I just spent Saturday morning in an Ali Babas cave of old computers
ranging form a huge 6ft tall by 10 ft wide analogue computer through a
few DEC machines (see below, and old ICT 1301, a Telefunken TR4 a
burroughs 1800, a few French minicomputers and quite a number of
unidentified systems. Included were lots of tape and disk drives, boxes
of documentationa nd software. Just a dream come true!
The collection belongs to ACONIT : "l'Association pour le Conservation
de Informatique et Telematique" I guess that's pretty clear even to non
french speakers. It has been accumulated over since 1985 and is
currently stored in a warehouse in a town called Voiron near Grenoble.
ACONIT has acquired larger and more convenient premisies in Grenoble
itself and will be moving the collection there later this year and we
plan on setting up workshops etc to restore as many of these systems as
possible.
Among the DEC machines I saw was a complete PDP-9. How rare are these?
Anyways, if anyone is in the Grenoble region later on in the year drop
me a line and I can provide a personally conducted guided tour of what
we have.
I'll keep you all informed of what we are doing as thngs develop.
Regards,
Hans B Pufal