VT103

I made a trek over the weekend to collect a VT103 with RX02 drive unit. With it came around 35+ 8" disks with stuff on them, and a dozen or so DECtape II tapes for the dual dectape II drives in the VT103. I have not tried powering on either unit yet. Inventory of the boards in the VT103 are: M7264-EB KDF11-F with KEV-11 with onboard 4KW MOS RAM M8047-CA 16KW RAM M8044-BB 8KW MOS RAM M8028 M8029 RX02 flopppy disk controller (18 bit DMA only) I have a set of floppies with dot matrix'd lables 1/4 through 4/4 for RT 4.0 "patched". Not sure if these are original DEC. They have DEC part numbers/etc on them, but nothing that really indicates they are DEC (no DEC branding/etc). Any idea of these are original ? Given the CPU and storage, I'd assume RT would be this boxes current limit, correct ? Is 2 8" floppy drives enough to make a sysgen'd RT with software and space to do stuff with ? Before powering up for the first time, anything I should be aware of that would be likely weak with the VT103 after years of sitting idle (attic) ? (i.e. caps in the power supply are likely to pop) How are the DECtape II drives ? Do the capstans tend to turn to goo ? They look OK visiually, though I have not touched them. Any good way to confirm if they'll hold up or break down before they eat a tape ? How best to preserve images of the 8" disks ? I understand there are parallel port RX02 emulators for the system, but nothing that I found for hooking up the RX02 drive unit to a PC for imaging. I've also read that the RX02 used a percular format (MFM sector data with FM headers as I recall). Will things like the Disc Ferret archive images if I had a more modern 8" floppy drive to use with it ? Suggestions ? Obviously if I get the system working and I had another M8029 (which I don't), I could hook up a RX02 emulator and duplicate discs from real ones to the emulator. Is that the only viable option ? How best to image the DECtape II tapes ? If the drives work, I understand they are serial, so is there any source out there for doing this under Linux/UNIX ? Or again, what I have to do this in some fashion under RT-11 and get the images off the system ? What should I look out for, clean, lubricate/etc on the RX02 before eventually trying it for the first time ? And lastly, towards the future, I understand one can add the 4 missing bits on the backplane to go from 18 bits to 22 bits, then an 11/23 cpu can be used in it. Is this the only cpu board upgrade option viable in an VT103 ? With that, I'd assume RSTS/E, TSX, RSX, RT, and old Unix would be options ? What would be the suggested hard drive options ? Will CQD-22 SCSI work on the existing CPU ? Will it work with a larger CPU with an upgraded bus within the VT103 ? I'd like to consider some sort of SCSI->ATA->flash solution for low power and put it inside the VT103 for a self contained approach. The mounts are not standard, otherwise ZIP drives or JAZ drives in place of the DECtape IIs would offer immense storage and easy switchover to other 11 OSes. Looking to understand this box more, how to bring it back to operation, and what I can do with it as is, and improve it a bit towards the future (no cutting/drilling.... any upgrades have to be able to be removed to bring it back to original. Unrelated, anyone know if the VT525 does Regis graphics ? Thanks in advance, -- Curt