6 Apr
2010
6 Apr
'10
2:45 p.m.
Brad Parker [brad at heeltoe.com] wrote:
So I gots to thinking. What if someone really did
want four
8250's? Could they even find them? And, if they did (which
is the scary part), could they find a complete set of spares,
including power supplies?
I'd be surprised if they couldn't find them (I'm assuming they're
willing to pay real money for them ... in the thousands). What might
be tougher is finding licences for whatever they want ... I'm sure
someone in HP could sell them the appropriate licences but I expect
it would be a struggle finding that someone :-)
And, what about disks? Can you connect a SCSI disk to
an
8250? I would think SCSI would be the only hope for a
reliable production machine in 2010. Did all 8250's come
with UNIBUS? If so, then a unibus scsi board would be the right
option.
I think UNIBUS was an option. You'd either hang your disks off
a KDB50 or you'd fins whichever 3rd party SCSI card was available.
The only reason I can possibly think of for needing a VAX 8250 is that
the nuclear plant certification (or similar) requires it and will cost
$MUCHO_WONGA to redo using more modern gear. In which case shoving in
a 10K 73GB SCA-80 SCSI disk isn't going to fly either is it?
Actually the other two reasons I can think of are "misread the
requirements
entirely" and "missed 1st April by a smidgen".
Now, VAX 9000 would be somewhat harder.
Antonio