The posting about the KA10 emulator reminded me to post about a project
I'm currently involved in.

We're a bunch of around 30 crazy people here in Bergen, Norway who have
started a computer museum. The star of our collection is...  wait for
it....

a DECSYSTEM-2065!

That's right, all six cabinets of it. One of our members rescued it from
going to a landfill some ten years ago. Since then it has languished in
several not-quite-optimal warehouses etc. and we started the museum in
order to once again save it from the landfill.

We are not quite sure how much memory it has, but probably 512KW. We
have 5 or 6 RP06 disks drives, a TU45 tape drive, two LA36 console
terminals, a large lineprinter (LP20?) and a card reader. We even have
some documentation! ;-)

It was originally delivered to the Norwegian School of Economics as a
2060 in 1979, build #2 from the factory and the first 2060 shipped to
Europe. As installed it had 256KW of memory, one RP06 and one RP07 disk
drive, 48 serial lines, the TU45, the lineprinter and the card reader.
It was upgraded several times during its lifetime, and retired as a 2065
in 1988.

Our goal is to get it up and running again, but to do that two things
have to happen: 1) We need someone to pick up the tab for the power bill
and 2) we need to fix all the corroded contacts and other hardware bugs
that have doubtlessly accumulated over the years of storage. 1) is
difficult but possible, 2) is damn near impossible. We are going to try,
though.

Our latest acquisitions for the museum are a VAX 11/785 and a VAX 11/750
in perfect working order. They came with 3 RP06 disk drives (including 5
known-good disk packs), 5 RA81 disks and a TU-something tape drive (the
type you load from the top, reels lying horizontally). At least one of
these machines will be running NetBSD when we have cleared space for
them at the museum (space is limited).

If we get an ISP to sponsor us we will connect all the machines (well,
at least the ones we are able to power up and boot without them catching
fire) to the 'net.

In addition to this we have several MicroVAXen, a DECstation or two, an
IBM System/36, two Xerox 850 systems, an old Tandberg machine of some
sort (Norwegian computer) and of course a handful of micros and hobby
computers. We even have 40-60 m2 of good, old fashioned data floor, if
only we could get it transported from Oslo to Bergen.

We're hoping to get a PDP8 (Digital Norway is working on it), we have
been promised a Sperry of some sort by a private individual and we are
of course looking for a Norsk Data (ND) machine. An old HP machine
(perhaps a HP3000?) wouldn't hurt either.

If you're ever in Bergen...

Gunnar

Bergen Datatekniske Museum
(Bergen Computer Museum)

--
Gunnar Helliesen   | Bergen IT Consult AS  | NetBSD/VAX on a uVAX II
Systems Consultant | Bergen, Norway        | '86 Jaguar Sovereign 4.2
gunnar@bitcon.no   | http://www.bitcon.no/ | '73 Mercedes 280 (240D)