Future projects now that card archiving is almost complete

 SELLING, DONATING OR DUMPING THE PHYSICAL CARDS

I have the approximately 150,000 cards, almost none of which I will want to keep once the archiving is complete. I will hold on to a few cold start and diagnostic decks so that I can keep the various peripherals working properly. Everything else has to go.

I have mailing boxes that fit blocks of about 1000 cards, so that I can ship these either as snail-like media mail or via faster but costlier means. I will group together interesting decks, for example a complete DMS2 system load deck or the ECAP program decks, offering them on eBay so that someone who treasures them can grab them. Secondarily, there is always a market for people buying cards as memorabilia, so I can sell smaller lots to those interested. Donations or gifts are possible as well. If all else fails, there is the trash bin, so that one way or another I will reclaim the space in my workshop. 

ADDING 240V OUTLET TO POWER IBM 1130 AND 9 TRACK TAPE HARDWARE

My lease for the workspace includes permission to install a 240V outlet so that I can bring up and restore the two machines that need it - the Telex tape subsystem and the IBM 1130 with its peripherals. I just need to schedule a local electrician to make this happen.

BRING IBM 1130 UP AND VERIFY THE NEW LIGHT PANEL WORKS PROPERLY

Once I have power, I can bring up the IBM 1130 to be sure it is working properly. I will start with a power supply bringup before hooking up the logic to the power, then bring up the processor. At the same time, I have to connect the new light panel I built so that I can see the state of the machine and verify its operation. 

Further down the line I have to hook up my external box, with an FPGA that extends the 1130 with a range of virtual peripherals and a fast means of loading and dumping core memory contents. When this is working, I can boot up all manner of software to test the system fully.

DEVELOPING DISK ARCHIVE PLATFORM AND ARCHIVING OF MANY, MANY 2315 PACKS

I have a large number of 2315 disk cartridges with software for the IBM 1130. These may contain some precious files that weren't in the card decks, thus archiving them all is important. Too, these archived files can be used with my FPGA extender as virtual cartridges in virtual disk drives.

I have a Diablo disk drive, the standard density version that matches the density of the internal 'ramkit' drive inside the IBM 1130. It had suffered a head crash but I have replacement heads available. I expect I will create an FPGA to drive the disk drive and extract the images, much as I had done to read and archive all the Xerox Alto disk images from the Xerox PARC cartridges they let us access. 

First I will get the drive put back together, second I will inspect and clean some of the cartridges, then I will work out a method to align the Diablo drive so that it matches the internal 1130 drive and the data already on the cartridges. Once I figure this out and execute it, I can begin testing the FPGA code I will write.