Restorations

When the current restoration project began in the summer of 2003, the DECsystem-1090 had been powered down for more than a year, after the close of a previous effort—but it was known to have been working at that time. The DECSYSTEM-2065 was disassembled into three cabinets.

The VAX-11 restoration was started in August of 2008, and OpenVMS 6.2 was first booted in January, 2009. We have two machines: a VAX-11/780-5 which is currently running and available online, and a VAX-11/785 which has been largely restored but is offline until we perform some power upgrades.

The restoration stories are taken from excerpts of progress reports; items not related to the hardware restoration have been left out. One long gap in October and November was filled with software work and forensic analysis, while we waited for a consultant to become available.

Read the Restoration Stories: