25 May
2011
25 May
'11
3:57 p.m.
On 05/25/2011 10:10 AM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote:
Since I'm finally home and not busy, I've
gotten a chance to review at
the BitSavers documentation for the VT-103. It did support having a
TU58 crammed into the space under the normal VT-100 CRT. It was a Q18
4x4 serpentine backplane with lots of customization/"specialness" to
work in the VT-100 enclosure. Put an 11/23 and an MXV11-BF into row
one and you have three rows of quad slots left in the system. (Which
should provide more then enough space for expansion. As you've got CPU
and 128KB RAM, 2 SLU, clock and ROM all in those two boards.) I'd
probably put an RQDX3 or CMD CQD-22X SCSI controller for mass storage,
and another 128KB RAM board, to bring the system to a full 256KB of
RAM. And that still leaves two rows empty. What else can one stick
into the VT-103? Well, I'm sure you can think of something. (For
absolute hilarity, since RSTS/E 10.1 can run on an 11/23 with 256KB
RAM, add a DELQA, DLVJ-1 and two DZQ-11 modules and have a desktop
timesharing box with network connectivity.)
why not find a suitable Qbus uVAX and stuff it in there. Thats been
done and VMS
supports networking and is available.
I would prefer a real VT-100 (or VT-125), however I
have the slight issues of:
Vt103 and VT100 are essentially the same.
1. Can't find anything in Hamilton.
Call
Dave Dunfield, not that close but he know the locality better than me.
2. Don't have money.
Can't help, thats
unfortunately a common problem.
3. I can't drive any where to pick anything up
(because of visual
impairment - read: blindness in one eye, and crap vision in the other
- I can't drive a car).
Thats a limitation but not as serious a problem as finding the gear is
the first step.
So that's why I'm currently limited to using a
PC. Well that and a
slight lack of space.
You don't want to see my room, 10x14 ft ignoring closets there are 34
computers,
my ham radio and my workbench where I build stuff and it's my business desk.
I had a silly idea of what to do with spare QBUS 11
but it would be
more silly then anything. Since I'm a bit into the steampunk
aesthetic; built a QBUS backplane and PSU into an ornate small cabinet
so that it looks like Victorian era furniture, and put a table-top
KSR-33 (caseless) or KSR-35 (either caseless or with case) on top of
the cabinet and have a "Victorian-11". (Since the front panel on most
QBUS 11 systems is so simplistic one could also make the panel look
similarly "old." It would be an interesting conversation piece, but
mildly odd in apperance. Though, to keep the look you'd have to mount
the disk drives behind a small door (otherwise you have Victorian
furniture... with a floppy disk drive in it).
Nothing to stop you from doing that. A loose backplane and power supply
is all you need. Insure there is plenty of transverse airflow across
the boards
and your good.
Allison