Dave McGuire wrote:
On Aug 24, 2007, at 3:53 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
If 11/70 actuators were to be made, I would
probably be interested,
but I'm unconvinced that at present prices, it's economical to make a
hobbyist run of them. Perhaps in the medium-term future, should
fab-at-home-type hardware continue to drop in price, the equation will
look more favorable, but right now, I don't think it is.
About ten years ago, a friend of mine found a private individual
selling copies of the weird proprietary data connector used on many
Garmin GPS receivers. He was a hobbyist who had a small injection
molding machine in his house. I have several of the connectors he
made; they are of excellent quality.
OK, Standard Shirking of Accountability: I'm not trying to start a
flame war, or to minimize the attraction of fully-original restoration.
Having rendered myself blameless, I keep reading this thread and
contrasting it with the tape-drive-roller-goo threads. My question and
maybe some food for thought is "are you looking for Original, or Authentic?"
I have a bunch of PDP-11s, not -8s, but my practice is to make it
work. I have one system, an 11/53, that was fully original when I got
it. It's either factory-original, or DEC-FE original. That one gets
DEC parts, and if I needed to raid another machine or fab a part, I'd do it.
The rest of them have been maintained by customers and customized to
some extent or other. Those guys get fixed. If DEC parts are handy,
that's good. If not, an electrically-compatible Ratshack part will do
nicely. Original? No. Authentic? Damn straight - it's exactly what
would have happened in production.
Before I spend a lot of trouble or time getting it Exactly Right, I'm
going to evaluate the machine as a whole, and see if Exactly Right is a
hand-fabbed perfect replica, or a cheap Radio Shack paddle switch.
Discuss, please. Show your work. :)
Doc