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DEC units on ebay

Oi, I've pulled these boards from the bottoms of boilers and they work fine after a run through the dishwasher
:)

More seriously, board failures are actually pretty rare in my experience
 
I thought I remembered the back doors on the 11/780 (or maybe it was 11/785?) in the machine room at UCI around 1990 had hex key latches, but that is a very old memory. I worked as a graveyard shift backup operator, and then later in other positions in the computer support department, when I was an EE undergrad there. It was still in operation when I was a backup operator, and I did VMS backups on it. Later, when I worked at the consulting desk, it had been decommissioned. One evening while our boss was out of town on vacation, a friend (who also worked the consulting desk) and I pushed it into his tiny office, leaving barely enough room to squeeze by. We plugged in some of the chassis cooling fans, put a DEC Correspondent on his desk, and manually typed some simulated console activity to make it look like we were trying to boot it. My friend was on shift at the consulting desk when he returned from vacation, and said the look of shock on his face was exquisite. "It's... it's... RUNNING?!"

Later, another boss got the TU77 tape drive in his office overnight, but that one wasn't powered. I'd sure love to add a TU77 in my collection. To hear the jet engine scream of its air pumps again would delight me.

Edit: Maybe I remember hex key latches from some other DEC computer. Did the 11/780 doors have the flip-and-turn latches with wafer locks to optionally lock the flip levers down?
 
leegleason said:
Yah cool. I had one on my keyring for a long time. I don't recall it being for the 11/780 though - that was a two bitted key instead of an allen. I think I got mine from my 8600, think it was also used on 6000s, maybe others.
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My 11/44 lowboy cabinet has a hex key latch on the front and back doors. I just use a hex wrench.
 
leegleason said:
Yah cool. I had one on my keyring for a long time. I don't recall it being for the 11/780 though - that was a two bitted key instead of an allen. I think I got mine from my 8600, think it was also used on 6000s, maybe others.
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Yup - this is the "big Allen" key for later VAXen. PDP-11s tended to use the "little Allen" key.

There were a few iterations of 78x that used different keys - the non-FCC 780 (which became a "VAX-11/780-5" when upgraded to a 785) and the FCC 780 and FCC 785. I don't remember if my 8650's had real keys or Allen keys.

But it is good to have a full set of DEC keys when working on vintage hardware - here's mine (including the Alpha mini-ACE master key):
 

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is that straight 8 #16? the serial tag appears to be in the same spot as on other models and i'm not seeing a third digit...

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I just noticed this German eBay seller, who started listing quite a collection of Unibus and PDP-8 boards, however the boards seem quite pricey, especially with shipping outside of Germany. But I figured if someone is on the hunt for a particular oddball or rare board, perhaps worth a glance: https://www.ebay.com/usr/kunoku_de
(Not affiliated or anything)
 
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