Computer Museum Visit

Today I got a chance to see some real PDP-11s in action at the House for Retired and Aged Computers in Winssen, near Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. This private museum, run by Geert Rolf, is home to many old minicomputers. Most are Digital machines, but the collection also includes computers made by Phillips, Data General, HP and Olivetti. Unlike some other museums, Geert and his colleague Warner Krelekamp regularly work on the systems to get (or keep) them running. If you're into this kind of stuff, the museum is well worth a visit, but note that this can only be arranged by appointment.

Geert gave me an extensive tour of the PDP-11 machines and even a demo of a proper blinkenlights 11/40 and RT-11 on an 11/44. Hearing of my own little project, Geert was able to fix me up with a couple of spare RL02 disk packs and was even kind enough to copy an RT-11 boot disk to one of them, so I could get going as soon as my drives were operational!

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