One That Got Away (was: Woohoo! Another DEC score!)

Jay West wrote, in part: Hoorayyyy! Oh, it always gives a warm spot to my heart to see another DEC machine saved from the wilderness. :) There were a few things which got me started at this again after a twenty-year span of "modern" computers. One was seeing Robert Krten's webpages about the restoration of his 8/I, which reminded me of how much fun this was (http://www.parse.com/~museum/pdp8/pdp8i/restore.html). But another was more irksome... There was a PDP-11 - I think either an 11/40, or an 11/45; definitely a beautiful front panel - in a DEC pedestal-mount case(!) in the basement of the Opera House in Seattle(!!) for several years, in a spot so out-of-the-way that in fifteen years of working there regularly I only saw the machine twice. It was used as an auxiliary board for an old lighting console (a Van Buren lighting console, if anyone cares). I was tempted, at times, to ask the building staff if they really needed it around, but a good moment to ask never really came along, and I figured they had been hanging onto it all this time because they were still aware of its usefulness. Well, they recently remodeled the Opera House... and when I asked if they were planning to keep the machine or sell it or what, I was told (after finally finding a person who actually knew what had happened) that they had long since _thrown the -11 away._ They didn't even send it to the City's surplus outlet, for God's sake; they just _tossed_ it, into a construction dumpster which had long ago been emptied. They simply had no idea that anyone would think it was useful. I'm _still_ irked about this... not least of all at myself, for having waited too damn long for a "right moment" to ask about this machine. Damn it, damn it, damn it. :( ...There. That's my True Confession(tm). When I see older computers these days, I've noticed that I no longer wait for a "good moment" to ask about them. It's not a desire to be pushy or anything; I'm just hoping to make up for past mistakes. :/ -O.- [At least it wasn't a PDP-6. :) :) ]