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DEC units on ebay

cchhrriiss11 said:
Agreed.... I thought all of the Straight-8's were in museums - and not in private collections/ownership. There certainly can't be many out there.
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Not all are in museums. I am 2nd owner of SN1173. Built in 1967 it has 8k with EAE and the power fail option. AF01, TC01 with 3 TU55 drives., 64k DF32, PC01 and 34D scope option. In other words it is three cabinets and I have the shelf in the front. Mine has the original glass in the front panel although I did repair the common peeling paint on the edge issue.

The core has generally not been the issue. You tune it and it seems to stay good. Right now the front panel is glitchy. Probably just needs some cleaning.

The one on eBay looks decent but appears to be only 4k and no EAE. I didn't look to see if it has the extended memory option. I think a starting bid of 5k and a buy it now of 10k would be more likely to see some action. The real problem with the Straight 8 is that it is a Negibus machine and finding peripherals is difficult. Heck, finding cables is difficult. This machine as shown would be able to run the 4k paper tape software via the reader/punch on the teletype. A blast from the past but the novelty gets old very fast.
 
DougIngraham said:
64k DF32,
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32k?
DougIngraham said:
Right now the front panel is glitchy. Probably just needs some cleaning.
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The logic uses non latched output from the momentary switches so switch bounce causes weird behavior. It has a one shot to try to wait for switch bounce to settle but switches this old really bounce. I've cleaned but it seems to come back after a while.May need to get more aggressive if it gets to be too much of a pain.
 
One DF32 and one DS32 to get 64k. I do not plan to ever spin them up. When the College had the machine they left the drives running 24x7 to prevent problems. When stopped the head platter interface tends to collect moisture and you can see where the head rested if it sits there too long. I don't think the material choice for the platter was all that great. I guessed it was some sort of nickel cobalt alloy. In any case, it is far more fun to watch DECtapes spin. All the DF32 does is make a little whirring noise. No head movement as they are all fixed.

Yeah, the switch bounce is pretty bad on those old switches. Should probably come up with some sort of filtering solution. Someone had placed a cap across one of the switches in an attempt to solve it back in the late 60's. All that probably ended up doing was accelerate the wear on that switch. I removed the cap with no change in behavior so it is back to original. I looked through the ECO's and never found one for the panel switches.
 
Some really interesting machines coming out of the woodwork these days. I've seen a few rare systems over the past months, even some in the Europe. I have a hunch that the price of vintage systems peaked a few years back now, as I see systems hanging around on the auction sites for months whereas before they went very quickly. Perhaps people are starting to offload systems that were kept as investments or realise it might be a while before things pick up again. All good for us collectors though. Not so good if you want to offload/sell.
The price on this machine seems very low to me though. I'd be tempted if it was in Europe, although I'd have to sell the car first though :p
 
Not exactly eBay, but may be of interest to someone.

413f849a-eb07-49f8-81c8-e6e8f3151796

Vintage NEW RK06 Memory Disk Packs​

Not giving investment advice, but he claims
"..these would be very valuable to own and keep and will increase in value." :unsure:
 
Huh? I thought RK06 and RK07 packs had two platters, I've got one somewhere (I think) and the diff was the RK06 was half density.

Also could the RK06 be formatted in the field (probably not the servo platter)?
 
Interesting,
looks like DEC packs - but without colour.
Ok, these are 3rd party packs.
I can't see any information written on the packaging of the other pics that these are for RK06 drives, well maybe the usual websearch pops some infos out...
 
In one of the photos, it looks like these might be RL01 packs as the size is specified as 5MB -- What a great find though, NOS RL01 (third party/compatible) packs!
1696092345376.png

I'm definitely interested in a few myself. I've contacted the seller and will probably get some shipped to BC if anyone else close is interested? @ftcnet ?

-Chris
 
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THEY ARE PROBABLY NOT RL01 PACKS!

Seriously, that pack physical format was used by some Diablo drives, and IBM drives I think. But an RL01 uses an embedded servo signal between the sectors and you can't format that in the field without something really interesting.

So not a RL01.
 
original DECmate with RX02s if anyone is in the area of brunswick, GA and can pick up (or arrange shipping): https://www.ebay.com/itm/335043697995

looks to be a bit dirty but could be restoreable, not a bad asking price for a project

been watching it and only posted because nobody's bid yet, i would grab it myself but timing is bad :/
 
So there are two pdp8/L's on Ebay. Our super expensive one up there is down below 5k (a reasonable price IMO) and there is a second one that is in parts but "clean" and of course untested for 2k. That's not bad IMO.....
 
The 2K one didn't sell but it is relisted for the same price. I admit this is tempting to me, it seems much less of a basket case than the other one at 2X the cost, and although the front panel definitely needs repair, it seems quite manageable. The (slightly?) damaged backplane is a bit more concerning and I don't know if it's otherwise complete beyond the 2 missing cards mentioned in the description. How big of a deal are the missing M706 and M707 interface cards, are these pretty much unobtainium at this point?

If I had my druthers, it would be an 8i or 8e however.
 
706 and 707 are not important. Someone (Dave I think) makes and sells replacements that support RS232 and an amazing baud generator that works far better than the original one.

Yeah an 8/I is neat, but to be honest I've had one and they are huge for about the same speed. An 8/e is fine (I have one, want to trade for a BM08/L?) but kind of boring when you think about it.
 
czunit said:
706 and 707 are not important. Someone (Dave I think) makes and sells replacements that support RS232 and an amazing baud generator that works far better than the original one.

Yeah an 8/I is neat, but to be honest I've had one and they are huge for about the same speed. An 8/e is fine (I have one, want to trade for a BM08/L?) but kind of boring when you think about it.
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Hmmm - I can do a lot more with a PDP-8/e than with a 8/L, so there is nothing "boring" about it - quite the opposite.
 
thunter0512 said:
Hmmm - I can do a lot more with a PDP-8/e than with a 8/L, so there is nothing "boring" about it - quite the opposite.
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If they're so great I'll trade one for a BM08 :)

More seriously an 8e can do things but so can a Raspberry Pi running an emulator. The cool thing about the 8I and L is that they do it with nothing more complex than flip flops and analog amplifiers.

The ultimate win of course is the 8S which does it with..... insanity :)

It all depends on what you're looking for in life. You can do a lot more with an RL02 than an RK8 but which would you rather have.... :)
 
I have an 8/L and also the complete omnibus family. I like the 8/L for what it is. A small machine designed to be cost effective for dedicated applications like the satellite navigation for example.

A PDP8/S would be nice or a straight 8... I just like these because of the use of discrete transistors. Oh well... dream on... :) What would a 8/S be worth anyway? I've no idea...
 
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