14 Dec
2015
14 Dec
'15
5:09 a.m.
On 13 Dec 2015, at 18:40, Robert Jarratt
<robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote:
I picked up some Qbus cards yesterday. They seem to be board set for a
MicroVAX II. However, one of the cards was, to me at least, a bit unusual.
It was made by a company called Webster, and it appears to be a controller
for SMD disks. I was not familiar with SMD disks and had to look them up. I
suspect this might be a little out of the ordinary, and, possibly, an odd
combination for a small Qbus system to access such a physically large type
of disk. Were MicroVAX IIs used much with such disks? Is this a bit of an
unusual find?
Webster were based in Melbourne Australia and developed a lot of innovative products in
the 1980s/1990s. We had one such controller in a MicroVAX-II I used to manage with a
Fujitsu Super Eagle SMD drive. It was a very cost effective solution compared with an
RA-82.
I hadn?t thought about this particular system for a long while and it brought back fond
memories. The fact that I still manage OpenVMS systems 30 years later is cause for
celebration!
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"