11/45 pictures & questions

On Mon, Dec 29, 2003 at 08:23:20AM -0600, Tom Uban wrote: I have run 2.9BSD on an 11/24 w/3MB of memory and two RL02s. It was not an easy fit (I didn't have enough room to load the sources and rebuild the kernel). I wanted to try to put 2.9BSD on an RK07 or two, but I lost them when my employer closed years ago (no room to take them with me on top of the four truckloads of VAXen and PDP-11 equipment I _did_ rescue, including an 11/750, an 8200, another 11/24, 2 x 11/34, 2 x 11/04...) At least with 2.11BSD, you can use an MSCP controller without having to resort to patching/retrofitting a driver (I think there is a way to use MSCP w/2.9BSD, but I've never attempted it). There are lots of options for MSCP disks on a Unibus -11, probably the least expensive to aquire is a UDA-50 and an RA81. There are plenty of things cheaper to ship, however. For context, we were using a UDA-50 and RA81 on that same 11/750 in 1984 ($26,000 for the drive, IIRC). If you want something older for your 11/45, you may have to dig harder. Lots of people who shied away from DEC operating systems were attracted to third-party disks. You might hunt down something in an SMD or ESDI subsystem. When we got our first 11/750, we put a Fuji 160MB drive and an Eagle on it, via a MASSBUS interface to a Systems Industries SI9900 box. I wasn't around when it was bought, but ISTR it was more than 30% cheaper than DEC disk, meg for meg (sturdy, too... survived several moves and daily production use for ~10 years). -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 29-Dec-2003 14:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -11.1 F (-24.0 C) Windchill -33.7 F (-36.5 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 8.30 kts Grid 358 Barometer 699.1 mb (9912.2 ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html