Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen?

Collect? That's what seems to have happen being a pack rat. It was not intentional, it's just I seem to be unable the sell or throw out any of my DEC stuff. When I needed more speed or memory I bought a faster unit and never thought about the old ones. The DEC 3000's I have are 150MHz and they can be unstable at times. I was told it was the SIMM sockets, I just periodically reseat the memory and go. I agree the PWS600 is stable and very usefull, good for surfing and code building. The MicroVAX 3800's are a lesson in patience when booting, though I still have use for them. I have added an HSD30 to one of them, allowing me to image the DSSI disks to SCSI ones. The SCSI drives are faster and the machine will boot noticably faster. Heat issues are what the Alphaserver 1200 is about, for sure keep the case closed. It has dual 475W supplies and both are required for operation. It does serve very well as a space heater. I justify it for this purpose by looking at the watt rating of an average oil filled electric space heater, they are 1500W. Thanks for the reply... Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: "der Mouse" <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 11:55 PM Subject: Re: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > > Enough for now, let me and/or the group what you have. Maybe we can > > form some sort of list for contact and advice or maybe part swapping. > > Well, I wouldn't say I "collect" Alphas or VAXen. But I have a handful > of them. I have a MicroVAX-II (in a BA123). I have a couple of more > recent VAXen which I put on the shelf when I got them and haven't yet > collected the round tuits to get out and do anything with; I don't even > remember their model numbers. I have a drawer full of MicroVAX-II > cards (CPUs, DEQNAs, disk interfaces, tape interfaces, etc) and a spare > BA123, and quite likely could assemble another machine if I wanted to. > As for alphas, I have a NoName (an AXPpci33, I think, is the proper > name for it). I have a PWS 600au. I have a "DEC 3000 - M300X, > 175MHz". > > The ?V2 I almost never turn on, because I have basically no disk for > it, and it's *very* slow to run it entirely diskless. One of my > projects is to try to put together a simple disk interface of some > sort (probably IDE), but that's very much a blue-sky project at the > moment. > > The NoName has cooling issues. I have it in a peecee case, and to keep > it from overheating I not only had to add a big fan blowing directly on > the CPU and 3.3V regulator heatsinks, but also run it with the case > open. It also won't reboot cleanly; if I tell it to reboot, it hangs, > and I have to hard-cycle power to make it come back. I suspect this > may be a legacy from having overheated to the point of crashing too > many times. > > The 3000/M300X has been unstable too, but in rather intermittent ways, > and I've mostly given up on stabilizing it. I'm not even sure whether > the problems were hardware or software, though I suspect hardware. > > /~\ The ASCII der Mouse > \ / Ribbon Campaign > X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca > / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B >