KIM Uno /PiDP-11 plans...

We have plenty of the original bezels, from which it would be easy to cast molds (the same part is used on the 11/45 and 11/70, unlike the rest of the front console). The real issue in any front panel recreation is going to be the switches (not the plastic toggles, the actual electrical device). Both the /45 and /70 used the now-apparently-unobtainium version with the intergral metal plate to hold the switch in place in a metal holder plate. So a recreation front panel is going to have to have some new mechanical design, to allow use of standard micro-switches - and that's probably going to mean a re-design of the plastic toggles, as those attached to side-plates on the original toggle switches. (That's all a bit difficult to describe in words; a picture will make it obvious, if anyone wants to know more.) I wonder how big an order of switches would be required before some switch-making firm could be convinced to do a run? Maybe whoever made the 'back in the day' still has the tooling to do so gathering dust in an old room.... To do that is going to require exactly emulating the interface to the CPU, which is not going to be entirely trivial. Physically, the signals all come over flat ribbon cables to standard Berg connectors, so that won't be hard, but I doubt the interface is documented, someone will have to puzzle it out by reading prints - and probably looking at a working one with a logic analyzer. Also, powering the front console requires an unusual AMP connector shell, although that may still be available? And of course one could always bodge the power connection... Noel