I am very excited that today I finally received a DECstation 5000/240 that was shipped to me from California along with a TURBOchannel extender (although there was no cable, so I need to find one of those). I used to have one of these before, but I swapped it for a MicroVAX 3100 Model 95 and regretted it ever since.

The machine came from a company called Mesa Electronics; in May 2017 someone from the company said it was moving and needed to clear out a load of old equipment. A very kind individual in the area picked up the machine and sent it to me as the people at Mesa Electronics were just too busy moving to be able to think about shipping things abroad. They also had a faster model 260, and a DECtalk DTC01, but sadly I missed out on those; I have been looking for this model of DECtalk for a long time as I remember playing with one at an exhibition in Milan in mid 1980s.

It came with a TURBOchannel extender (no cable though), and a bunch of other cards. Here are the two machines:

The DECstation 5000/240 was immaculately clean inside. It came with:

1. 1 memory board (size unknown).
2. PMAGB video controller.
3. Some kind of video capture board (?).
4. A TURBOchannel Extender module (installed for shipping only).

Here it is inside:

The TURBOchannel Extender was filthy inside and also slightly rusting. It came with:

1. PMAG-D video controller which has been marked as upgraded to PMAG-E.
2. RRD42 CD-ROM.
3. 2x RZ25-E hard disk (426MB).
4. PMAD Ethernet controller (installed for shipping only).

This is it inside:

I also got a bunch of spare boards:

1. 3x PMAG-C video controller (with a memory board).
2. PMAZ-A SCSI controller.
3. PMAD-A Ethernet controller.
4. 2x PMAG-D video controller (with a memory board).
5. 2x DEFZA FDDI controller.
6. 4x memory board (size unknown).
7. A bunch of terminators and Ethernet transceivers

Over the coming days I will check the machines over carefully, make sure the power supplies are working OK and then see about getting them running. I think I still have the disk that I used to run my first 240, so hopefully if everything works I will have it up and running quickly, although I won’t be able to make use of the Extender until I can get a cable.