Rescue update: DEC RC-25s + / was Re: DEC cartridge ID

[Paul Anderson]

Great save!

On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 8:27 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

> So Rob and I got onsite yesterday and ended up taking away a small haul of
> DEC equipment.
>
>         - Three RC-25 drives with a dozen-or-so cartridges. We know at
> least one drive works.
>
>         - We were quite excited to see two 11/83 boxes, one of which was
> working with one of the RC-25s, running RT-11.
>           However when Rob got everything home and examined it, it turned
> out it was an 11/23 CPU in the running box,
>           and the other was mostly empty of cards, with no CPU.
>
>         - A VT-330 terminal (left two other 330 displays, only one
> keyboard between the three of them).
>
>         - 4-slot Q-bus backplane/rack unit, probably originally held the
> 11/23 CPU.
>
>         - Some extra/duplicate Q-bus device controller cards.
>
>         - RT-11 install media on floppy.
>
> It was the data-collection end of the Becton-Dickinson FACS 440 equipment
> (Flourescent Activated Cell Sorting), 1980s technology that been in use
> till not too long ago. All the extra bits had been accumulated over time to
> keep the system going.
>
> Sadly we had to leave the 440 rack which had two 5-6" X/Y CRT displays,
> 3KV power supplies, the laser table with two water-cooled lasers,
> photo-multiplier tubes, optics, etc.
>
>