In a message dated 10/13/00 2:25:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, foo(a)siconic.com
writes:
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, John Foust wrote:
>
> > Personally, I'm in a throw-away mood as opposed to a
> > collection mood. I tossed 3" x 3" x 25" of old clone
> > 8088 through 486 PCs and cases away last Tuesday.
> >
> > I coalesced a box of Pentium 50-166 Mhz era motherboards,
> > some brand-new, and for heaven's sake, they would barely
> > fetch a few bucks on eBay. My other mantra was a friend's
> > rule that if you can't sell it on eBay, throw it out.
>
> ACK!
>
> As much as I hate having seemingly useless crap like this, I still refuse
> to throw it out. It's useful to SOMEONE.
>
> What I'm recommending to people who have older PCs these days is to donate
> them to your local community college electronics or engineering
> departments. I'm sure the students can use them for either spare parts or
> as controllers for whatever projects they're working on.
>
> Pentiums are still useful to schools and other organizations that take PCs
> and refurbish them to donate to schools. Try to find places like this
> where you live.
>
> If you still don't want to do even these simple things, in the very least
> donate your crap to Goodwill. Maybe someone will come across it and find
> it useful. In the very least you can take a tax writeoff.
>
> Sellam
everyone might want to check out this site:
www.freeboxen.com
I just claimed a 286 card for one of my old macs and looks to be a good place
to get rid of some of my extra PS/2 stuff.
DB Young ICQ: 29427634
hurry, hurry, step right up! see the computers you used as a kid!
http://www.nothingtodo.org
>>8088 through 486 PCs and cases away last Tuesday.
>>I coalesced a box of Pentium 50-166 Mhz era motherboards,
>>some brand-new, and for heaven's sake, they would barely
>>fetch a few bucks on eBay.
>
>Goodness. I love 486's. I make them into very handy Linux boxen. They
>and those motherboards are worth shipping to ME at least.
Same here. Of 7 PCs I have 2 are 386/16s and only one a P166 the rest
are
various 486DX/33-->133s. The 486s run NT4/sp4 workstation better than
W95! However for fast, Minix is hard to beat(it's very small). Linux as
in RH5.2
is good on them but Caldara Openlinux2.3 is a bit too fat for them.
Allison
>> VMS isn't a memory pig. Alpha however was aimed at big apps and isn't
>> as byte efficient as VAX so it tends to consume 2x-4x the ram. The
>I think you know what I mean :^) The system in question is an Alpha,
and on
See the comment I left in? Yes, I do know what you mean.
>Alpha's OpenVMS is a memory pig! A quick (SHO CLUS) shows that my 24MB
>VAXstation 4000/VLC is sitting at 60% memory usage, the AlphaStation
500/333
>with 96MB that doesn't have DECwindows loaded on the system is sitting
at
>69%, unfortunatly I don't have either of the workstations with 112MB up
at
>the moment as but running DECwindows I believe they'll be at about 80%,
>IIRC. Of course my main system is only at 20% :^)
An Alpha with 96mb is running faster than the VAX however with 24mb
so you get what you pay for. However in the time frame when they were
both current that Alpha would likely have had 128mb minimum and likely
more and the vax would have been big at 32mb.
It's the difference between the byte oriented VAX and the Word orieneted
Alpha.
>I understand why OpenVMS on an Alpha uses so much memory as opposed to
on a
>VAX, however, the fact remains, it's a memory hog, and like I said based
on
>my very limited Tru64 experience it seems even worse on the exact same
>hardware.
Actually any os on Alpha will be bigger by 4x, it's the instruction
granularity
mostly and also the Alpha is actally less CISC than VAX. The payback is
the 64bit addressing and math.
Allison
Is any one privy to the workings of an the Intel 310? The one I have is
missing a monitor and keyboard and hookup is not immediatly obvious to
me. Also has labeled ports on the back for ethernet, console,
cube. I'm assuming it was the control box for my newly acquired iPSC/1
system. This one is a model "PSYP310", 286/12 8 mhz, 1 meg mem, 140 mb,
45 mb streaming tape & a floppy drive.
Any info appreciated...manual or copy greatly! appreciated....
Craig
From: healyzh(a)aracnet.com <healyzh(a)aracnet.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, October 12, 2000 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: VMS/VAX/Alpha questions...
>Currently the *only* non-DEC drive in my cluster (except those that came
in
>storageworks cannisters) is in a VAXstation 4000/VLC, and I've got major
>problems with it at the moment as a bunch of the files have bad blocks
:^(
I've run a great mix of nonDEC SCSI drives on the 3100s I have and the
CMD interfaced MVII. For MFM I've tried everything I have most are
smaller
than RD53s though but they worked.
>> Does DEC say: "You'll run that RZ25 & *Be Happy About It*", or can I
run
>> non-DEC rommed hard drives just fine?
>>
>> RZ or not RZ, *that* is the question. ;-)
>
>The answer, is hopelessly vague. It depends. It might work, it might
not
>work. OpenVMS and the hardware are only tested with specific drives, as
a
>result the drives may or may not work. The good news is that OpenVMS
V7.2
>is a lot less touchy about this than say VAX/VMS V5.5.
Depends what you have and what interfaces, usually it works fine.
>So, you see the correct answer is, try it and find out. Which
unfortunatly
best answer.
>isn't the one you want trust me I understand as I've looked into
upgrading
>my server to a U2W SCSI controller and Ultra160 drives. As a hobbyist
I'm
>not sure I want to risk buying drives that might not work.
Finding a U2Wscsi for a nonPCI VAX or ALPHA would be real tough.
Though Qantum fireball (scsi-II) at 5.1gb worked fine when I tried it
as a non boot disk on the M76 running VMS7.2. I tried it for laughs
as I was pulled from the server (p133!).
Allison
From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch(a)30below.com>
>I do know about the VAXstation boot drive limitations of 1Gig... For the
>price, I like the 1Giggers better, but they won't do me crap if the VAX
>won't recognize 'em... ;-)
First research that as it only affects certain boxen and only for VMS
crash dumps.
>(I've got a few DEC drives laying around, so I've not tried any non-DEC
>drives in my VAXen yet...)
Try them anyway. They will work most likely.
Besides a 1gb drive is lots of space as VMS isn't a pig like NT or Win2k.
Allison
From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
>CLOSE. But, ... Remove the diodes completely from an alternator.
Select
>pulleys for correct ratio, and simply maintain a steady engine speed to
>provide 3600 RPM at the alternator shaft. Now you have 60Hz 3 phase
>power. Adjust the voltage, and run minis and mainframes.
>You'll need to drive where there is little traffic to maintain that
>constant engine speed.
leave the diodes in and don't use them, bring out the power on leads
>from the other side of the diodes for AC. the rectified power can then
be used for reedback regulation of the AC. did this years ago for
a ~1kw tube TX worked very well. it was cheaper than buying a
HV alternator (120/230v).
the auto system if well maintained can do just fine power wise.
resonable power is around 3-500W at the high side.
Allison
At 06:11 PM 10/11/00 -0400, you wrote:
> > Looking for information about a Compaq Deskpro 286. I have two of
> > them. Would like to know some specs, how to get into the BIOS, etc.
>
>When painted gray (any shade you choose), they make an excellent
>anchor for the bass boat, although the bass (and EPA) may disagree...
I'm surprised I didn't get a hernia carrying that thing home from Goodwill.
Although you just HAVE to love the rubber-mounted harddrive chassis to
reduce vibrations. That's classic.
:)
Tarsi
210
