6 Apr
2010
6 Apr
'10
2:52 p.m.
On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
Hi,
Someone on linked in this morning asked if anyone had four (4) VAX 8250's.
Wow. That's specific and obscure.
I tried to explain that they were hopelessly old and
slow. ?And all the obvious simh/charon/etc...
But he says he has an RFP which has no room for changes or negotiation.
Sounds like someone is up against the wall.
So I gots to thinking. ?What if someone really did
want four 8250's? ?Could they even find them?
And, if they did (which is the scary part), could they find a complete set of spares,
including
power supplies?
Having an 8200 (or 8300, depending on the loadout) in the basement, I
can say that the CPU enclosure is fundamentally a BA32 cabinet. I
suspect one might be able to lay hands on just that or its PSU if one
had a dead CPU cabinet.
And, what about disks? Can you connect a SCSI disk to
an 8250? ?I would think SCSI would
be the only hope for a reliable production machine in 2010. ?Did all 8250's come with
UNIBUS?
If so, then a unibus scsi board would be the right option.
There was at least one BI SCSI card manufactured, but back in the day,
it was $10K, so we never bought one. It was easier to get a KDB50 SDI
interface since nearly every 8200/8300/8250/8350 was initially
configured with one (including the used 8200 we bought c. 1989).
Unibus was available (DWBUA) but less universal (I have one of those,
but it has never worked since I moved the machine from its former home
to mine - I presently have three dead UET cards so the DWBUA module
doesn't pass self-test and isn't available when the machine boots).
Anyway, consider it a thought problem. ?Unless of
course, you have 1-4 VAX 8250's you'd like to
sell ASAP :-)
For the right price, I could part with my one 8200, but it would
obviously need a KA825 rather than a KA820.
-ethan