11/23's

[ciaraldi at rochester.UUCP]

In article <221 at andromeda.UUCP> marco at andromeda.UUCP (the wharf rat) writes:
>
>What can you do with PDP 11/23 's ?? I've got a couple of the things
>hanging around from old projects, and while I hate to throw 'em out,
>I really can't think of anything useful to do with the beasties.  They're
>too tall for terminal stands and too big for paperweights :-)  I think
>they have something like 16 K and two RL02's each.  Any ideas ?

As some who followed this newsgroup a few months ago know,
I know someone who ran a large bookstore with  an 11/23.
He had 256K RAM, 2 (later 4)  RL02's, and 3 terminals,
all running TSX+.

The system worked fine for many years, and was recently
(2 weeks ago) upgraded to an 11/73.

Thanks to the help and suggestins of several people on the et,
we were able to upgrade by buying a new (to us)  22-bit chassis,
11/73 processor, and a 4Meg memory board.  Cost was about $5500.
Now it runs three times as fast, and should be able to handle
the 6 terminals we want quite easily.

Only snag so far is that the version of TSX+ we have (2.1) will
only address 256K, so we have to spend another $600 to get
the new release (6.4).

The lesson is that, with enough memory (not all that
expensive), a PDP-11/23 can do quite a bit.

My recommendation:  Either find a used computer
dealer who will buy the parts, or donate it
to  a school or other non-profit organization.
It will be a lot more useful than the
Ataris peole are giving them.

Mike Ciaraldi
seismo!rochester!ciaraldi