The switches were made by a company in the US called Stackpole They
still exist.
The switches are marked Patent 3217112
They are a normal slide type modified with a U bracket to allow
the attachment of a lever arm to operate the switch when toggled up and
down.
They come in three types ; hold up or down to connect and close to connect.
The lever arms are molded from a tough type of plastic (nylon or PET ?)
They have maintained their bright colour over the years suggesting a
tightly bonded structure.
There appear to have been attempts to produce copies but the only results
I have seen, have been disappointing.
3D printing looks hopeful but not for production quantities,
The tooling for injection moulding (thats how they were produced back in
the 1970's )
is too expensive.
At this time I'm just doing replacement panels for 8/e's and maybe other 8's
Long term a light weight resin bezel and maybe (very maybe)
a lamp and switch panel + microprocessr to emulate a real 8.
But only if the switch sourcing problem is solved.
Rod Smallwood (Newbury England)
On 07/06/2015 14:13, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> From: Rod Smallwood
> I have recently produced a number of high quality custom PDP8/e front
> panels. They are full size reproductions of the original. The
> production methods are exactly as used in circa 1971.
First, my sincere congratulations! This is a real contribution, and I doubt it
was trivial to accomplish.
> I'll also instigate another batch of ten. .. If I get orders for more
> than ten then I'll bump up the second batch size accordingly.
These sound so cool I'm tempted to buy one, even though I don't even own a
PDP-8! :-)
> If there is a demand I'll do other 8's or 11's front panels that use
> the same plexiglas and silk screen technique.
Someone mentioned -12's and -15's?
I don't (yet) need any -11 ones, although at some point, I might need an
11/20 one (I have a line on an 11/20 that spent a lot of time outside, so its
front panel is sadly very faded).
The thing we really need to find now is a source for the special switches
that DEC used in the front panels of the machines of this generation.
Electrically, they are just standard SPDT switches (usually two-position,
although for some - e.g. Deposit/Start - they are momentary-contact
spring-loaded); the real issue is the mechanical fastening, which uses a
special front plate (albeit on a standard micro-switch body).
I have a number of different ones in my machines, from various manufacturers,
but I have had no luck tracking down new ones through the part numbers on
them (they seem to be DEC part numbers, or adaptions thereof). I have asked a
number of people, but nobody seems to have spares/extras.
Anyone know of a source?
Noel
