9 Feb
2012
9 Feb
'12
12:50 a.m.
On 02/08/2012 10:23 AM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Kevin
Reynolds<tpresence at hotmail.com> wrote:
The DLV11J
is supported line an DL. But not as console as CPU has one.
I believe the backplane was different.for the uVAX1, and different
The cabinet for the microvax I is different that
the BA123 and the BA23 that are available for the later vaxes I believe.
Nope.
Bog-standard BA23 or BA123. There are later cabinets for
MicroVAX IIIs, but they are models like the BA213. You can take a
MicroPDP-11/23 and re-stuff it as a MicroVAX-I or a MicroVAX-II,
though you will probably need different peripherals (I don't think the
DLV11/DLV1J is supported under VMS, for example, though the RLV12 is). from the 11/23 and uVAXII in the CD slot usage. though
the backplane
is swappable.
Generally a uVAXII in a BA23 is cramped, just not enough slots or
places to stick disk drives. If your doing that use the densest memory
(8mb boards or 16mb is possible), IO(DHV11) and a RQDX3. Some
boards like the RQDX2 are quad width and eat more space than RQDX3
a dual width card. But power may be a factor if care is not taken.
The uVAX-I has a dual-board CPU that must be installed
in slots 1-2 of
a backplane with CD slots, and the memory sits _on_ the Qbus, so with
22 address bits, you top out at 4MB. The later MicroVAXen fit on a
single board and use PMI memory (different boards, matched to the type
of CPU). I don't know the MicroVAX III memory max off the top of my
head (after my time), but the uVAX-II has 1MB on-board and can take,
IIRC, 12MB in the first two slots.
the KA630 was 16mb, KA650 and 655 maxed at 64mb .
Besides memory, the big limitation I remember from
those days about
upgrades was disk size. The uVAX-I shipped with the RQDX1 which did
not support disks over 30MB, I think. (RD52 but not RD53, IIRC). The
RQDX3 supports DEC disks up to the RD54 (154MB) and non-DEC disks,
though it can be tricky to get the Field Service formatter which can
label non-standard disks. Even so, MFM disks top out pretty low. I
think I managed to fit VMS 6.0 on an RD54 on a 9MB uVAX-II, but I had
to leave something behind (like the HELP files). Using an MSCP SCSI
controller bypasses this dance and leaves memory as the critical
resource.
Yep, memory is the critical resource to a point, 9mb will run a lot of
the later
versions but make sure you have swap space on the disk.
If your creative, and the box is a BA123 you can use multiple RD54s
(up to 4 drives are supported) and space is less an issue. Other ways
is a RD54
and a mix of smaller drives. RD52 (quantum D540) is a good drive for
swapping
as it's fast despite being only 31MB.
Using a SCSI controller is the way out but watch for dives over 1GB for
the boot drive.
I forget if that affected only the older 3100s or also the uVAX-II boot
as well.
Allison