29 Jun
2015
29 Jun
'15
12:35 p.m.
Well, ok, if your list was intended as a "first VAX" only list, then
That is what I believe the OP was asking for,
fair enough. I would not consider most of those
machines as good first
VAXen either. Although, the 6000 is actually not that hard, nor some of
the small 8000-machines, such as the 8200.
The 6000 series are quite big cabinets and as a first VAX it's hard for me to
see the great advantage over a microVAX or a VAXstation.
The problem with lots of the more modern machines
though, are that they
essentially are fine if they work, but if they break, you'll have a hard
time to fix them. That goes both for the 6000 series as well as all the
pizza boxes.
My view is that there are only 2 VAXen series that I would want to run at home. For me.
That is machines where component-level investigation and repair are very possible, Those
series are the 11/780 (including the 11/782 and 11/785, of course) and the 11/730
(including
11/725). As I don't have space for the former, I intend to run the latter. But my
requirements and
interests are likely to be very different from other people's hence my initial
comments.
Thing about the VAXstations is that there are quite a few about that can be raided for
spares. There
is a printset for at least one of them on bitsavers, so I would guess finding a faulty IC
is not going to
be impossible. I refuse to actually suggst b***d-sw*pp**g but you know what I mean....
I have never seen a printset for a 6000, 7000, 8650, etc machine. Do they exist? I doubt
it for the
6000 series.
-tony