Micral, SEA, Bull are three that come immediately to
mind. I don't have
access to the inventory yet.
OK, those names are familiar (is that the same Bull as in
Honeywell-Bull?). Nope, they do not show up around here!
That is good news (for us). Do you have contact
details for anyone who
has one?
The DEC Australia collection probably has one (but they have damn near one
of EVERYTHING DEC made!).
Are you connected with the Rhode Island group? If so I
would appreciate
some pointers on how to operate such a group. We have this huge
collection here gathering dust in a storehouse but plans are in place to
move it to a location where some, hopefully many, of these machines will
be restored to working state.
I am one of the directors of the group, and one of the "later" founders.
Operating the group is quite a task, in that we also have a rather large
collection, but we have it housed in a rented room at an old rubber
factory - a very useable space with power, STRONG floors, a freight
elevator, and a dock. We do not, however, have extra space. Right now we
are looking into getting pallet racks to get some of the collection off
the ground (4 ft. DEC cabinets in a room with a 20 ft. ceiling is a bit of
a waste!).
Money for rent, of course, is a bit of a problem. We all have to chip in.
We also sell some of the stuff we get donated (anyone here want to buy
some brand new fibre, or how about an original NSFnet router?). Getting
linked up to a big company or two really helps for the donations, even if
they are nothing more than old PeeCee junk.
Getting machines for the collection is the easy part - building a
collection of 1970s and 80s iron (our forte) can happen in a very short
amount of time. And yes, every so often a real gem comes along!
Maybe you can hang around or list for a while, just to see our day to day
activities - let me talk to our list owner.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net