4 Apr
2013
4 Apr
'13
6:32 p.m.
From: Brian Roth <abacos_98 at yahoo.com>
To: "cctech at classiccmp.org" <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Subject: VAX 11/780
Message-ID:
<1365090232.96105.YahooMailNeo at web141403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
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I just recently acquired a very nearly complete VAX 11/780. I will
be spending the next few months in a partial tear down and cleaning
and with luck, hopefully little money to get it operational again. I
am looking for whatever spare parts I can find for the VAX and its
TU78 tape drive. I have plenty of spare drives and such. One thing I
am in need of is a console boot floppy and whatever diags I can find
on floppy for it. Also, I do have a hobbyist license but I would
like to get an early version of VMS to run on it if I can find a tape.
Holy moly! Amazing! Well, I used to know the 780 pretty well, but
didn't save anything
from the two I was manager of. The biggest problem I
might imagine is
getting the
LSI 11 to boot off the floppy drive. I suspect original floppies may
have deteriorated
to the point they won't read. Higher-level diags can be booted from
tape, but there
were some low-level diags like control store diags that could only be
run from the
LSI 11. I believe the machine could actually CREATE a new diag floppy
from the
diag tape, though, so if you can find
good blank floppies you could
recreate the
diags.
Hmm, refresh my memory, the TU77 was the 800/1600 BPI drive and the
TU78 was the 1600/6250 drive? I'm pretty familiar with both. We had an
early TU77, and went through about 13 mod kits on it to get it to stop
melting
tapes on the heads. It really flew through tape, though.
Good luck restoring this machine!
Jon