Is anyone interested in helping me do the
TU56/TC11 restoration as a "virtual restoration
project"? I know you California guys can get
together in person and meet and work on your
PDP-1 restoration. I'm stuck here in South
Carolina and don't have a face-to-face group
to interact with.
I'm going to add a projects page to my site,
and add the TU56 project under that. I've
taken some pictures of it the way it is today,
which is pretty much how it arrived, except
that I've located a couple cards that were
missing.
I don't know if anyone has ever done anything
like this remotely in a "virtual mode" before,
but the idea of a team project sounds interesting
to me. David in New York could restore his
TU56 in parallel. In my current job I work
daily with a team in India. We never see one
another face-to-face except when an occasional
developer comes to the U.S. to spend some time
learning our procedures and processes. We are
able to accomplish our goals with teams
working on opposite sides of the globe.
Several folks have already privately been in
correspondence with me and have already been
a big help. You know who you are.
If anyone's interested, let me know. The
project would have a plan that folks could
help me put together, to do things in a
reasonable and logical order. Things like
clean the backplanes, check the flip-chips,
re-form the capacitors, etc. I don't know
what would be in it for everyone else, other
than to know that you helped when it finally
spins up a DECtape and can read and write to
it as the unit is connected to one of my
PDP-11s.
Call me crazy if you wish. I suppose I've
been involved in too many group projects over
the past 20 years and this seems like a fun
opportunity to try out the group/team concept
in a different way.
Ashley