bit of a shock. I examined it for several minutes and concluded eventually that it was probably a computer. It was a DEC pdp-8e!
Over the next few weeks I learned a little more, got it powered up - no manuals, no terminal, just the cpu box with its front panel - and started working out what all those switches did. Then I had a break - I got in touch with a guy named Pete Waldron (aka Old Father Time) at DEC UK, in Basingstoke. He put me right, and put me in touch with a colleague who was having a clear-out... I drove to Basingstoke and came back with a car full of bits - a rack, another 8e, an 8a, RK05, paper tape reader, RX01, manuals - all good stuff.
I've never looked back, and grabbed machines from anywhere I could over
the years since then. Here are some of them. Click on the links in the
navigation frame above for more info on each of the main types I deal with,
and details of the individual machines. Most of these systems are still
in the UK... in storage since my move to the USA towards the end of '98.
At least some of them will be joining me here when we get settled somplace
with enough workshop space to take them! In the meantime, a select few
systems have made it over, and still more have been aquired in the USA.
For your entertainment, here's a panorama (click on any image to see the
high-res original) of the current Corestore operations centre:
I've divided these pages into four subsections, corresponding to the main
areas of my collection:
DEC pdp systems - pdp-8, pdp-11, pdp-10, pdp-12, pdp-15, and their associated
software and peripherals
Large IBM Systems - IBM 1800, System/360, System/370, System/390, System/3x, and AS/400
Supercomputers - especially Cray, Convex, and Connection Machine systems
Various oddball workstations & Unix boxen
I'm happy to help and trade with anyone interested in this field; email me if you feel I can help you, also please check out my 'Wants List' - there are some systems I'd pay serious money for!
Cambridge
University Computer Preservation Society
Al's Xerox
Collection
Computer Conservation
Society (UK)
Joe Smith's pdp-10 page
Dinos Web
Ring
The Retro-Computing Society
of Rhode Island
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