This is very nice from you Adam, hats off. Thanks for putting this together.
On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 7:17 AM Adam Thornton via cctalk < [email protected]> wrote: > Last Saturday I went out to the location where the collection mentioned by > Kristina Kaur resides, to take photos, create an inventory to the best of > my abilities, and help her solicit proposals for the various items. > > I’m going to lead off with one of my last sentences in this email: PLEASE > DO NOT WRITE KRISTINA, OR ME, DIRECTLY WITH YOUR OFFERS. Use the contact > form in the Google Drive folder (see below) I’m pointing to and send your > proposal to [email protected] <mailto: > [email protected]> . I have no power over the disposition of > any of this—I am just the chronicler—and Kristina wants to route all > proposals for acquiring these things through the family's lawyer. > > The basic background is this: all of this stuff belongs to a man who has > run a bulk-mailing business for many years, and who wrote a bunch of his > own software for PDP-11 machines to do that bulk mailing. He has continued > to use the PDP-11s until, apparently, quite recently. > > He also, unfortunately, has recently had a stroke, and although he is > expected to recover, he is not going to be able to continue running the > business, and particularly not from these machines. So his daughter, > Kristina, has decided to make the collection available to people who will > do right by it (preferably in a public museum), rather than just send it to > the scrapper, which is awfully nice of her. > > I want to express my gratitude to Kristina for allowing me to go out there > and root through the collection, and to Ruthann, who provided good company > during the digging and invaluable service during the search. > > There are three locations for all these items. Computing equipment is > either in a climate-controlled garage, and apparently has been running > until quite recently, or it is in a warehouse, which I do not believe to be > climate-controlled but is walled and roofed and kept dark, which are all > good things in Tucson. All the manuals were on a bookshelf in the home > office, and were kept climate-controlled and relatively dust-free. The > manuals are in excellent shape considering their age, with no environmental > damage, although some of them are clearly worn from use. > > Let me get a couple things out of the way first: it was rumored there was > an 11/40 here. I didn’t see one, but I saw a mystery PDP-11 in the garage > that I believe to be an 11/70. As near as I can tell, there are two PDP-11 > systems in the garage (the mystery 70 and an 11/45), which I believe to be > in running or near-to-it shape. > > There’s also a *lot* of stuff out in the warehouse, much of it apparently > bought from the University of Arizona at auction over the years, largely > shrinkwrapped (sometimes to pallets, sometimes not) or stored in plastic > bags. My guess would be that the things in the garage were in general > never used after their acquisition, although some may well have been > migrated out there after their useful lifespan was over. This is a GUESS. > > I have no idea of the condition of any of it, or what was cannibalized as > spares for other things; I can say that, in general, it’s been stored out > of the weather and doesn’t seem to be water damaged or (for Tucson anyway) > very dusty. > > I (and the Kaur family, and everyone) make NO GUARANTEE AT ALL of the > condition of any of this. Everything here is sold WHERE IT IS and AS IT IS > and it may or may not work or be restorable. It is YOUR responsibility to > pick it up, and if it can’t reasonably be restored, tough luck. We don’t > know, and the one man in the world who DID know is not in any condition at > the moment to tell us. > > As you might expect from a bulk-mailing business, this collection is > super-heavy on printers and various paper-handling devices, as well as tape > drives. These are things I know almost nothing about: I have mostly > collected 8-bit micros and videogame systems, and only recently have > started acquiring and restoring DEC equipment. > > There may well be pictures of things Kristina doesn’t want to include as > part of this lot—all the more modern printers and paper-handling stuff is > destined for people in the printing-and-mailing world in Tucson. But > there’s an awful lot of stuff here where “uh, it looks like a lineprinter > to me, and maybe you connect it to a PDP-11?” or “that’s probably a disk > drive?” or “it’s a controller for _something_.” > > So among the things I’m asking you to do is to please help identify what I > took pictures of. I’ll call out the things I find particularly interesting > and baffling. > > I have already offered first pick of the manuals to Al Kossow and > bitsavers.org <http://bitsavers.org/>, the Living Computer Museum and > Labs, and Jason Scott at the Internet Archives, since that is likelier to > get them scanned and preserved than if they just vanish into people’s > private collections. The LCML has indicated interest, and I have not heard > back yet from the other two. If there’s something from the manual > collection you particularly want, and one of those three also wants it, you > will probably have to work it out with them. Most of the manuals seem to > be for fairly major software, which I suspect (but have not looked to > check) that bitsavers already has a copy of. > > Kristina asks that you please put together a proposal for what you would > like from the collection BY MAY 31, and please use the form on “Equipment > Proposal v2.docx” ( > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oJFVg8MsTie3e3fpdzmfoWmIuQo96aQP < > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oJFVg8MsTie3e3fpdzmfoWmIuQo96aQP>) to > do that. She and her family’s lawyers will evaluate the various received > proposals and she will decide on a division of items. > > The pictures I took—and many of them are terrible. In many cases I don’t > know what I was looking at, and in other cases, the items were not in > convenient spots to photograph; sometimes both. > > All are in the folder at > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kECm7hiYComNDTrLEwPPKIdIZ3MqKJ6y < > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kECm7hiYComNDTrLEwPPKIdIZ3MqKJ6y> . > > My inventory of these things is in CSV form at > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Xv5aYu9tE3BUYZOicgJTTJhrDhy2ci89 < > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Xv5aYu9tE3BUYZOicgJTTJhrDhy2ci89> and > in slightly-better-looking Numbers (a Mac spreadsheet) form at > https://drive.google.com/open?id=15i1hEKjB108cq4g4B7c7gNpn-HDbgRIi < > https://drive.google.com/open?id=15i1hEKjB108cq4g4B7c7gNpn-HDbgRIi> . > > I make no representation as to its accuracy—it’s just the best I could do > in the time I had available. For most of the items, there is both a line > number (some numbers are missing: this is intentional. They correspond to > which spreadsheet line it is, and there are some blank ones) and a > reference to the picture of said item, which is the filename (i.e. > “IMG_2xxx.JPG”) in the folder. I didn’t bother to do image IDs for the > manuals—they are mostly in order, and I figure everyone can read, so > matching the title to the image is generally straightforward. > > A few notes about the items. It looks to me—and I could be wrong—that > there are two PDP-11 systems in the garage. One is obviously an 11/45, and > judging from the structure of the panel, the other is some kind of 11/70, > but I’ve never seen a front panel quite like this: > https://drive.google.com/open?id=15i1hEKjB108cq4g4B7c7gNpn-HDbgRIi < > https://drive.google.com/open?id=15i1hEKjB108cq4g4B7c7gNpn-HDbgRIi> . > Based on the fact that there are two Datasystem 570s out in the warehouse, > I suspect it’s a Datasystem with a Frankensteined front panel, but I don’t > know. I think that basically it’s two two-cabinet systems, each with a CPU > and a disk in one cabinet and a tape drive in the other cabinet, but again, > I’m not sure. > > I have no idea whether the pair of Datasystem 570s in the warehouse are > intact or not. There are also three VAXes out there, one 11/750 and two > 11/730s. One of the 11/730s clearly has an attached RL02, but I don’t know > about the other two. Most of the stuff out there, generally, looks like > it’s in good shape in the sense that it was put in the warehouse, often in > shrink-wrap, and not exposed to light or weather for a long time. > Sometimes a very long time. > > I am quite curious about what the Sun Microsystems item ( > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZLpoP6ZoHfs3_dvdOFkv9uy68X29OSjV < > https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZLpoP6ZoHfs3_dvdOFkv9uy68X29OSjV>) is—I > couldn’t really get to it, and it’s about the right size and shape for a > 3/160, but it could also easily be something like a tape drive that Sun > OEMed. It has a plate on it identifying it as part of an “IRAF” system, > and what I know about IRAF is that it’s astronomical software (I am helping > design something that the LSST project hopes is a ubiquitous successor to > it, sort of), and so I kinda suspect this came out of the astronomy > department or Steward Observatory at UA. > > There are no pictures of the 13-or-so Decwriters in the warehouse: they’re > on a shelf about 10 feet up and you’re going to need either a forklift to > get them down, or be extraordinarily brave. The ADM-3A (well, I think. > It’s obviously an ADM terminal, and these match my mental image of 3As, but > I could be wrong about the model) was obviously the terminal of choice here > and there are a dozen or so. Sorry about that, VT-xxx fans. > > Again: PLEASE DO NOT WRITE KRISTINA OR ME directly with your offers. Use > the contact form and send your proposal to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> . > > I hope this is useful to folks. > > Adam
