Value of 7-track TU10

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: William Degnan

    > I found the doc somewhere months ago sorry I can't remember where. I
    > will upload to my site if I get a free moment and it's still on my
    > computer.

Thanks; that would be great. I already did find online the TU10 Maintenance
Manual (EK-TU10-MM-007), the TU10M Master System Manual (DEC-00-TU10M-D), and
the TU10 Engineering Drawings, so we're pretty well set for these drives, but
it would be good to have DEC-00-TU10S-DC too.


    > $2000 if clean.

Wow. I saw a pair of H960's, a pair of CDC 92185 tape drives, 3 Fuji
MiniEagles and an 11/23 go for $1.5K on eBait recently:

  http://www.ebay.com/itm/161928600660

Now, those are streaming drives, not vacuum column, but still - why is the
TU10 worth so much more?

    > Master unit double that price.

I find this even harder to understand. The only difference between the two is
that the Master has 7 dual Flip Chips (M640, M891, M7673, M7672, M892, M895,
M7671) and 3 single Flip Chips (M100, M896, M958) that the Slave doesn't have.

(The backplane is, as far as I can tell, wired for both - the wire list given
in the prints is for the master, and I don't see a second Slave-only
wire-list. Yes, perhaps some early Slave drives had a Slave-only backplane,
but that's just a guess. If someone who has a Slave drive can check their
backplane to see if slots 6-15 are wired, that would be very useful to know.)

Yes, the full set of 10 Flips Chips would be hard to find, but I have a hard
time seeing them being worth $200 each...

	Noel