-- The story about the rescue will be described in future. In March 2012, there was a discussion on the classiccmp mailing list about some remainings of the former Computer Museum Aachen (CMA) in Germany. As far as I understood, a few years prior to 2012, the building in which the museum was residing, had to be torn down which is why the collection had to find a new home. Eventually, most of the collection could be saved thanks to the Computer History Museum (CHM) in the USA and a donation of SAP. The latter made possible the shipping from Germany to California from a financial point of view. The collection is since then known as the "SAP collection" and stored at the CHM. Bits and pieces, the CHM had to leave behind, found their way in an old warehouse in Dortmund. A very motivated person, Alexander, got informed about the location of the vintage systems by locals and, in turn, tried then to locate and contact the tenant of this warehouse via the landlord. It turned out that the content stored there had to be cleared within two months, as the buidling was going to be sold. Thankfully, Alexander then tried to contact collectors willing to save these remainings, as everything not saved would otherwise have been scrapped.
A post in a forum dedicated to Robotron computer systems (Vintage computer manufacturer from the former Federal Republic of Germany) was placed with images of the bits and pieces in the warehouse. The approach was "first come, first serve" in order to give away for free everything to collectors, whoever wanted to save these.
A list member of the classiccmp mailing list posted a link to the Robotron forum thread. There, I was able to contact Alex that managed the give-away of the computer remainings in order to ask him for information about and identification of the parts. A lot of phone calls and several visits to the warehouse followed over the next three months.
During my first visit, I met very friendly classic computer enthousiasts from the Robotron Museum who came to rescue systems and parts for their collection. There was a very good atmosphere in trying to help each other to move heavy parts and cabinets around, to part with the bits in a fair way and to identify and estimate the conditions of these remainings.
Those are the days I appreciate a lot: When you can meet new people who share this passion about vintage computing and save systems together from being scrapped. And that's how I have been knowing the classic computing community in Germany up to that point in time. But for the first time, I also made less pleasant experiences in this area. Soon, the discussions in that robotron forum thread dealing with the CMA remains where marked by rough tones of a person who stated that the remainings left behind by the CHM in that warehouse where "rejects" and therefore not worth or at least not interesting to be picked up because of probably being incomplete. This same person called Alexander (who discovered the whole thing and opened the thread to save these systems) as unfair, as he felt the systems were already rewarded to others under doubtful circumstances. Another bad surprise, we had to face, was the behavior of a collector from north-east Germany who was at the warehoues earlier than me. This person took the opportunity to take with him two incomplete EAI 2000 analogue computers for somebody else, I originally was supposed to deliver to. The person in charge at the warehouse confound that guy with myself and asked him, if he was the one supposed to bring these machines to the person, who claimed interest in these. He said "yes" and took everything with him. This was for me the first time that I had to face such a doubtful behaviour to put hands on vintage computers! I'd say that the real condition of a big lot of machines can only be identified properly, when being on site. That's exactly what I did. I stated interest in some parts of which I knew for sure that I could store them savely, in case their condition was satisfactory enough to resurect them to working condition one day. I also tried to save things which should belong together. Too bad that I was limited in storage space (the eternal problem of a collector). Otherwise, I would have tried to save more. Anyway, I was able to give the following systems and peripherals a new home: Two Honeywell Bull Datanet systems (on Level 66 basis), can be hopefully transformed to normal mini-computer with approriate software Honeywell Bull reel tape drive with vacuum columns, complete (rebadged CDC tape unit, probably of type 669) Honeywell Bull terminal and printer Honeywell Bull disk drive (rebadged CDC BR3C9) with spare parts from another incomplete drive Control Data 604 Tape Transport Unit, all logic boards missing Control Data 854 Disk Drive, seems complete Control Data 841 Multiple Disk Drive, saved complete electronics and one complete disk unit with its hydraulic actuator, had no space for the entire cabinet :( Telefunken MDS-252 reel tape drive with vacuum columns, complete (belonged to a TR-440 mainframe) Telefunken TR-4 console, complete (rebadged IBM typewriter) Telefunken WSP-414 disk drive (rebadged Century Data Systems drive) with concentrator unit (complete) in order to connect up to eight drives to the TR-440 mainframe Telefunken LSS-150 power supply of a Facit paper tape unit DEC RP03, (ISS) with spare parts from another damaged and incomplete drive Pertec reel tape drive, complete NCR reel tape drive (rebadged CDC BW303 tape transport), one small PCB missing Logic boards from a CDC 608 tape unit (according to the person who organised the give-away, nobody ever showed interest in taking the complete unit) I focused the haul on peripherals due to my particular interest in disk and reel tape drives. With a little bit of luck and some required information, the Honeyweel Front-End Network Processors (FNPs) can be turned into a standard Level-66 Honeywell Mini-Computer. This, however, needs further investigation. In the end, most of the remaings of a big computer collection originally located in Aachen were thankfully saved by motivated computer enthousiasts.
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