Classic Computer Rescue - A Story from Peoria

The other side of the story. (We were the peoria guys!) Saturday, August 2, 1997 - 8:00 We overslept because Jeff can't set an alarm. But only by 20 minutes. We made it to work, stole my boss's van, and off we went! Jeff brought his soon-to-be-girlfriend, and they left in my car. (A little Chevy Sprint) I took my boss's van. We left at about 10:45, after killing some time at work. This van is great. Everything works fine, except the driver's side door refuses to latch. We tied it closed with a bungee cord. Saturday, etc etc etc - 11:45 I show up at the the pickup place. We lost jeff somewhere, he arrives 20 minutes later. We take 20 minutes to find our contact. Then we actually see how BIG this thing is! The Things We Got: 2 PDP-11/44s. One in operational condition, the other is a spare CPU without a power supply. 1 Letterwriter 100 Printing Terminal... Loads of RSTS-E docs, backup tapes, diag tapes for the PDP on the drive Brett got. A set of 11/750 diags on DECTape IIs. More serial cable than I can carry. Loads of miscellaneous Unibus cards. Various assorted PDP and VAX docs. Including a copy of the DEC Peripherals Handbook and various other things... We had REAL fun fitting all this into the minivan and the car. Poor car was about 5 degrees nose-high on the way home! Given a set of wings, we could have taken off! Saturday, about 5:00 We get to our workplace, hoping to get this thing fired up Sunday. We later learn how foolish this is! Almost remove my fingers trying to get the double-cabnet 44 out of the van! Sunday, All day. Various unloading. Jeff succeeds in dropping the double-cabinet 11 on his foot, sideways. He smashed it up pretty well. The 11 survived. Found out the smaller 11 has no PS, and I dropped the power key inside of it. Then found out I don't have a hex key! Ended up unlatching it with a screwdriver. This was fun. Got the 11 powered up, but haven't gotten it booted yet. Terminal problem. Monday - 9:00 Boss shows up. Complains soon as he sees it. Looks like the big 11 gets to live in a storage shed for awhile! And after he gave us permission to put a computer here! Oh well. Looks like booting it will take a little longer than I thought... We had fun anyway. (Even Jeff)