Terak 8510a

Oh yes! I finally own a little bit of a PDP. The Department of AI at the university here just disposed of some of its old hardware and I ended up with a Terak 8510a with extra floppy (8512) and monitor, keyboard (8532). Lovely!!! It's a really neat and fast machine. FYI, it has a four-slot backplane with an LSI-11 board (with FPU), 28kw of MOS RAM, a brilliant framebuffer card (640x240 text and 320x240 graphics at the same time -- the card mixes both modes on the same screen and allows hardware panning, smooth scrolling and other effects), Shugart floppy interface, RS-232/current loop and some other strange card (probably for controlling some robotic device of sorts -- useful). It came with all of its documentation (disgustingly complete, including business reply card with `READ THIS NOW' written at the back, brochures, reference cards, RT-11 manuals, Shugart tech ref (so you want to take apart your Shugart 8" drive's head assembly?), etc). Also a set of original red-and-purple(?) PDP-11 manuals for RT-11. And to top it off, there were a few 1978-1979 DEC PDP manuals for various architectures. They're in almost mint condition, but the paper is really showing its age. GOOD documentation, though. Software-wise, there are both of the common OSs for the Terak: RT-11 and UCSD P-System/Pascal (haven't worked with this in ten years, but my fingers still remember how to press 'F','L',':' really fast). Lots of languages, including Logo, BASIC and Prolog (it *was* a DAI machine, you see). The 12" monitor is rock steady and displays a clear image in P3 phosphor (sort-of paper white) and the keyboard is refreshingly 70s with nice clunky keys that, however, are really comfortable for touch typing once you get used to them. Oh yes, I also got a boxed TI-99/4A with all its manuals and a memory expansion box, but that is probably too common for you folks in the States and certainly too mundane in comparison to the Terak. I'm a happy man. :-) PS: Oh, the department has quite a nice collection of old stuff, including a PERQ that just seemed to attract a lot of drool. They're keeping it, though -- it's going to a real museum (not computer related, though). All in all, I think I must have looked too much like a kiddie in a sweet shop. --------------------------- ,o88,o888o,,o888o. ------------------------------- Alexios Chouchoulas '88 ,88' ,88' alexios(a)vennea.demon.co.uk The Unpronounceable One ,o88oooo88ooooo88oo, axc(a)dcs.ed.ac.uk