VAX 11/750 rescued, alas...

Hi Fear not all is not lost. There's tons of modules around but not that many cabs. In the picture of the Qbus board it appears to be sitting on the module config diagram. As it is pre printed and not filled in by hand its probably a standard system. That will give you a list of the boards. Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will need some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. The case will clean up well and you can start off by getting the PSU's working and getting the list of modules together. Disk drives would have been in another rack I think. Rod Smallwood The DECcollector -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of J Blaser Sent: 06 October 2007 02:10 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... [Sorry for the double post...having trouble with my mailer line-wrapping] The gods smiled upon me, and I was chosen to rescue the DEC VAX 11/750 that Richard alerted us too about a month ago. Yesterday I went up to collect it. I think most of us, during a pickup, are mindful of just getting the load onboard and away, and it was the same way for me with this pickup. Besides, the unit was literally stuffed so tightly into the front corner of their storage that there was no way to examine the innards at that location. A few images can be found at: http://www.rogerwilco.org/VAX11-750 Once back on homebase, I finally got a chance to open up the unit. To my horror (it is October, after all), I find just a single board installed in the CPU backplane, and one loose q-bus board! The first is a System Industries 9700-6301 with the following significant chips: Signetics N8X60N, AMD AM9128 (x2), Motorola MCM93L422PC (x4), TI SN74S181N, and about a dozen TI 82S137s with little numbered stickers on each. Otherwise it's loaded with TTL logic chips. There are no headers or other connectors on board, just the backplane fingers. I have no idea what this board is. I openly admit that I'm a complete {non-uVAX | massbus | unibus} novice. The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, which I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel interface. I'll have to do a little scouting on Bitsavers and Manx to see if I can turn up anything useful. Anyway, sadly, this box is not much more than an empty carcass, without any brains. It clearly was sacrificed to keep other systems alive. Still, I would dearly love to populate the backplane(s) and light this baby up, but I guessing I'll be hard pressed to find anyone with a whole set of spares that I could somehow convince into letting them go. I don't want to lose an opportunity here, and I'm not saying that I have my eye on the local metal recycler just yet, but what am I going to do with an empty chassis?! Now, I should say that the donor was extremely nice, and offered to pass along anything related that eventually turns up as they dig deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20', literally boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure I should hope for much. Am I foolish to ask? Anyone with a spare set of VAX 11/750 modules? - Jared