13 Jun
2006
13 Jun
'06
6:13 a.m.
At 12:54 AM -0500 6/13/06, Scott Quinn wrote:
I might have the opporitunity to get a DEC 3000-300X
machine for
VMS (175 MHz 21064)
I know that 21(1,2,3)64 machines offer substantially improved
performance, but for the moment they are out of reach.
The question- I'm running VMS currently on a VX42 (233MHz 21066A,
512k cache, 88MB RAM) Multia, and it is quite slow
(user response time with AXP-VMS v7.3-1)
SPEC-92 indicates that the DEC 3300X will be slower (84/100 for the
300X, 97/112 for (a generic) 21066A/233)
Likely, however, the 300X would have better I/O subsystems. Would it
be worth messing with, or should I not bother (as far as
useablility, not number-crunching prowess)?
I'd recommend getting it as long as its cheap enough. It is a
supported system (unless they've dropped support), unlike the Multia.
Besides with two systems you can play with stuff like clustering :^)
Get more RAM for the Multia, it's starving! I found with V7.2 the
realistic bare minimum for an Alpha is 96MB, and the realistic
minimum is actually 128MB for a lightly used system (the V7.2 SPD
says 64MB is the minimum for an Alpha).
IIRC, that would be another advantage to the 300X, it should be able
to take more RAM than the Multia. HOWEVER, you'd best look into what
kind of RAM it takes and how much it has. Depending on the model, it
might be cheaper to get a better system than to upgrade the RAM.
This is why my AlphaStation 500/333 sits unused with only has 96MB
RAM, and you don't even want to know what I paid for it :^(
Oh, and my guess is, the 300X really is faster.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
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| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |