14 Sep
1999
14 Sep
'99
11:19 p.m.
While we have to store it for a bit until we figure out how to get it
upstairs, we're really interested in getting it to work. Unfortunately,
our elevator has not been repaired, and the 9 is about 10 inches too tall
for it anyway. It was brutal getting the 2 PDP-10's upstairs, and we
still have two tape drives to bring up.
On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Hans B Pufal wrote:
Merle K. Peirce wrote:
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
215 Shady Lea Road,
North Kingstown, RI 02852
"Casta est qui nemo rogavit."
- Ovid
Our latest acquisition is a PDP-9, one of 455 built. It served until
this summer controlling a very large 60"x60" XY plotter. This is one of
only 2 of this size in the world, and is used to prepare glass plates for
etching. The plotter moves in increments of 1/10000 of an inch. The
plotter was built in the late 1960's by Concord Electronics in
California. The plotter is built on a granite slab about 3 feet thick,
which rests on supports which were drilled down to bedrock. In order to
be installed, the rear wall of the building was removed. The Concord
controls fill 3 cabinets, and these are controlled in turn by the PDP-9.
Two PDP-11's are used to control and programme the PDP-9. This summer a
more modern control system the size of a filing cabinet replaced the 3
six-foot control racks, and a Dell server and UPS replaced the DEC's. We
were give the PDP-9, PDP-11's, and Concord control parts, as well as
spare flip chips, terminals, paper tapes, manuals, etc.
Congratualtions. ACONIT, here in Grenoble, has 2 PDP-9's one used to
control an experiment at CERN. We laso have a quite extensive library of
documentation, paper-tapes and DECtapes. The state of the DECtapes is
unknown till we got our system working again.
If you need any assistance please feel free to contact me.
This is the 5th PDP-9 that I am aware of, we have two, there is one in
Australia and I learnt of another one in Germany a few days ago.
Regards
_---_--__-_-_----__-_----_-__-__-_-___--_-__--___-__----__--_--__-___-
Hans B Pufal Comprehensive Computer Catalogue
<mailto:hansp@digiweb.com> <http://digiweb.com/~hansp/ccc>