October 2009, I received an email from a chap in Amstelveen (near Amsterdam) who had seen my website. He rescued a PDP-11/23 from the dumpster in the eighties, thinking "I am going to do nice things with this beasty". But as time went by, Rob (that's his name), only performed a few sysgen's on the system. As it often goes, the room where the PDP-11/23 was set up was needed for other purposes ... In his email he mentioned that besides the 11/23 there was also a VT100 terminal, a box with cables, a "BA11" box, LA50 printer and spare parts. He hated to throw the stuff away, but it had to go. "If I would be interested?" Rob asked. Sure, as I did not have an 11/23 in my collection! But I also asked for the dimensions of the 11/23 housing or cabinet containing the 11/23. It turned out to be a small office-sized cabinet, something I did neither have in my collection. And that would easily fit in the car. Cool! So, one evening I drove up to Amstelveen. We talked for almost three hours! Time flies when you’re having fun. See the history description of this PDP-11/23 ... Anyway, we went up to the attic to get the boxes with 8" floppies, documentation and cables, the VT100, LA50 and BA11, which turned out to be a "-VA", a tiny box with a small power supply and room for a 4-module QBUS card cage. Rob had already dragged the 11/23 cabinet downstairs! The logo on the cabinet says "11/23", but the front of the processor box says "11/03". As it was custom in those days, the 11/03 was upgraded to an 11/23. The cabinet also housed an RX02 dual 8" floppy drive. Rob told that it would simply be a matter of connecting the power supply cable and hook the VT100 to the terminal cable to fire up the system. While going downstairs with these goodies, he pointed me to an original DEC table desk! Again, "If I’d be interested?" from Rob. I hesitated, realizing this would be a very nice item for my museum, but would it fit in my car? Easy said, easy done, just try it. I replied "if it fits in the car, I'll take that too". As "old stuff collector" it is a clever idea to get a car with some space in the back ... yep, I got that table desk also into the car with a little help from Rob.

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