Sale of another PDP-11/05

[Qbus]

Another PDP 11/05 that was in fair condition with big case, CPU cards and couple sets of memory cards just sold on EBay, I bid $500 on it myself but did not expect to get it at that price, it sold for $ 510 Thought it would go higher then that although other then a serial board had no other stuff with it. Now I got to feel guilty for not cranking it up a bit more. Item number 290705202538
RF

 

[1944GPW]

Hi all,
Indulge me while I make my own comment about this recent eBay auction, I heartily congratulate the winning bidder. $510 USD for that machine was I think a very VERY good price with extra CPU cards and the like. My 10-1/2" 11/05 cost me about $800 USD before adding on the shipping from Arizona to Australia (which took about 7 months, three shipping agents and some local interstate shipping) and considerably less than my slimline 11/05 (the subject of that outrageous "collusion" thread a while back) which I obtained for considerably less than the $2000 USD another slimline 11/05 went for last year. On its way to Australia less than 48 hours after the auction finished, postage of this one was a very reasonable $375 although it suffered some minor case damage by not being packed properly.
Heck, an 11/05 console front panel alone went for I recall $280 USD in the last year. Doubtless there are those who will shake their head and comment "yeah, I got one of THOSE but only paid $X for it" where X is some embarrassingly low amount. I restore WWII vintage vehicles and believe me I hear this comment at swap meets and clearing auctions all the time, whilst chasing rare parts. Sometimes I pay too much, sure, but for the most part I ignore them.

Anyway, I ramble. I suppose I am guilty about not posting some details about my own machines here. I will do so, just need some bulk time to work on them, what with all my other hobbies (and family) competing for time.

So again I reckon whoever got that 11/05 today is jumping for joy, what a fantastic win!

Steve.

 

[Qbus]

I gave it a lot of thought and was willing to go $500.00 plus whatever it would cost for me to travel the three hundred or so miles each way to collect it and that would not be cheap.
It did have some issues with one of its power supplies but that would not be a problem but the more I look into the whole Unibus world the worse it looks epically when you look at Qbus where everything cost less and is more available. Looking at that 11/05 looks like you have to enter the boot sequence by hand where all you need with a Q system is BDV11 Bootstrap card that allows you to boot from any number of sources. Figured If I got that 11 would have to come up with at least a RX02 and controller and a fixed drive of some sort like a RL-01/02 and all that would have been another thousand before it's all over, so all that kind of stuff is my excuse for wimping out not going higher. Maybe we will see a post from the person who bought it?

 

[1ajs]

i allmost bid on it but then relized where am i guna put it i got 3 rl02's a 8a a h11 2 h89's a server rack of rk05's running outa room and i need to find terminators for the rk05 controllor for the 8a

 

[Qbus]

The RK05 looks like the drive to have for old systems, I have worked with the RL drives for my newer "Q" systems but kind of imagine that the ultimate Dec system would be a PDP-8 or 11 (Unibus) with a RK05 and paper tape. Wonder how often the media shows up for RK drives and if they are also low level formatted at the factory like the RL drives?

 

[Lou - N2MIY]

Ray,

RK05 media is not factory formatted, but that causes problems too. In order to make sure your RK05 drives (and therefore packs) are in correct alignment for interchangability with other people's drives, you need a factory formatted customer engineer pack. The media does show up on ebay from time to time, but seems to be ~5X the price of an RL pack.

Omnibus 8s and all 11s can work with RL drives. Although RK drives are a few years older, I personally would much rather deal with the RL drives.

Lou (working on putting an RL8A in my 8/e...)