CDC 6400/6500 DD60 Console Rescue

This is the story of the rescue of a Control Data Corporation DD60 console which was originally used by Purdue University on their CDC 6500 computer system. The console was stripped of parts and moved to the univerity salvage warehouse over a decade ago, where we recovered the console on January 20th, 2004. The console would have looked something like this back in the day (circa 1965):

These consoles were used by the system operator in order to watch and control what the programs which were run on the attached mainframe computer. The console utilized two 12 inch radar like green round displays, each with a screen of text drawn in vector fashion.

console_01_joe.jpg	console_02_joe_tom.jpg	console_03.jpg
console_04_truck.jpg	console_05_stripped_front.jpg	console_06_stripped_top.jpg
console_07_stripped_back_left.jpg	console_08_stripped_back_right.jpg	console_09_crt1.jpg
console_10_crt2.jpg	console_11_deflection1.jpg	console_12_deflection2.jpg
console_13_deflection3.jpg	console_14_deflection4.jpg	console_15_deflection5.jpg
console_16_hv1.jpg	console_17_hv2.jpg	console_18_hv3.jpg

So the plan is to restore this console cosmetically to be as original as possible externally. In terms of electronic restoration, that will depend on how much of the high voltage drive is missing. A copy of the original console manual and schematics would also aid greatly in determining what has been stripped. As it seems highly unlikely that this console will ever be connected to a functional CDC 6400 or 6500 again, maintaining the interface which would allow that seems less critical. The current plan is to create a set of electronics which will allow the console to be driven by a PC running a CDC 6X00 simulator. More to come as the story unfolds...