Roger Ivie wrote:
Ethan Dicks
wrote:
unwarranted. I kinda fell off the PDP-11 cart in the KDJ11 era, so
I'm not as conversant with what's out there...
I knew a fellow who claimed to have build a MicroVAX II in a VT103. I
never saw it and don't know the details, but I believed him. He was
some sort of meta-service guy at DEC (i.e., he got called when the
normal service guys couldn't figure it out) and I think the machine
was on the DEC internal network. IIRC (and I might not), his name was
Ozzie Perez and the node name was OZZIE::
Jerome Fine replies:
I also heard about that system. I received the impression
that the fellow was in Australia. The name fits.
The requirement (if I remember what I was told) is that
the CPU and memory must be placed into ABCD slots - which
are standard in the BA23 (the first 3) and BA123 (the first 4)
backplanes. Since I have trouble even thinking about using
a soldering iron, attempting to set up ABCD slots was just
beyond my ability. Now software on RT-11 is a different
story for me. But most everyone who reads this is more
concerned about hardware than software.
As far as I know, the MicroVAX I would have run in a standard
VT103 backplane, but modified to support 22 bit addresses. So
there may have been a challenge to see if it could be done
with the MicroVAX II. Anyone know how many amps that CPU
draws on the 5V? With a 16 Amp limit to the 5V and much less
on the 12V, the VT103 can't support very much.
It was fun to bring in the VT103 (as if it was just a VT100
terminal) and boot RT-11 on the hard disk drive inside.
The only concern was to never move the VT103 around while
the hard drive was spinning.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
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