22 Apr
2021
22 Apr
'21
11:31 p.m.
On 4/22/21 4:42 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
Heh. :) But, ah, no. We have everything as close to "as-shipped
perfect" as possible at the museum, and even in a personal setting I'm
WAY too anal to run a machine without proper covers.
But when a BA32 sits in a dirty warehouse for twenty years, dust and
crap gets into those slots, top covers or not.
Dave McGuire
<mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
.... schmutz in the slots.
That's what you get for jimmying the cover interlock :) The ZIF slots, "no cables attached to the
cards" and the "identical POST pass/fail LEDs on every card" features of BI
are nice for working on, but it's a real problem for restoration. Anything that
attached to some peripheral (DEBNT, KLESI-B, KDB50, DMB32, etc) required a special
"transition header" that adapted the backplane to the cable set for that
particular device. Spare BI cards are fairly easy to come by, but everybody has thrown
away the transition headers and the cards are pretty much useless without them.
Yes, it's awful. I have countless BI and XMI boards with no cab kits.
DEC was clearly not planning properly for the surplus and aftermarket
for their machines. ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA