road trip score: AViiON, Microdata 1600

Yesterday my girlfriend and I returned from a hastily-scheduled road trip to Maryland; we went to see a friend who is gravely ill. While we were in town, we took the opportunity to visit a few other people. Another friend up there is preparing to move, and he dropped a few things in my lap since I was there with a mostly-empty car. The first was a Data General Aviion AV300 workstation. This is one of the few machines built around the Motorola 88K CPU. It came with its original keyboard, mouse, monitor, and a full set of DG-UX manuals. I don't yet know if it's functional, but according to my friend it was running a few years ago. The second is something I'm REALLY excited about. We went to his garage and he pointed me at two dusty card-cages full of boards, and told me that he picked them up from a college loading dock twenty years ago, and that he had no idea of what they were, but there were core memory boards in them. Oh, and there's this lights-and-switches front panel that goes with them. (!) Upon getting them home and digging around, it appears to be a nearly complete Microdata 1600 CPU. I have the two backplanes with card cages and boards, and the front panel, along with some cables. I lack the power supply, but I can build one of those...with that, I think I have enough to resurrect the basic CPU. Neat stuff! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL