Collection policy was Re: No space for vinatge computers in

Even then you'd not be totally lost without a schematic if you knew the type of valve that was supposed to go there (quite likely to be a double triode, actually). The heater connections should be darn obvious, and you can easily distinguish grid from anode from cathode with a little practice. The only problem would be keeping the right anode/grid/cathode together. I suspect if the holder was broken into a fairly small number of pieces you could fit them back together well enough to work out which pin was which. Anway, can somebody please tell me how running a machine (as opposed to having it on statick display) is going to cause valve holders to break in half? Oh, a relatively new machine (must be, it's got one of those new-fangled microprocessors [1] in it) :-) [1] As opposed to an old-fashioned microprocessor, meaning a sequencer running microcode. Both DEC and HP used the word in this sense in the 1970s. -tony