Hi folks, I'd like to share with you my experiences, I made during March and April when most of the remaings of a big computer collection originally located in Aachen were thankfully mostly saved by the collectors in Germany. In March, there had been a brief discussion about remainings of the Computer Computer Aachen, Germany. As far as I understood, a couple of years ago, most of the collection could be saved thanks to the CHM and a donation of SAP, who made shipping from Germany to California possible from a financial point of view. The collection is since then known as the "SAP collection" and stored at the CHM.Bits and pieces, the CHM left behind in a warehouse in Dortmund, "re-appeared" in March. A very motivated person, who got informed about the vintage systems, tried then to locate and contact the renter of this warehouse via the landlord (which had to be located and contacted as well). It turned out that the content stored in this warehouse had to be cleared within 2 month, as the warehouse was going to be sold. This was a pure coincindence and destiny here was on the side of all those, who'd like to save ancient comouting systems from being scrapped, as that person actually tried to find collectors willing to save these remainings, as everything not saved would otherwise been scrapped. An post in a Robotron systems online forum (Vintage computer manufacturer from eastern Germany) had been placed with images of the parts. First come, first serve was the philosophy in order to give away for free the bits and pieces to collectors, whoever wanted to save these. I found the thread when I read about it here at classic-cmp, as another list member posted the information here and asked for information about and identification of the parts. So during the last three months, I went to this place more than once in order to try to save as much of complete parts as possible, I could, with the focus to get them back to working condition one day. During the first visit, other very nice collectors from eastern Germany were there as well. There was a very good atmosphere in trying to help each other to move heavy partsand cabinets around, to part with the bits in a fair way and to identify and estimate the conditions of these remainings. These are the days I like when you can meet new people who share this passion about vintage computing and save systems together from being scrapped. And that's how I have been knowing the collectors community in Germany so far. But for the first time, I also experienced different attitudes in this domain. With time, the discussions in that robotron thread where marked by rough tones of a person who stated that the remaings left behind by the CHM in that warehouse where "rejects" and therefore not worth or at least not interesting being picked up because of probably being incomplete and he treated the person who discovered the whole thing and opened the thread as unfair, as he felt the systems were already rewarded to others under doubtful circumstances. Another bad surprise, we had to face, was the behavior of a collector who was at the warehouse earlier than me and who took the opportunity to take with him two EAI 2000 analogue computers for somebody else, I originally was supposed to deliver to. The person in charge at the warehouse confound that guy with myself and asked him, if he was the one supposed to bring these machines to the person, who claimed interest in these. He said "yes" and took everything with him. Call it what you want, but that's seriously the first time, I face such nasty behaviour to put hands on vintage computers! I'd say that the real condition of a big lot of machines can only be identified properly, when being on site. That's exactly what I did. I stated interest in some parts of which I knew for sure that I could store them savely, in case their condition was satisfactory enough to resurect them to working condition one day. I also tried to save things which should belong together. Too bad, I was limited in space (the eternal problem). Otherwise I would have saved more. Anyway, the following could find a new home within "my walls". two Honeywell Bull Datanet systems (on Level 66 basis), can be hopefully transformed to normal mini-computer with approriate software Honeywell Bull reel tape drive with vacuum columns, complete (rebadged CDC tape unit, probably of type 669) Honeywell Bull terminal and printer Honeywell Bull disk drive (rebadged CDC BR3D4) with spare parts from another incomplete drive Control Data 604 Tape Transport Unit, all logic boards missing Control Data 854 Disk Drive, seems complete Control Data 841 Multiple Disk Drive, saved complete electronics and one complete disk unit with its hydraulic actuator, had no space for the entire cabinet :( Telefunken MDS-252 reel tape drive with vacuum columns, complete? (belonged to a TR-440 mainframe) Telefunken TR-4 console, complete? (rebadged IBM typewriter) Telefunken WSP-414 disk drive (rebadged CDS-drive) with concentrator-unit (complete) in order to connect up to eight drives to the TR-440 mainframe Telefunken LSS-150 power supply of a Facit paper tape unit DEC RP03, (ISS) with spare parts from another damaged and incomplete drive Pertec reel tape drive, complete NCR reel tape drive (rebadged CDC BW303 tape transport), one small PCB missing Logic boards from a CDC 608 tape unit (according to the person who organised the give-away, nobody ever showed interest in taking the complete unit) Unfortunately, I couldn't find documents online about all of these parts. So I'd kindly like to ask the list, if anybody has documents about the following ones, so that I could ask them in future, when I come to the point where I can start restoration of these: - CDC 604 and BW303 tape drives, 854 disk drive and 841 multiple disk drive - Honeywell Datanet (or Level 66 minis) documents and software - Telefunken schematics As you can see, I focused on peripherals, due to my particular interest in disk and reel tape drives. Maybe, a running Honeywell system can be obtained out of the stuff, I saved. Let's see how much can be resurrected of these in the years to come. Biggest problem regarding the disc drives will certainly be the missing disk packs and the probable re-calibration of the disk and tape units. The disk packs, I got from there, were all coroded to such an extend that they are most probably useless. The DEC RP03 drive came with two document binders containing schematics. Haven't seen them on bitsavers, yet, and will therefore scan them in near future. Kind regards, Pierre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pierre's collection of classic computers : http://classic-computing.dyndns.org/