On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 11:36:26PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
or disk/tape
drives that work with it... I mean... I like VMS and I've been
using it for 20 years, but unless I want to plug in a particular peripheral,
I'd rather run a desk-top-sized machine than a rack, just for power/heat
reasons (for the record, I use the 8300 because I have a stack of VAXBI
For an alternative viewpoint, the only VAXen I'd want to run at home are
the 11/730 and the 11/780 family (11/780, 11/782, 11/785). The reason is
those are the only ones I can actually understand the internals of --
they're built from standard chips (non-protected PALs in the 11/730,
admittedly), rather than custom gate arrays or worse).
That's a fair argument. I was happy to get an 11/725 again last year (I
used to have one that I loaned to a "friend" who neglected to tell me that
his company was being sold and it went out the door to the new owners. By
the time I learned about it, it was too late).
I've never had the chance to work with any of the 11/780 family. I know
about them academically, but not personally. If I had to choose, though,
I'd probably pick an 11/730 or 11/725 over the larger systems, even though
there's a serious difference in memory capacity and horsepower, just because
of power/heat issues.
Of course, if I had a MASSBUS disk or tape I needed to fiddle with, that
makes the choice for me.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 07-Aug-2004 01:40 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -72.3 F (-58.0 C) Windchill -122 F (-85.59 C)
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Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov
http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html