I just won my first[1] PDP-11 on ebay. It’s a Micro 11/73 in the DEC half-rack with the TS05 9-track tape drive. Great. Another “first-floor only” machine. Where am I going to put this thing? On the other hand, it’s a PDP-11, and that’s pretty cool. Now I have to recruit some help to get it going.

[1] Except for the three Micro-11s I had in my old apartment and gave away because they were heavy. But we won’t talk about that.

All in-box from the original owner. I don’t yet have an external 3.5″ disk (which I should be able to use to read Pro-dos formatted disks written on an old Macintosh,) but I do have one with my //gs. Will it work?

Operation Crimson has ended. Bounty collected is as follows:

– SGI Crimson Elan/Server (it’s got both labels – maybe upgraded from Server to Elan gfx option?)
– SGI Indigo2 (teal) with xZ gfx option
– SGI Indigo2 (teal) with unknown gfx option
– SGI Indigo2 (purple) with xL graphics and FDDI card

There was supposed to be an SGI O2 as well, but it went missing, so in its place was:
– HP 88780B 9-Track open-reel tape drive!

I think that’s a fair trade-up from the O2. It’s monstrously heavy, but, assuming it works, I have now been mired another step deeper into the pit of vintage computing. Now to get it hooked up to something that can read those old tapes I’ve been storing for years. Wonder if there is any Windows software that will support it?

I don’t go back to work for another two weeks, so sometime soon I’ll be sorting these machines out and figuring out what I have. The I2s will likely be traded off if they’re of lesser spec than the ones already in the collection.

I’m going to need to clear some space.

Currently heading north on I-94 towards the great land of Mil-wau-kee. Due to slip beyond the Cheddar Curtain in moments. The steam of the Zion nuke station is on the horizon.

Really friendly squirrel

Pier 39, San Francisco, CA

They’ve been showing up there since 1989. No, you’re not allowed to feed them.

An $8 tour turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. This is the aft 6″ gun. There is a 5″ gun at the bow which you can sit in and spin around the platform using the hand cranks.