using new technology on old machines

[Pontus Pihlgren]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 12:52:23PM +1200, Mike Ross wrote:
> 
> Has this ever been seriously considered, or mooted as a possible
> co-operative venture for a group of us?
> 

I see it on the small scale all the time. Such as Rod's new front panels 
for the 8/e. Or the various replica kits for early micros.

One computer I could imagine would sparc interest is a new PDP-6. Not 
sure how that would materialise.

I have a theory as to why it hasn't happened yet though. And that is 
lack of skill. Take an average sized Swedish town and you can probably 
scrounge up a fair amount of welders, carpenters, painters and 
metalworkers willing to work on a fun medium to large scale project such 
as restoring trains, cars and even whole factories. And given the number of 
"industry heritage" museums in Sweden it's a fairly big group.

But finding the a good sized group of people with the right skills for 
wirewrapping a large scale backplane and populating it with period 
correct hardware... much harder I think.

There are other problems too, finding a big chunk of metal to machine a 
new crankshaft is not so hard. Where do you find enough germanium 
transistors for a PDP-6 (I'm guessing that is what was used, and I'm 
also guessing that they are less common today, please correct me if I'm 
wrong)

I would love to work on such a project though!

/P