PDP1 3522
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Provided the elevators were reasonably large. A lot larger than normal person-elevators.
A famous early story was that of the installation of the first 360 in Norway; it was nicknamed "Emma".
It was installed in a huge centre in central Bergen, on the sixth floor in a large concrete complex. The complex was early fifties, and had housed all kinds of IBM equipment for a decade already. It only had small, cramped "people-elevators".
To get the machine in they erected a crane in the parking lot, knocked out the end wall of the 6th floor, and meved the pieces in this way.
A decade or so later the upgrade path of the original frame was finally exausted, so they planned to remove it and put in other gear. Someone went for the plans for installation, and thought "ok, we just do this in reverse".
Nice thought, but in the elapsed decade they had put up a 10 story high-rise on the parking lot.
So, they ended up having to cut up the 360. It was amazingly well built; the local welding shop took several months to cut it into door-frame pieces.
Seems likely. A fellow I worked with a while back talked about how they got some big IBM into and out of a basement location at the school...
Firearms might do a more complete job, but it fouling up the hardware due to debug frustration didn't require them. Many years back I managed DP for...
ObQuestion: For how long could you reasonably upgrade the innards of a 360 frame and still have a reasonable system.
-- mrr