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

[Jacob Ritorto]

Good deal.  I guess I'm just gonna go for it after a cursory inspection and
dusting.  It has stayed utterly dry; just the temp and dust were concerns.
I'll report back in a while..  Thanks!

On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Ian S. King <isking at uw.edu> wrote:

> 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
> >
>