Thinking about acquiring PDP stuff

-----Original Message----- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Noel Chiappa Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2016 9:08 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Subject: Re: Thinking about acquiring PDP stuff Well, I have to get all mine running first... ;-) Seriously, though, I'm looking at several years of work to get them all running. (And there are also various peripherals to do, like tape drives, etc.) And then there's the project Dave B and I have to creat new blinkenlitz panels (not to mention SD-card based mass storage to replace those cranky old disk >drives for every-day running, the original purpose before the blinkenkraze hit us :-) for the PDP-11's... create anything useful. And it's _very_ successful at that. True enough. I enjoy the repair and build aspect of the hobby. When I got a dead Digital Group Z80 system, repairing that and getting it operating was like going on an exploration of ancient ruins. Seeing it come to life was amazing. But I don't find a lot of use for it day to day. Likewise with my TVT project -- the experience of building it is fantastic, but not sure I'd have much for it to do once done. Even my old Commodore only gets sporadic use, and only because it has so much of my old games library. That was kind of why I thought buying a PDP in pieces over time might be my way to go, even if it took eons to get everything I needed to rebuild one. It'd be fun to try and piece one back together. But yeah, I'm trying to think of what I would do with it afterwards. :)