Getting out of the hobby

[Jason Howe]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2016, Ethan Dicks wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 10:33 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>>    > From: Jason Howe
>>
>>    > I really really want to aquire a PDP-11 ... Given the price of these
>>    > things in the world right now...
>>
>> If you're willing to live with a QBUS machine, and not a UNIBUS one, it
>> doesn't necessarily take a mountain of money
>
> Agreed.  I see Qbus PDP-11s offered from time to time for a few
> hundred dollars down to free.  I'm helping someone restore a 42" cab
> with a MicroPDP-11/73, a second BA23, RL02, RQDX3 (missing drives
> because they were removed and destroyed prior to sale - a common
> thing), TSV05 magtape, 10 serial ports... I think it was a recent
> State Surplus auction that went for under $100.

Oh yeah, I'm not proud or picky here.  I've actually eyed a number of the 
microPDP systems -- mostly from a standpoint of how much less room they 
take up.

>
>> I've bought 11/23 CPU boards for as little as $40 recently, and memory and
>> serial interface cards for console are on the same order of money. And I got
>> a BA11-S box, complete with power supply and backplane, for a little over
>> $100, IIRC.
>
> No disagreement with those price points.  Those are the kinds of
> numbers I see too.
>
>> The real hangup is mass storage; the older drives, at least, are all real
>> money now.
>
I actually randomly got an RD51 in an "Make these boxes of stuff 
disappear" pickup a couple years ago.  I also have a couple good MFM 
drives out of various old PC's, so something with an RQDX3 really sounds 
ideal to me.

My budget and space are both super limited, so I usually end-up 
selling something before bringing something new into the house.

I admit I haven't been really active in my search recently, but always 
half an eye open for if something should pop up.

--Jason