SYSTEMS ON EBAY

At the beginning of August 2005, I was doing my regular eBay search for old Data General equipment when I came across this sight that made me gasp.

A local guy was selling a Nova 3 and Eclipse S/130 with peripherals housed in two 6ft racks. In the left rack, top to bottom: an Eclipse S/130, a Nova 3, a model 6031 diskette drive, and two model 6045 disk cartridge drives with fixed disk. In the right rack, top to bottom: Diablo model 33 fixed disk and disk cartridge unit, a model 6021 800bpi 9-track tape unit, and another 6045 disk cartridge drive with fixed disk.

Along with the machines, there came quite a bit of documentation and several disk cartridges, 8-inch diskettes, and a few magnetic tapes.

Plus, there also came several large boxes of punched paper tape. Heaps!

All that was running through my mind was how I was actually going to go about transporting the machines and where would I put them. My girlfriend offered several suggestions, but I was low on cash so I decided that it was best I let someone else buy them and give them a good home. Alas, nobody bid on them and it was here that my conscience started to gnaw away at me.

Photos used by permission of John Theodoridis