[pups] Suitable PDP11s, in the UK

[Tim Bradshaw]

Having long ago got rid of my collection of ageing British (super) 
minis, I realise I'm missing them, though I'm not sure why.  I can't  
pretend any more that something running 4.2BSD is really practical,  
so I'd like to get something really impractical, like a pdp11.

What I'd like to be able to do is run 7th edition or thereabouts and/ 
or 2.11BSD on something which is not too large (so full-height 19"  
racks are out).   I'm not interested in emulators.  It looks to me  
like there are such systems - for instance the recently-discussed  
11/23 (or 11/73) looks practical, other than being in Utah.

So I guess I have two questions:

Firstly is this a practical thing to do in terms of reliability of HW  
etc?  I finally gave up on the previous lot of machines at least  
partly because disks &c were just so flaky that it was too painful to  
keep things working (also we're talking full-height 19" racks in some  
cases so they were a bit, well, big).  I don't want to spend my life  
trying to source ancient disks etc (though I'm clearly not expecting  
things to be as reliable as good, new modern kit).

Secondly, does anyone in the UK (may be there is no one but me, of  
course...) have any hints where I might look and what I might expect  
to pay.  I've looked on ebay but I'm a little nervous of what I might  
get that way.

Thanks

--tim