The PDP-11 uses a very peculiar colour scheme. Getting the colours right is crucial to get that early '70s feeling across. Unfortunately, getting colour exactly right is much, much harder than you'd think. The problem starts with computer screens, which unless they are professionally calibrated do not show colours faithfully *at all*. Then, the manufacturer of my acrylic panels has the same problem, so I had to make a special acrylic bar with all possible colours to pick the right one.

And now, I have to make sure the switch manufacturer delivers the exact right colour. Today I went to a local specialist shop, and identified the near-perfect Pantone colours for the switch manufacturer.

That is, if anyone is ever interested, Pantone numbers 222 and 187. For fun or otherwise, below are colour sets I got off high-quality photos of the PDP-11. Even good cameras are off no matter what you do. Seriously, that is how far off you get without 'professional' colour calibration. It illustrates the misery of colour matching:

I just hope the switch guys are precise with their colour matching. Otherwise, the test sample (minimum size 4000 switches!) will be a very expensive write-off :(