PDP-8 chassis on eBay

Dave dfnr2 at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 8 09:53:14 CST 2017


I managed to snag the chassis and what I hope is the matching cover.  I thought it looked like an 8/e or 8/f.
When I bought my PDP 8/m, I also picked up 2 extra complete board sets (including front panels, and power supplies from the seller's swap/repair stock.  The front panels are the 8/f/m versions (with LEDs), as are the switching supplies.  I've been looking for a chassis ever since, although I suppose I could have adapted a commercial 19" chassis.  Now I need to find a backplane (or 2), bezel, and lock.
As a side note, I bought my 8/m from a guy who ran a business setting up leather and textile embroidery (cowboy boots, etc.) systems based on DEC PDP/8 and PDP/11 controllers.  The business was still going as of 3 years ago.  The owner was working on a EPROM emulator to simplify programming of a particular PDP-11 based controller, which stored the designs in EPROM.  He apparently still had some customers running setups in Canada and India based on 8/a systems.  He was just getting around to retiring the last of the 8/m based systems.  His shop was (hopefully is) a living vintage DEC museum, but for him it was simply his work.  Of course a Raspberry Pi could fully replace those systems, even running the PDP-11 embroidery design software on SIMH, but apparently customers don't like to mess with working systems.
Dave

    On Wednesday, November 8, 2017 6:50 AM, Pete Turnbull via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
 

 On 07/11/2017 15:09, william degnan via cctalk wrote:
> The seller in the past sold an 8i I believe, it's probably an 8i.
> Bill
> 
> On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 10:00 AM, Dave via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> Can you tell which PDP8 this goes with?  Would an 8/e panel fit?
>> Dave

It's an 8/e (of which I have two, and a nearby friend has three or four 
more, as well as a couple of 8/Ms) chassis.  It takes a big linear PSU 
and two 10-slot Omnibus backplanes.  The 8/F and 8/M (OEM version, 
usually with a very simple turnkey panel) are shorter, take only one 
10-slot Omnibus backplane, and have a completely different switch-mode PSU.

-- 
Pete
Pete Turnbull


   


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