While the other respondants are experts whose advice I strongly recommend, you might be interested in this: https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/pdp8 It's a chronicle of my restorating of my 8/M. Note that as pointed out, your power supply is quite different from mine. However, this might give you some sense of what kind of things you might run into. BLS On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 04:24:07PM -0500, therenguy via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Thank you so much for getting back to me so soon. Alas, I live near Philadelphia, Reading, PA to be specific. Not quite in your back yard. I am really not sure how to begin. I could plug it in you know but I am sure that is not the way to proceed. Are you aware of anyone closer to me? I have worked on projects throughout my lifetime across the web so that might be a possibility although I am sure some of the questions I might ask would be truly from a beginner for a project like this one. Don?t really know. Decided to look into it. Ashame it sits in a closet.
Randy
On Jan 20, 2025, 4:18 PM -0500, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org>, wrote:
On 1/20/25 16:14, therenguy via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In any event I am the owner of an intact PDP-8/e that was operating once upon a time when I received it. A kind person gave it to me because they had too much hardware and needed a loving home for it. That is how I came to own it. At one point in my career many years ago I was invited to DEC to write code for a similar computer.
I am looking for someone to help me restore it to operating condition. It has not been used for many years and has been sitting and moved between many closets. I have its power supply also.
Can someone help kick off this adventure with me? I would be very interested in having a conversation with anyone who can make suggestions on how to proceed, who to contact, and if perhaps someone is interested, would like to help with such a project. I understand there are sessions help by VCF in this region, I live in PA, and I would certainly be willing to attend such a session.
Where in PA are you? LSSM has a few 8/es, and I personally have a few more, most of which I have restored. I've been working with, on, and inside of 8/es for about 40 years.
If you're near Pittsburgh, we can probably collaborate.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA