16 Mar
2006
16 Mar
'06
2:17 a.m.
On 3/16/06, Robert Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
The BA32 is the baby VAX BI chassis used in the 8200/8250/8300/8350
systems - I have an 8250 (it'd be an 8350 if I could find another CPU :-)
Mine's an 8300 because I don't have any 8250 CPUs.
that has some problem with the cooling. The blower
speed seems to vary all
the time it's running, and it's constantly speeding up and slowing down.
The system wil run for about an hour and then trips itself off, presumably
either because of airflow or overtemp.
Can anybody tell me if the blower speed is supposed to vary like that?
Hmm... I don't remember the fan speed varying on mine, and the airflow
sensor is pretty sensitive - if you leave the lid off, it should trip
the box in well under a minute. We had to make a cardboard sheild
when I did VAXBI board production - to let us have our analyzer pods
and ROM emulator pod stick out.
Does anybody have any maintenance prints for the BA32
blower control?
Anybody got any spare parts they're willing to sell?
Unfortunately, I have no prints and no spares.
I spent a long time putting it back together after
it'd been stripped by a
scrap yard, and I've actually got it to the point where it will boot VMS
now, so I'd really like to fix this last problem. Besides, it's a really
cute little system
I certainly like mine. I wish I could figure out why the DWBUA won't
pass onboard diagnostics - perhaps I have 3 dead UET cards (Unibus
Exerciser/Terminator - it has to be present and functional for the
DWBUA to report 'all clear').
If you just want to play with BI machines, it's a fun little box. The
two most common ways I know of adding disks are either the KDB50 MSCP
controller or stick it on an HSC50 and use clusterable disks. There
_are_ VAXBI SCSI cards, but back in the day, they were like $10,000.
I've never held one.
... I believe it's the smallest VAX BI box around.
That and the VAXstation 8000. No other machines that I know of are
100% VAXBI - the 85xx/87xx/88xx are Nautilus Bus based with a BI
adapter, similar for the 6xxx series (XMI w/bus adapter). I used to
have an 8550, but it didn't survive a move 13 years ago. The 8300 was
easy to stick in the back of my VW microbus (and is in my basement
now, hooked up and powered down).
-ethan