11/73 (ba23) bringup after 12 years in deplorable storage conditions

[Ian S. King]

At the very least, take a good long look at the power supply and its caps.

Has the storage, as bad as it's been, been dry?  If not, you'll almost
certainly have corrosion all over the place, especially in the fastons ISTR
run power to the backplane.  (I haven't looked at my own 11/73 in a few
years, but it's in a dry, temperature-stable basement.)

Best of luck! - Ian
On Nov 20, 2014 12:32 PM, "Jacob Ritorto" <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey all,
>   I've been getting the bug worse and worse to start working on a real
> pdp11.  The Raspberry Pi / simh emulation is fantastic, but my hunger for
> authenticity is becoming rampant.  I haven't run the youngest in my fleet
> of pdp11s, the 11/73, since circa 2002 and if I recall correctly, it was
> becoming flaky and popping out to ODT inexplicably from time to time back
> then (I think this is the one with the notoriously combustible power supply
> wires that probably haven't been ECO'd yet -- need to get to that too).
> It's been lying in a warehouse in western Pennsylvania with no heat and a
> lot of dust.  So, worst case, we're talking temperature transients around
> 110 F and -20 F with no protection.  It did stay quite dry.
>
>   Think it'd be bad to simply blow the dust off and fire it up?
>
> thx
> jake
>