What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own? [Tek 4132]

[Christian Corti]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> I find it curious that what seems to be collected in the minicomputer
> area seems to be gear of major brands.

Me too :-)

> Does anyone collect Varian minis?

Yes! We have a couple of Varian 620/f (some with expansion boxes)

> Or General Automation?

Yes!! We have an SPC-16/65 that I really would like to restore, but I lack 
a) all kind of documents/schematics/software and b) the memory board. I 
could probably build a replacement for the memory board if I had the 
technical documentation for the machine.
We also have the FPs and boards of two GA16-2?? (I know that someone has 
the CPU boxes and racks where these came from but I don't recall who it 
was).

> Or any one of the many non-DEC, HP, etc. minis?  Heck, I don't read much
> about DG minis  on this list--and they were a major force.

Dietz MINCAL 523; a micro-programmed 19 bit minicomputer with foil 
micro-/macroprogram ROM (micro and macro programs share the same 
address and data bus) and a mixture of sign/magnitude and twos-complement 
arithmetic. It was *great* fun to reverse enginere just *everything* from 
the confuse backplane wiring (no bus) to recreating the mnemonics and 
disassembling the monitor and microcode.

Christian