Heaven and Hell!

Hi ALL! I had the good fortune to witness something truly extraordinary yeaterday. I imagine there are some on this list that have stumbled on large collections by accident or by design, and marvel at thier good fortune and curse their luck at not being the owner. Well, such a thing happened to me yestrday and I was truly awestruck. I had met a retired engineer at the auction I attend religiously at the University of Arizona. I have been attending these auctions for about 5 years, there are some who have been attending for far longer, and also have been collecting from other source even longer. Roy is such a person. He lives alone in a very large red brick hacienda in a very lush part of the San Pedro River valley in SE arizona, only a few miles from me. Upon arrival at his home which is at the end of a very muddy and rutted dirt road, I was greeted by a very large vulture sitting on a telephone pole outside the driveway to his house. An omen of things to come? I proceeded down the driveway several hundred yard through a huge thicket of willows and cottonwoods to come upon a HUGE graveyard of old computers, electronics parts,equipment racks and large piles of junk moldering in the humid arizona sun. Sitting upright in the mud/grass were the remains of a DG Eclipse, next to a stack of DEC RL02 disks about three feet high. piles anf piles of old dot matrix printers were next to several equipment racks. An old school bus stood forlornly by. It was stuffed to the gills with equipment.A hazeltine terminal/computer half buried in the mud. A Variax? 10KW I was greeted by Roy and we entered his house. I should say warehouse, as the this house was crammed from floor to ceiling with computers, test equipment and electronics gear. The floors were concrete and suported industrial steel racks packed full of stuff..in every room save one! Have you ever seen people who have collected books or papers and went overboard..Well imagine this with computers.Not just computers, but old computers and electronic gear. On my hour tour of the premise, I spotted: At least three Data General Nova 2 and Nova 3's, with a paper reader and terminals. All in great condition. One was turned on for me! At least two HP 1000 and at least one HP 2100 series. Dozens of Tektronix terminals and the early 405xx series computers Roomfulls of HP testing and analyzer equipment and so many of the early HP computers they were too numerous to count. Shelves and shelves full of old DG terminals (the oval ones) Ahmdahl terminals At least two ASR 33's and some teletypes that might be even older. A rack full of a pre WW11 commercial radio transmitter. WWII and later aviation instruments! A TOW missle. (the warhead had been replaced with intrumentation and there was no fuel in the missle but the rocket engine was intact) A very early laser! A shelf crammed with DEC decpacks RK11/RK02 all with RT-11 inscribed on the sides. A big amount a older DEC documentation! Huge bookshelfs full of documentation forTektronics, HP, DEC most pre-1990 some pre-80! some pre 70!!! A large file cabinet stuffed with new in the box 8" floppies., paper tapes 8" inch floppy drives of all makes and models. Various disks from HP to DEC to DG.(dozens) A room dedicated to electronic testing equipment, mainly HP but also scores of others. most pre-1980. dozens of Oscilliscopes. A scanning electron microscope! Dec VT52, VT100 terminals. It was said there is a VT05? hiding somewhere! It was almost too much for me too comprehend. I'll be heading over there soon to pick up an RX02 that I spied hiding in a corner. O yeah.. a parting gift included a LSI-11 that looked somewhat complete, all the cards. There was a unibus pdp11 buried somewhere in the racks of equipment, behind other racks of equipment. There was more stuff that I probably missed or forgot than what I remembered (I didn't take notes!) This may take a while! Cheers Tom