The best laid plans of mice and Slor...

You know how some things tend to snowball?  Well, let's just say my last week has been rapidly rolling downhill, getting larger and larger as it's moved on.  If you recall, I stated in my last entry that I would be posting photos of the machines I've been working on the next day.  That was just over a week ago.  Here's a summary of events that have taken place between then and now:

- I decide it's time to take some photos to post here.
- In order to be able to take decent photos, I figure I'll need to finishing cleaning up the computer room.
- Just after I've started cleaning again, I'm notified that someone in the area is looking to part with a VAX system cheap.  As is my tradition when I'm not sure if I should buy something, I offer the guy half of what he what he's asking for the system.  He says "yes", so that's another half trunk full of stuff I need to find room for.  It'll have to stay in the trunk until either my room or the garage has some space freed up.
- As I get back to the cleaning, I figure it would be stupid of me to get everything all packed up and put away again without taking out, photographing, and settin aside the multitude of "stuff" that I have been meaning to get rid of for a while now.  This, of course, means making the mess worse before it gets better.  The VAX stuff makes itself comfortable in my trunk while I tear up the computer room and garage some more.
- Each time I start to clean up again, I run across a piece of hardware that I can't put away in good conscience without installing whatever upgrade has been sitting around for it. There are a couple late nights gone.
- After a good chunk of time upgrading, photographing, and setting aside items to sell (more on that later :)), I am finally able to make some progress putting things away.
- Today, I am finally able to walk through the room again, take some photos, and write this blog entry.

As you've probably already noticed, the RetroChallenge ended 3 days ago, so that pretty much means I made ZERO progress in finding something "interesting" to do with the machines I spent the previous days getting up and running.  Am I disappointed by that?  Yeah, a little, but my disappointment is greatly overshadowed by my happiness that those machines are now working, I have organized a bunch of stuff to get rid of, my work area is nearly a work area again, I eventually found a nice spot to put the VAX(guess what my next restoration project will be), and it's only been a couple weeks.  I'll credit the RetroChallenge for getting me on gear on a lot of that, and perhaps I'll enter myself for the "Most Untimely Yet Productive U-Turn in a RetroChallenge" prize.  At the very least, I'll be ready when the next one comes along!

For what it's worth, here are some photos of the machines I worked with for this challenge.  In the next few days (no, really), I will do another post or two to detail all the machines currently in this room that is nearing museum level and shoot more pics of the everything in sight.  Anyway, thanks to the RetroChallenge for some motivation, and on to the photos:

The Amiga 3000 and DEC 3000

The HP 9000

The TT030 with Spectre

The next project...