pro-350 dumpster dive

[Jules Richardson]

Tony Duell wrote:
>> At 11:08 AM 2/5/2006, joseph c lang wrote:
>>> I've been hanging around the dumpster again....
>>> I salvaged some DEC pro-350 parts. 
>> I've got to ask - what sort of dumpster has Pro 350 parts in it?
> 
> When I was at university (both undergrad and grad student), I had 
> permission to 'skip dive' (same thing as dumpster diving, I guess). Among 
> the things I recovered were : 
> 
> An HP2100A minicomputer with 7900 disk (that was in poor condtiion as it 
> landed on the front panel) and paper tape reader

Heh. Apparently the Meiko CS1 transputer machine that I used to use at Kent 
uni ended up in the skip (I think it was running at about 140 processors when 
I was there). The story goes that some students rescued it and it went to the 
Science Museum (and there is something on their asset list that *could* be 
that machine).

I need to make enquiries and find out how complete it is - hopefully it's all 
there *and* all the docs etc. were saved too.

When I was at Kent though most of the surplus equipment was put out in 
Computing for people to pick over prior to it going in the skip - needless to 
say, the computing staff tended to take any workstations / minis home with 
them before us mere mortals even saw it :)

> The test boards for the BBC micro

Those are not easy to find. Far as I know they only ever went to service 
centres, so there can't have been that many built.