Sometimes friends with machines they no longer need will get in touch to pass them on to me. Sometime they have friends who have something they want to get rid of but can’t bear to throw away and so again, I get a call.

I got a message from an old friend of mine, John, to say that a friend of his had a PDP-8 clone that he no longer had space for and was loathed to scrap so asked if I would like it. Of course I said yes please.

At this point all I knew was that it was a PDP-8 clone and it was Canadian. I searched the web for clues but didn’t find anything.

John sent me some photos over and my jaw dropped. I was expecting something like a PDP-8a; A 19″ rack about a foot high. I didn’t expect two chest high 19″ racks, one with the computer, the other with a 9 track tape drive.

Have I been a bit hasty in saying yes?

I did have second thoughts but it’s not everyday someone offers you a PDP and so I couldn’t really turn it down. Luckily I have more than one friend and another, rather generous one, said I could store it in his storage unit for a bit.

From the photos I could see that it was badged as a Consolidated Computer Inc, machine but a lot of searching on the web turned up very little. I found that CCI had been a computer company in Canada and that they were well know. I found that they did indeed make their own computers but I haven’t been able to find anything about the computers themselves. Not even the name of one let alone the specifications.

The important thing was to get the machine first. I’d worry about the rest later.

After a brief visit to see the machine in the flesh, I hired a van and got some friends together and we got both cabinets into the back of a van and into the storage unit.

No one was harmed in the making of this journey.