1 May
2001
1 May
'01
5:54 a.m.
Now how on earth are you getting a FWD card to work in
PWS500au's, or maybe
I should ask which card? That's a KZPSA isn't it? I tried the KZPSA I
just got in my PWS433au, and it wouldn't boot, as it complained about an
unrecognized card.
I'm using KZPSA cards. I've got an
ISP1040A built-in as well
on one of the PWS systems and an Intraserver U2W/Ethernet card
in the other. The Intraserver is a leftover from when I was
using a PC164LX system. I'm going to replace the board set
in the other system with a set that includes the ISP1040A.
At that point I'll remove the Intraserver card. That's
another reason I want to find a couple of empty 5.25" SBB
cases; I want to avoid trying to use the built-in ISP1040A
controllers with external devices (which is not supported
but may work).
You're going to remove the Intraserver card?!?!?! If it was me I'd be
putting a couple decent sized U2W SCSI disks on that sucker, instead of
messing around with UW or worse SCSI disks! I'd really like to add an
Intraserver card with a 3rd party tower of Ultra160 disks, that's my
long-term plan. BTW, it sounds like your ISP1040A is on the
Motherboard itself? My
controller is a PCI card, while running Narrow SCSI devices off the
connector on the board isn't supported, it works. You can plug your UW
SCSI disks to the 68-pin connector, and Narrow to the 50-pin connector.
The ISP1040A is on the slot board. There were two different revisions
(that I know of) of the PWS-au systems. One has the Intel I/O chipset
on the mainboard, no SCSI on the slot board, and no USB ports. The other
has a Cypress I/O chipset on the mainboard, ISP1040A SCSI on the slot
board, and two USB ports. You can't mix-and-match the mainboards and
the slot boards, either (I tried, it didn't work, confirmed on c.o.v).
I will need to keep a SCSI CDROM on a different controller if I can't
find an SBB case, and the DLT on one of the systems.
What are you using for Graphics Cards? I've got
an Elsa Gloria in my
PWS433au, and it totally sucks. I get definite ripple on the left side
when scrolling web pages in Netscape, and some problems when doing other
things.
Right now I am using a VT525 with a 19" monitor. I was using an Else
Gloria, but the speed was bad enough that I just decided to do any
DECwindows stuff using my Linux system as the display. I did buy an
Oxygen VX1 PCI, but the current driver doesn't work right with pre-
21264 CPUs. The card will display, but the system is so slow it
takes five minutes to log in to the console to kill the DECwindows
server.
From what
I've read the big difference between the DLTx000 drives and
the equivalent TZ8x drives is the TZ8x drives will read TK50/TK70 tapes,
but I haven't tried yet. I suppose one could try to write the TZ8x
firmware in the DLTx000 drives, but I'd rather just buy a cheap TK70
off eBay than risk destroying my DLT4000.
That's the difference, however, as far as I know, it's not a firmware
issue, it's a calibration issue. I'm not worried about reading TK70's
really, but it would be nice to be able to read TK50's, still I've a TZ30
for that. The AS200 4/233
was my first Alpha (my wife bought it for me
to replace my VS3100, which I still have). I followed that
with a couple of PC164 motherboards, then a PC164SX (which
can't run VMS, so I used it for Digital Unix until I sold
it), followed by a PC164LX, followed by three PWS500au systems
(one of which has a ruined case but was bought as it had a
2MB cache module). I have someone digging up a replacement
case, and I'm on the lookout for two more 2MB (or 4MB if
I get lucky) cache modules. The PWS500au systems displaced
the PC164 and PC164LX systems for VMS, so the PC164LX is
my Tru64 system now. I also have a VS4000-60 running. The
two VS3100 systems are kept around just-in-case, and I have
a MVII which I'm mentioned is in line for a PDP-11 transplant
as soon as I find a CPU and memory.
Sounds like as bad of a menagerie as I've got around here, though instead
of the PC164 stuff I've got a DEC3000/300LX and the AlphaStation 500/333.
I just unlobotomized and increased the PDP-11/73 I've got in a MVII BA123
Chassis, I got a quad-hieght /73 board for it in place of the dual-hieght
/73 I'd been using and some other stuff. It's *SO* nice finally running
with a full blown board, and having the console at 38,400 instead of 9600!