Help collecting gear from west of Chicago

[Dennis Boone]

 > Looking for someone who can "rescue" and temporarily store a PDP-11.
 > It's about 30 miles west of O'Hare, apparently.  I won this at auction;
 > the notification didn't arrive, and now that I'm traveling and can't do
 > anything about it, they want the beast out of their building yesterday.

I ended up hiring a commercial pack/ship outfit to get this home,
and it was delivered yesterday -- 2199 pounds.  Thanks to the folks
who said they would help me load it if I picked it up.  Here's a
first glimpse inventory of the haul:

The CPU is a PDP-11/44 with additional labels indicating it was a
Teradyne Teranet ATE Networking System, whatever that is.  In addition
to the CPU, the tall cabinet (purple and orange DEC banner across the
top) contains a serial mux, a DEC battery backup, two RL02s, and an
additional card chassis with some damage to its backplane wiring.
The latter contains a pair of memory boards (Mostek), and some
Teradyne-built items; I don't recognize the bus -- two edge connectors,
each wider than qbus.  It doesn't look like the unibus cards I've seen.

The first small cabinet (9764, I think?) contains three RA81 drives;
one is labeled 'bad hda'.

The second small cabinet (also 9764) contains a TU80 and an RA81.
The RA is labeled 'bad motor / bad hda'.

Also included are a Decwriter, a DataProducts line printer, and
a VT131.

It looks like the cabling is pretty much intact.  Whoever
decommissioned this system did a decent job of tucking cables up into
the backs of the cabinets.  I figured with my luck someone would have
just cut them, so I get to be happy now.

I haven't had the CPU out on its rails yet, so I don't know what's
inside.  I'm going to have to work on power outlets before I can
even try to run this beast.  (And yes, I intend to look through the
archives for tips on proper pre- and first-power-up etiquette before I
blow anything up)

Guess I have a summer project now.  (Like I need any more projects. :-)

De