Kiel PDP-10 [was RE: pdp8/e frontpanel lamps]

Hi Rich, I've been told that the University of Kiel's PDP-10 installation originally was largest in Europe. In the early 90s, the system went out of service. At that point they already discarded masses of equipment. I've been told of many tons of disk drives, tape drives and so on. The Kiel museum/collectors society who were tracking the University's computing department's "output" for many years saved a complete system consisting of two KI10 (not sure, but older than KL10) processors, memory, drum memory, peripheral controllers, and some peripherals. About 25 racks. And a row of RP02/03 disk drives. And tons of cables and documentation. That roughly describes what has been kept in basements over the last years. Since last year, the FH Kiel (technical college) took over the whole collection that contained the pdp10. They are currently in the process of compiling a permanent exhibition of computing history in an old WW2 shelter that is currently being prepared for that. They have to deal with massive space limitations compared to the volume of existing stuff in the collection. So they started to sort out things. Their interest is do display stuff, not to run stuff (but at least a pdp8/e will be runnable, perhaps we repair the 8/i as well). They are in touch with the guy who maintained the machine (the guy with the lamps). He selected about five cabinets and one RP02 disk drive for the exhibition. The exact minimum of stuff that can be called "pdp10 system, complete". The rest has been given away to collectors. I personally saved some stuff (RP drives, RS04 drives, CR10 card reader), the biggest part went to collectors who have in mind to get the stuff working again. The documentation for the pdp10 (or most of it, It will probably my job to dig through the remaining docs of the collection) has been thrown away with respect to the fact that the system will "never run again". A very lucky circumstance was that Erik Brens was standing next to the trash when that happened. So the recycling took place on eBay instead of a paper mill. could it be The "never run again" comes from the DEC service engineer. He told the Kiel official people (and me) that it would be possible (if the docs and cables etc. were still there, of course) to get the system back to work. But for that he would need at least one year of work (3 month to move the system from one building to another, with 4 people!!). He is sure that nobody else would be able to get it running. And he is not interested to do it as there also is no interest and money to get the system running again. So it will be there, nice and clean. And never run again. Hopefully the guys who got the major part of the system will be interested and skilled enough to get their stuff working. That would be a resurrection of great historic value! Best wishes, Philipp