I read somewhere that it could be converted to a 11/53
with a minimal
effort. How much trouble?
Rip out the CXA's (16-port serial boards), add a
disk and/or tape
controller, and perhaps some memory. Off you go. The heart of
the DECserver 550 was/is indeed a barebones /53 CPU. Which comes
with 512KB RAM on the CPU card, and its console serial port.
I don't believe you are "ready to go" after this mod. I seem
to remember that the ROMs on the DS500 use special boot code
and that they need to be replaced to be a normal 11/53. I
saw some posts on one of the newsgroups from someone who had
done it.
Correct, you need the ROMs from a /53, and then you should be good to go.
I've got a couple boardsets, but due to lack of room ended up having to
dump the chassis and have never gotten around to completing the conversion.
I can't remember how much memory is onboard, but there should be enough to
to run RT-11. Such a setup seems to be popular for 2.11BSD for some odd
reason.
The big problem with these boards is that due to the bulkheads on the
boards, they'll work best in a BA213, rather than the normal chassis used
for a PDP-11.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
|
http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
