30 Aug
2004
30 Aug
'04
7:20 a.m.
I have a 3100-40 which has a 4Gb drive as a boot
drive. The
model 40 is
SUPPOSED to be the same as the 30, but different case, expansion, etc.
The model 30 memory certainly works in the 40. I seem to recall it is
more an issue of age of firmware. I just asked a computer parts place
I do business with about my model 30 and they said a 4Gb drive is the
biggest that will work in it. Didn't try it though, just went to the
model 40 (needed the space for more drives).
The limitation applies to:
- all VAXstation 3100 machines
- to the MicroVAX 3100 Models 10 and 20
and
- to the MicroVAX 3100 Models 10e and 20e *if* the ROMS are
older than April 1992 (I forget the version number ...)
So the MicroVAX 3100 Model 30 and Model 40 are not subject
to this limitation. Note that the MicroVAX 3100-30/40 are
nothing at all to do with the VAXstation 3100-30/40 (different
processors, different ROMs, different vintage entirely).
I don't know of any firmware restrictions other than
the 1(.073)GB limit in the VS3100-30/40,UV3100-10/20[e].
The only reason I can think of for a 4GB limit being quoted
is that at the time that the MicroVAX 3100-30/40 were
released the RZ29 (4GB drivce) was the largest supplied
by DEC. So it's possible that they never qualified anything
else (and the largest I know of DEC releasing was the 9GB
RZ1D or some such).
Another reason might be that older versions of OpenVMS
were more fussy about the drives that they would accept.
Later versions ("later" here meaning from sometime in the
mid 1990s) were more tolearant (of the sh*tty SCSI support
that drives of that era gave :-)).
The main things to watch out for are cooling - but I
would expect that today's drives (5400 and 7200 ones
at least) run cool enough for those cases.
Antonio
--
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Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org