Mike Patton: Retro Computing

I have approximately one tractor trailer load of old computers (mostly old DEC equipment, primarily PDP-11, but including PDP-8, LSI-11 and uVAX among others). I know this, because we nearly filled the second moving van with just the computers that didn't fit in the first one. I started this page from an e-mail I sent out describing my collection, hopefully I'll work on it from time to time (I meant these pages, but it applies to the computers as well) and eventually get more details. If there's any questions you have, feel free to ask...

I keep telling myself that I'm going to work on the computers in my collection and get some of it functional again. But, in reality, I expect I'll never really get the time. So, if there's anything that you are looking for, feel free to drop me a line. At least then it'll be of more benefit than just sitting in the basement acting as ballast to keep the house from blowing away...

More details: I have several dozen PDP-11 CPUs, mostly 05/10, several 34s, and a few 45s, plus maybe another odd one or two. I have a large collection of peripherals, TC11+TU56, RK11+RK05, RX11+RX01/02, plus paper tape, serial and parallel interfaces and some early (non-DEC) Unibus Ethernet cards. I have a large collection of Q-Bus stuff, very little of this is actually assembled into systems, but there are many CPU cards of various flavors, both LSI-11 and uVAX. There are a few systems though. A couple of VAXstations (mostly GPX in rolling floor boxes, BA123 IIRC) and some "net only" boxes (BA23 rack mount) with a CPU, 2 Ethernet cards and a PROnet card, which were the original IP routers at MIT. I also have a bunch of early DEC PC clones in pretty bad shape (but with a dozen or so the theory was that there should be enough parts to make some working ones).

Other folks

Collecting old computers is a fairly popular hobby for the people who learned on these machines. I have a page dedicated to linking to other web sites about Retrocomputing.

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And finally, a random note:
When I die I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather and not kicking and screaming like the passengers in his car.