Straight-8 on eBay

[Tom Uban]

At 03:02 PM 6/27/2005 +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:

>On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 10:00 -0400, Paul Koning wrote:
> >  Jules> Out of interest, what drives are those? Our 8 has a pair of
> >  Jules> Dectape 55's, which have bronze-coloured faceplates rather
> >  Jules> than the black of the Ebay system. Is Dectape 55 a different
> >  Jules> animal to TU55?
> >
> > Curious.  The black ones are the ones I know, with black "spider"
> > hubs.  Then again, the PDP-6 photo on
> > http://simh.trailing-edge.com/photos/pdp6.jpg shows shiny metal hubs
> > and a faceplate that doesn't seem to be black.  So yours may be an
> > older version.
>
>Hmm, I've only got one photo of our 8 here on this machine, however...
>
>Machine (panels are currently laying behind it, they're not missing!):
>   http://www.patooie.com/temp/pdp8small.jpg
>
>Closer view of the drives:
>   http://www.patooie.com/temp/dectapes.jpg
>
>
>I don't know this machine's history, although I can ask. I did wonder if
>the bronze panels were just the same as this EBay 8 and had been
>stripped back to metal for some reason (i.e. they were once painted
>black), but (without the machine in front of me to check) it looks like
>the lettering's added direct to the panel - plus of course it carries
>the DECtape55 nameplate which the TU55s of the EBay machine don't have.
>
>I thought it was going to be a stupid question with a really easy answer
>(I'm a DEC novice!) but maybe not! :-)
>
>cheers
>
>Jules

That's a nice looking machine as well! Is the controller in the lower
left (with the blinkenlights control panel) for the TU55s? Does that
machine have an RF32 as well?

--tom