30 May
2015
30 May
'15
6:27 p.m.
So Rob and I got onsite yesterday and ended up taking away a small haul of DEC equipment.
- Three RC-25 drives with a dozen-or-so cartridges. We know at least one drive works.
- We were quite excited to see two 11/83 boxes, one of which was working with one of the
RC-25s, running RT-11.
However when Rob got everything home and examined it, it turned out it was an 11/23 CPU
in the running box,
and the other was mostly empty of cards, with no CPU.
- A VT-330 terminal (left two other 330 displays, only one keyboard between the three of
them).
- 4-slot Q-bus backplane/rack unit, probably originally held the 11/23 CPU.
- Some extra/duplicate Q-bus device controller cards.
- RT-11 install media on floppy.
It was the data-collection end of the Becton-Dickinson FACS 440 equipment (Flourescent
Activated Cell Sorting), 1980s technology that been in use till not too long ago. All the
extra bits had been accumulated over time to keep the system going.
Sadly we had to leave the 440 rack which had two 5-6" X/Y CRT displays, 3KV power
supplies, the laser table with two water-cooled lasers, photo-multiplier tubes, optics,
etc.