I think I've only ever seen pictures. I know I haven't seen one up close.
There is "close" and there is "this thing is going to tip over on me" close.
It was pretty impressive: Amazing lights panel that would allow you to see what it was doing, what sector and track you were on, and all sorts of stuff. I wrote a few quick programs to copy the lower 4k of memory to a specific track, it was handy because I could then load up pretty much any diagnostic tape image I wanted in a second.
Made a fair bit of noise spinning up, once running you could hear the disks seeking, quite loud. The write protect panel had a square lighted switch for each disk and a sector lockout that I think protected the top sectors of the disk from writing.
One 6 foot rack would fit the panel, controller, one drive, and the power supply for the drive then the controller. Pretty hefty, a second drive was in the rack next to it above the pdp8/I and PC08 paper tape reader. It was a truck. I wonder how it's doing these days...
C
