PDP-8/e and terminals in West Sussex, UK

[Jules Richardson]

Tony Duell wrote:
> What do people consider to be the 'holy grails' of classic computer 
> collecting? 

Interesting question. Are we limited to production machines? For me, 
prototypes actually seem to hold more interest - it's fascinating to see how a 
prototype evolved into a final product (or how bits of it were re-used in 
other products), or to see from the various hardware hacks which bits the 
designers were having trouble making work.

Oddball architectures appeal, too - parallel / multiprocessor systems, those 
which use a secondary processor for bootstrap / monitoring, those which use an 
uncommon CPU. Then there's graphics-heavy systems - I can always appreciate 
(and relate to) something with a lot of attached graphics hardware.

I'm not too fussy I suppose - I don't tend to go after specific machines, but 
just see what shows up. Having said that I would *love* a Connection Machine 
CM2, although I probably wouldn't know what to do with it - but you can never 
had too many blinkenlights :-)

Now that I have the space for it, I do really want to find something *big* to 
play with - not necessarily rare or anything, but a few cabinets of mini or 
mainframe would be fun to screw around with (maybe a PDP-11 and some storage / 
I/O would be nice, then I could perhaps understand what all the fuss is about 
DEC machines :-)

cheers

Jules