On Jul 1, 2015, at 3:57 PM, devin davison <lyokoboy0 at gmail.com> wrote: In the 80?s my job involved moving a set of 11/34a + 11/23?s cross country each summer to do research for 8 years and back again. We shipped commercially on air cushioned vans, but did all the packing ourselves. The less anything moves or vibrates the better. We left everything in their racks. Our approach was to disconnect all the cables between major subsystems. Everything was marked with duplicates on both sides of cables. We left the cards in the Unibus and QBus, but had padding, covers to make sure the cards wouldn?t vibrate or fall out. Locking slides on rack mount devices and heads on drives was of course mandatory. Had big labels attached to drives and movable parts we had locks on (insert Apollo 13 movie reference about not jettisoning the LM early). Then a heavy layer of packing tape on everything that might move or vibrate. Heaviest components on bottom of all rack. Watch out for tipping and pad with old blankets. Extra straps in the trucks to make everything immobile. These days given the age of this gear, you have to be extra careful on the cables, especially older Unibus BC11A type flat cables. Tough call is on the filters. I?d remove the filters ahead of time if you can and ship in their own container. If they are original they will crumble on touch. Filters and foam pieces will shed particles (or worse). Whether you leave them in or not, you need to open up everything and clean before (if you can) and after moving. Disk packs should be in boxes or padded individually. Other than a bulb in the head positioner in an RK05 going out, I don?t recall major problem restoring the systems. Good luck. Jerry

The 11/34 is a pretty good 'starter' Unibus PDP11 IMHO. It has memory management and 18 bit addressing (so a maximum of 124kW of RAM [1]). But it is simple enough to be able to understand and repair easily. [1] A PDP11 address addresses a byte in memory. So 18 address lines gives an address space of 256k bytes or 128k words. But the top 4k words are reserved for I/O devices, boot ROMs, etc. So 124k words of RAM. Of course it is a 16 bit machine and will read or write 2 bytes in one go in case you are worries. Things to take with you : A good hand tool kit. You will need assorted flat blade screwdrivers, #1 and #2 Phillips. A set of inch-size nutdrivers and allen keys is very useful too. And a pair of sidecutters ('DIkes'). You do not cut cables, of course, but you may need to cut cable ties. A notebook and pen. And a digital camera if you have one and if the seller doesn't mind you taking photos (if you are getting it from a company they may, quite reasonably, prohibit any photography in their buildings). Even if you take photos before dispmantling, you should still make notes as to where cables go, in case it is not clear. Tie-on labels. You may want to tag cables when you disconnect them. Boxes for screws, cable clips, cables, etc. You will have loose parts. A friend. The RL's and 11/34 CPU are not hard for 2 people to lift and carry. But I wouldn't want to do it on my own. RL's maybe, but if I had to move an 11/34 single-handed, I would take the PSU off first which is more work. Then you need to disconnect things. You will find the AC mains cables side of the rack (normally). This will have 2 classes of socket outlets, 'switched' and 'unswitched'. The CPU normally plugs into an unswitched one, everything else into switched. But check and make notes. Then unplug the lot and free the cables from any clips or ties so they are all loose. Still on the power controller you will see a little 3 wire cable. Unplug it. The other end goes to a similar socket on the back of the CPU. Unplug that end too. If the cable is free, remove it, and store it On the RL drives there are 2 connectors one above the other on the back. The plugs have a little quarter-turn locking peg at the end the cable doesn't come out of. Turn that counterclockwise to free them. And unscrew the P clips that hold the cables to the drive. You should have a terminator (looks like a plug with no cable) in the last drive, then cables between the drives, and a cable back to the CPU. This might go to a bulkhead bracket screwed to the rack. Unplug it there in the same way. Now for the RLs themselves. You _MUST_ make sure there are no disks in them, which means opening them up. The problem is that there are interlocks which mean they will only open if powered up and connected to a working controller. Not a good idea at this point. Pull them out of the rack one at a time. They will come part way out, Now look at the sliders, you will see a little rocking lever on them. Frob this and the drive comes even further out revealing the top rear cover held on by 4 screws. Undo these, lift the cover, unhook it from the rear edge of the top door, then lift the front edge first so that it hinges on the cables, and hang it on the back of the drive. Now lift the rear edge of the door slightly, slide the catch and lift the door right off. There are a couple of spring loaded arms that will snap over and scare you, but nothing to worry about. Look inside the drive. If you see a disk pack (white thing) inside, go very carefully. Lift up the read/write module (middle of the rear section of the drive) and check the heads are fully retracted. If not, they may be toast anyway, but carefully move them back (this is a darn bad thing to do to disk and heads, but since the heads have already hit the disk, it's not going to do any more damage!) Then remove the disk pack as described in the manual. Now, there is a locking clamp for the RL head and it's shown in the manual. You can move it to the locked position before puttiing the covers back, but my experience is that if you transport them back end downwards the heads will not move. So if you can't figure out the clamp, do that. Put the covers back on the RLs Now look at the slides again. You will see one clearly visible screw holding the slide to the drive. Remove it. Then press in the leaf springs that are preventing the drive from going back in the rack, and slide it back until another screw is visible through the hole in the slide. Take that out too. With all the screws out pull the drive fully out again and lift the catch on the bracket on top of the slide (on the drive unit). Slide the drive a little further forwards and lift it off the slides. Stand in on its back. Push the slides back in and if possible tape them so they don't slide out at the wrong moment and hit your shins... Now for the CPU. Again pull it all the way out of the rack. Loosen the screw each side of the top cover (on the side of the CPU box) and slide the cover to free it. Lift it off. There is a cable clamp strip at the back on top of the PSU held down by 3 screws. Remove it to free the cables and either store it or put it back under the cables for the moment. Now, for each cable you have a choice. If it's free you may want to leave it and move the CPU with it dangling off . If you don't, or if it's fixed to something else, remove the PCB that it connects to, make a note of how it is connected (which connector, which way up, etc) and unplug it. Put the PCB back in the right slot. With all the ccables removed, put the top cover back on the CPU to protect it, and then press the buttons on the sliders. With a friend helping, pull the CPU right out of the rack and put it down. If there are any Unibus expansion boxes then most likely they will be like the CPU, Deal with them in the same way. I can't comment on the tape units as I don't know what you have. -tony