Thought you folks might be interested in a quick update on my folly here. At the beginning of November I drove down to the bay area to pick up the two fire-damaged PDP-11 systems -- a PDP-11/70 and a PDP-11/45. (I also made a few other stops and got a few other items, but that's not what I'm here to talk about...)
Over the past few weeks I've gone over the two systems and my assessment is that the 11/70, while completely filthy, is completely restorable. The fire/heat damaged the front panel enough to discolor the plexi and start melting a few switches (http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/1170/1170.jpg) but that's the extent of the damage. My only fear is that the fingers on the backplanes might possibly have some corrosion here and there, but I've started going through and cleaning the boards and the backplane slots and so far I haven't run into anything that looks troubling. The 11/45 is considerably further gone. It took a serious amount of heat, enough for the pig iron frame for the front panel to start melting ( http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/1170/1145.jpg). The front panel is completely destroyed, as is the wiring harness for the power distribution. But... the metal of the chassis and the power supplies seems to have protected the boards and the backplane. There are no melted or even discolored wire-wrap wires on the backplane, and the boards look fine. As an experiment I took the non-11/45-specific boards out of the backplane (a Plessey memory board, an RL11 controller, and an M9301 bootstrap terminator -- this one was right up front where things were the hottest and the handles had started to melt) and tested them in my PDP-11/40. They all work fine. So I think that, maybe, with a LOT of effort, the 11/45 could live again. I'm tackling the 11/70 first (Al kindly sold me a new front panel for a very reasonable price so it already looks 100% better) and once I'm done with that I hope to move on to the 11/45. In the meantime I'm hoping to keep my eyes peeled for parts for the /45. I found a seller on eBay with "restored" H7420a power supplies for $68, with free shipping so I grabbed a pair. I realize this is unlikely, but I was curious if anyone has 1) any parts of the 11/45 power wiring harness, or 2) (really unlikely) an 11/45 front panel in any condition. Well, any condition better than "melted into slag," I suppose. I can build my own wiring harness, but if I can save myself the trouble, that'd be nice. - Josh
