So you want me
to start off with a VAX?
Lots of folks on this list have lots of nice things to say about the 11/750.
Personally, I theink the 11/750 is not the best machine to try to keep
running. The reason is that the CPU is made up of a large-ish number of
custom gate array chips. Even when they were available as spares from DEC
they were very expensive, now they're unobtainanle other than by raiding
other 750s.
If you have the space (and it's large), try to get am 11/780. I've never
been inside one, but I've read the printset (schematics) and it seems to
be all standard chips.
If you don't have the spave, and can stand the lack of speed, consider an
11/730. It's small (1 10.5" high rackmount unit), you can fit the
processor, disk and tape drives into a half-height rack (this was a
standard configuration). It's almost all standard chips, 2901 ALUs, TTL,
non-protected PALs, etc.
-tony
