[TUHS] DECtapes under the UNIX room floor

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

On Thu, May 7, 2026 at 9:28 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com>
wrote:

> TOY clock battery backup was not available on the 11/730.  This prompted
> Dick Hustvedt, chief VAX/VMS development engineer, to play a brilliant
> April Fools prank.  On April 1 the VMS Group's 11/730 had a new
> peripheral.  It was a sundial on a stand.  There was a photocell positioned
> at the 12 o'clock position.  The sundial was plugged into the 11/730's
> UNIBUS adapter.  On the sundial was a very authentic-looking (it was made
> using the actual fonts and layout) DEC marketing brochure claiming the
> device to be an "SD730 Fixed Head Solar Horologue".  This device could
> detect noon and set the 11/730's TOY clock accordingly.
>
And for those readers who never had the pleasure of having a meeting in
ZK03 and seeing it, "SD730 Fixed Head Solar Horologue", along with the
brochure, lived in his memory in a clear plexiglass display in a conference
room.  After Compaq sold the building, I sometimes wondered what happened
to it and to some of the interesting artifacts that decorated each
conference room, each of which had been named after a famous Mathematician
or Computer Scientist, rather than numbered.

Clem