HP find, plus some good DEC stuff too... and CDC.. and...

[Jay West]

Got a call from my High School, they had found more "old computer junk" in a 
little used closet under a stairwell. They said "come get it out", so I did, 
and I was pleasantly suprised. Here's what I found...

Four, yep... FOUR of the rare HP 12920 MUX panels.. at least two of which 
have full cable sets!! These aren't the mux controller cards, this is the 
large metal bracket (which has it's own circuit board) that the 12920 mux 
set connects to. And the cables for these are a bi***, double hooded affairs 
on one end, centronics style connectors on the other, a three cable bundle. 
Anyways, this totally makes my day :) I will keep one or two, the rest are 
available for trade.

A CDC 9715 "front panel filler kit". The CDC drive (a single one anyway) 
took 1/2 a 19" rack space horizontally. So this kit includes the extra 
filler panel to bring it across the 19" span. Also included are a full set 
of unit select plugs (look like they'd work on an RL02?).

An Emulex SC02/SC11 disc controller. This looks to be Qbus. Dang. I have 
qbus systems I'd use it on, but I'd rather have a unibus controller ;) The 
board comes with some interesting things in the box. Full technical manual 
on the board, plus a handfull of color brochures and specification sheets 
(marketing glossy's) for all the different products that Emulex made in the 
way of disk controllers and such. Then there is an envelope with a large 
amount of  the full line of emulex products glossy brochures/datasheets as 
well.

An odd HP "power controller". I've never seen anything quite like this. The 
power controller is HP part 30311-60001. It has a lot of the standard HP 
power connectors (yeeehar! Battery eliminator plugs!!), and test points on 
the front for "battery test". Then there's a large bundle of power cables 
that goes to a rackmount panel with separate switches for "lower memory" and 
upper memory" standby and run with lights for DC status, battery status, 
etc. This sure seems like it would be some kind of power management for the 
21MX M-series, but I've seen the battery backup option for the M series and 
this wasn't it. Odd.

A partially canibalized HP 2112A power supply

A CDC PA5A1 & PA5A2 hardware maintenance manual. The pictures look very much 
like the CDC 9715.

Misc. parts from an 11/03 or maybe 11/23 front panel (the 3 white toggle 
switches assembly) - bezel & circuit board

This appears to be a 3rd party manual for DEC memory - "CMV-1000 MOS Memory 
Manual"

Then there's some manuals for various 9" monitors frequently used with old 
systems - sanyo, ball (a TD12/15 service manual), ikegami or something like 
that...

I left a bunch of cannibalized 21MX power supply stuff behind, as well as 
some power supply parts for a 7970 tape drive. I will be going back to get 
those... as well as a pristine, apparently never installed brand new 
old-style HP 19" rack. Now I have a place to mount my other 7970E and 7906 
and 7900A :)

Lastly, some really odd stuff I left behind but will go back to get. I have 
no clue what this stuff is... honestly, it looks like stuff from an old 
Frankenstien laboratory in the movies. Desktop metal boxes in this mottled 
black paint, with HUGE brownish/redish dials on them that appear to be some 
type ceramic. Large analog meters on most of it. No brand name that I could 
see but it really didn't look "home brew". I could tell is was FAR older 
than the HP stuff I was looking for. Maybe when I get that stuff I can post 
a few pics and people could try to guess what it is. It's very clearly not 
computer related though - believe I saw a few tubes in some of them.

Oh, I also got a voice coil with 5 heads attached to it. It's quite odd 
looking - the heads don't line up. There's maybe two heads on the bottom of 
the coil that are aligned "over under". Then there's a third one off to the 
side. Then a glass reticule, then two heads above that that didn't line up. 
Wierd. It looks like something that came off a borg arm ;)

Regards,

Jay West