8 Aug
2003
8 Aug
'03
5:25 a.m.
Hi, everyone!
I've become the new owner of a nice MicroVAX 3100, and I'm trying to learn
more about it. I had a few hardware-related questions, and I'm hoping that
someone here can give me some insight.
This is what I know about the system so far -- it's got three RZ26 drives
in it, although one appears to have died, since SHOW DEV only reports two
installed. If I were to replace the failed one, do I need to get my hands
on another Digital drive, or will any SCSI drive work with VMS? Also, I've
heard that some vaxes (or was it VMS, or both?) have limits on the size of
the drive it will work with...what would work best in this system?
My VAX came with VMS 5.5-2 installed, but I'd like to go ahead and get the
hobbyist license and move to 7.2. Will my little VAX handle it? It's got
16 megs of memory and about 2 gigs of hard disk space (unless I can coax
that other RZ26 into working...) Also, I don't have a CDROM, or a place to
put it in the case. Again, if I get an external SCSI case, does it or the
CDROM I put in it need to be specific to the VAX?
Thanks in advance for your help! I'm really looking forward to putting
this machine back into service...
Cheers,
Chris Cureau
8 Aug
8 Aug
5:54 a.m.
On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 03:54:09PM -0500, Christopher Cureau wrote:
If I were to replace the failed one, do I need to get
my hands
on another Digital drive, or will any SCSI drive work with VMS?
Any SCSI drive
should work.
Also, I've heard that
some vaxes (or was it VMS, or both?) have limits on the size of
the drive it will work with...what would work best in this system?
There are some
old VAXstations that can not boot from disks > 1 GB.
(Can only boot from partitions that are entirely in the first GB.)
Also, I don't have a CDROM, or a place to
put it in the case. Again, if I get an external SCSI case, does it or the
CDROM I put in it need to be specific to the VAX?
AFAIK you need a CROIM with 512
byte / block. Most generic SCSI CDROMs
will work. I found that old Toshibas work good and Plextors don't.
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
6:24 a.m.
Jochen Kunz said:
AFAIK you need a CROIM with 512 byte / block. Most generic SCSI CDROMs
will work. I found that old Toshibas work good and Plextors don't.
Really? I've always had good luck with the plextors...very reliable.
Sometimes, though, there's a jumper you have to set to select the 512 b block
size; it's not always automatic on those drives.
- Dan Wright
(dtwright(a)uiuc.edu)
(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright)
-] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [-
``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.''
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
[demime 1.01a removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
9:38 a.m.
Jochen Kunz said:
I've had good luck with Toshiba's on my Alpha's. However, they wouldn't
work on my PDP-11, I ended up using a 2x Caddy DEC drive (RRD42?) until I got some Plextor
Caddy drives, and when I was working on the system both the 6x and 8x worked great (so
I'm running with the 8x). If they'll work on that picky of a system they should
work on just about any DEC HW.
Oh, before I got a read DEC drive for my VS 3100/10 I used a Toshiba Drive.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
AFAIK you need a CROIM with 512 byte / block. Most generic SCSI CDROMs
will work. I found that old Toshibas work good and Plextors don't.
Really? I've always had good luck with the plextors...very reliable.
Sometimes, though, there's a jumper you have to set to select the 512 b block
size; it's not always automatic on those drives.
11 a.m.
On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 10:20:49AM -0500, Dan Wright wrote:
Really? I've always had good luck with the
plextors...very reliable.
Yes. Plextors are very good, but it seams that at least my
VS3100m76
doesn't like my 12Plex. It works well everywhere else.
Sometimes, though, there's a jumper you have to
set to select the 512 b block
size; it's not always automatic on those drives.
I know. The old toshs have
some jumpers (solder pads) too...
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
3:43 p.m.
New subject: Nice find: DEC HiNote Ultra II
Hi all,
Today, a long-time customer surprised me with a biiig box full
of their "old stuff". OKOK, that wasnt too smart of him.. after
our coffee chat, I didnt do much besides going through the box'
contents *evil grin*
Amongst the fun stuff were a Siemens Hicom PBX (yay!) which I
installed there in 1998, and, even more yay!, some of his old
laptops: a DEC HiNote Ultra II, a HiNote 500 and a Fuji Lifebook.
The UltraII was his own, and damn, did I spend some time on that
thing in those days. Ugh. And now.. same all over again.. trying
to get it back to life. All manuals, cards, docks etc were in the
box, so no surprises there. The clock batt had died, but the box
still had the "in case your clock dies" DEC update pkg, and yay,
it worked: nvram/clock is back to normal. All other things seem
to work fine (machine, screen, disk, Mobile 6X dock) so after some
cleaning up on the hard drive, I now have a nice, very lightweight
lappy for hobby fun.
(yes, and it makes a GREAT term for serial/TCP/LAT with the WiFi
card ;-)
Shitty thing is... (a) the battery pack seems to have died, and
(b) I lost my copy of the SystemCD for reinstalling the system
onto it. Not a very big deal, I guess, but having it would be
nice.
Soo... anyone have of these gathering dust somewhere?
Lappy is a P8X/LYS5133 (P5/133 model, 16MB) with the 7.2V/3300mAh
stick-shape LiIon battery pack (FR-PCP8H-AB)
Cheers,
Fred (happily LATting into Tru64 ;-)
6:16 p.m.
New subject: ebay-Applicon 1977 antique computer--ROOM SIZED
Hmm, What's an Applicon? Only $150.00!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2944833186&categ…
click here
6:43 p.m.
New subject: ebay-Applicon 1977 antique computer--ROOM SIZED
Hmm, What's an Applicon? Only $150.00!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2944833186
Wish they posted pictures.
This is a DEC PDP 11/34 based Computer Aided Design (Drawing
and Routing) system. Judging from the location this is the same
system I bought in 2000 for $10 and left to the seller due to
weight/distance.
John A.
6:57 p.m.
New subject: ebay-Applicon 1977 antique computer--ROOM SIZED
On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, John Allain wrote:
Probably has Tektronix DVT terminals as well...
Peter Wallace
Hmm,
What's an Applicon? Only $150.00!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2944833186
Wish they posted pictures.
This is a DEC PDP 11/34 based Computer Aided Design (Drawing
and Routing) system. Judging from the location this is the same
system I bought in 2000 for $10 and left to the seller due to
weight/distance.
John A.
9 Aug
9 Aug
5:30 a.m.
New subject: ebay-Applicon 1977 antique computer--ROOM SIZED
I used to work on these things!
Applicon made CAD/CAM systems, very good ones too.
There machines were based on PDP-11's and early VAX systems, loaded with
lots of custom
peripherals such as graphics displays, input devices and even disk
controllers.
My first civian job was working on Applicon disk controllers. Very
fancy bit-slice based
machines that plugged into a Unibus slot, desipte being twice the normal
height for a unibus
board.
Later applicon machines used a custom bit-mapped graphics board (based
on a 6845 for video
timing). But the early machines (like in 1977) used a sort of math-box
like vector display
systyem. These vector box was built out of MMI 6701D's, the father of
the 2901 series.
Peter C. Wallace wrote:
On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, John Allain wrote:
Probably has Tektronix DVT terminals as well...
Peter Wallace
Hmm,
What's an Applicon? Only $150.00!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2944833186
Wish they posted pictures.
This is a DEC PDP 11/34 based Computer Aided Design (Drawing
and Routing) system. Judging from the location this is the same
system I bought in 2000 for $10 and left to the seller due to
weight/distance.
John A.
5:37 a.m.
New subject: ebay-Applicon 1977 antique computer--ROOM SIZED
Oh yes, in 1977, Applicon's main CPU was....
The PDP 11/40.
Somebody, jump on this system, right away!
Peter C. Wallace wrote:
On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, John Allain wrote:
Probably has Tektronix DVT terminals as well...
Peter Wallace
Hmm,
What's an Applicon? Only $150.00!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2944833186
Wish they posted pictures.
This is a DEC PDP 11/34 based Computer Aided Design (Drawing
and Routing) system. Judging from the location this is the same
system I bought in 2000 for $10 and left to the seller due to
weight/distance.
John A.
5:24 a.m.
New subject: Nice find: DEC HiNote Ultra II
Speaking of the DEC HiNote...
There are a very small number of DEC HiNote prototypes out there that
have about 11 PCI lines
missing on the motherboard between the system bus and the sound chip.
'Someone' at DEC had signed off on the testing, but it had never been
performed. So this major
bug went into the first production run and was only caught after the
units started comming off the
line.
I know the person responsible for this major blunder, and one of the
people who caught the problem
at DEC. I've personally seen this bug demonstrated, and I can garuntee
these systems existed at
one point.
I have no idea whats happened to them now.
Fred N. van Kempen wrote:
Hi all,
Today, a long-time customer surprised me with a biiig box full
of their "old stuff". OKOK, that wasnt too smart of him.. after
our coffee chat, I didnt do much besides going through the box'
contents *evil grin*
Amongst the fun stuff were a Siemens Hicom PBX (yay!) which I
installed there in 1998, and, even more yay!, some of his old
laptops: a DEC HiNote Ultra II, a HiNote 500 and a Fuji Lifebook.
The UltraII was his own, and damn, did I spend some time on that
thing in those days. Ugh. And now.. same all over again.. trying
to get it back to life. All manuals, cards, docks etc were in the
box, so no surprises there. The clock batt had died, but the box
still had the "in case your clock dies" DEC update pkg, and yay,
it worked: nvram/clock is back to normal. All other things seem
to work fine (machine, screen, disk, Mobile 6X dock) so after some
cleaning up on the hard drive, I now have a nice, very lightweight
lappy for hobby fun.
(yes, and it makes a GREAT term for serial/TCP/LAT with the WiFi
card ;-)
Shitty thing is... (a) the battery pack seems to have died, and
(b) I lost my copy of the SystemCD for reinstalling the system
onto it. Not a very big deal, I guess, but having it would be
nice.
Soo... anyone have of these gathering dust somewhere?
Lappy is a P8X/LYS5133 (P5/133 model, 16MB) with the 7.2V/3300mAh
stick-shape LiIon battery pack (FR-PCP8H-AB)
Cheers,
Fred (happily LATting into Tru64 ;-)
10 Aug
10 Aug
9:45 a.m.
New subject: Nice find: DEC HiNote Ultra II
I wrote:
Hi all,
Today, a long-time customer surprised me with a biiig box full
of their "old stuff". OKOK, that wasnt too smart of him.. after
our coffee chat, I didnt do much besides going through the box'
contents *evil grin*
Shitty thing is... (a) the battery pack seems to have died, and
(b) I lost my copy of the SystemCD for reinstalling the system
onto it. Not a very big deal, I guess, but having it would be
nice.
Ha! DEC noticed a problem with these battery packs "locking up"
after extensive periods of no activity, so they came up with a
small utility (revive.com) to "revive" the batt pack. It worked,
too.. my battery came back to life, and, after a full charge, is
as good as were it new.. !
Lappy is not a portable, ultra-light TCP/LAT/Serial/X11 terminal :)
(muhaha, with 802.11b WLAN ;-)
Cheers,
Fred
13 Aug
13 Aug
5:52 a.m.
New subject: Nice find: DEC HiNote Ultra II
On Friday, August 8, 2003, at 08:38 PM, Fred N. van Kempen wrote:
Shitty thing is... (a) the battery pack seems to have
died, and
(b) I lost my copy of the SystemCD for reinstalling the system
onto it. Not a very big deal, I guess, but having it would be
nice.
Soo... anyone have of these gathering dust somewhere?
Lappy is a P8X/LYS5133 (P5/133 model, 16MB) with the 7.2V/3300mAh
stick-shape LiIon battery pack (FR-PCP8H-AB)
Personally, I wouldn't give up on the battery yet. I've got an older
Dell here (P100SD- P5/100) which still holds >90% of its original
charge. My suspicion is that the charge is so low that the internal
charging circuit won't give it a full charge. (Does it try to charge
the battery and then stop?) You may need to remove/insert/remove the
battery several times to build up a small base charge before the laptop
will charge it to full power.
<<<john>>>
6:58 a.m.
New subject: Nice find: DEC HiNote Ultra II
On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, John Ruschmeyer wrote:
Personally, I wouldn't give up on the battery yet.
I've got an older
Dell here (P100SD- P5/100) which still holds >90% of its original
charge. My suspicion is that the charge is so low that the internal
charging circuit won't give it a full charge. (Does it try to charge
the battery and then stop?) You may need to remove/insert/remove the
battery several times to build up a small base charge before the laptop
will charge it to full power.
No, problem was that lappy didnt even *see* the damn
battery
pack, let alone charge it. It turns out that DEC, smart as
they were, had special gadgets in the battery pack to keep
it from going bad... however, that gadgetry would also lock
up if the batt drained 100% (read: leaving it be for a year
or so.)
There's a lil utility to kick the batt's butt (:) after which
the thing is seen again, and then can be charged. I did that,
and after a full charge-drain-charge cycle and many hours of
use, I verified it to be keeping 100% of its charge.. in
other words, even though its from 1997, its as new. YAY!
--f
15 Aug
15 Aug
4:30 a.m.
New subject: 11/750 minimum config
Hi guys :) The time of my life has finally rolled around that I can have
a good crack at getting my VAX 11/750 up and roaring (as i'm sure David
Brownlee would be pleased to note!) I'd like to canvass your opinions on
the absolute minimum of hardware that I need in there (I know f'rinstance
that I can remove the floating-point card and the RDM) to have something
that should at least get to console. I would also like to know what sort
of power load we would be talking per card, if anyone is privvy to that
sort of information, or at least an informed guess. Same applies for the
system blower - does anyone know how much air it should be pushing?
thanks meltie/alex
13 Aug
13 Aug
5:36 p.m.
New subject: Nice find: DEC HiNote Ultra II
If a Li-Ion battery pack is not working, get a replacement, or have it
rebuilt
by pros.
If you have never seen a Li-Ion cell explode (I do mean explode), then
you have
no idea how much power is in there.
Personally, I'd NEVER allow them to be charged on aircraft. Li-ion
cells are
highly explosive!
John Ruschmeyer wrote:
On Friday, August 8, 2003, at 08:38 PM, Fred N. van
Kempen wrote:
Shitty thing is... (a) the battery pack seems to
have died, and
(b) I lost my copy of the SystemCD for reinstalling the system
onto it. Not a very big deal, I guess, but having it would be
nice.
Soo... anyone have of these gathering dust somewhere?
Lappy is a P8X/LYS5133 (P5/133 model, 16MB) with the 7.2V/3300mAh
stick-shape LiIon battery pack (FR-PCP8H-AB)
Personally, I wouldn't give up on the battery yet. I've got an older
Dell here (P100SD- P5/100) which still holds >90% of its original
charge. My suspicion is that the charge is so low that the internal
charging circuit won't give it a full charge. (Does it try to charge
the battery and then stop?) You may need to remove/insert/remove the
battery several times to build up a small base charge before the
laptop will charge it to full power.
<<<john>>>
10 Aug
10 Aug
9:39 a.m.
Chris,
Late reply... was kinda busy.
I've become the new owner of a nice MicroVAX 3100,
and I'm trying to learn
more about it. I had a few hardware-related questions, and I'm hoping that
someone here can give me some insight.
Yay! The 3100, albeit a bit slowish, are
nice boxes... they're a real
VAX, they use SCSI for I/O (read: cheapo drives and stuff) and, as long
as they're taken care of, virtually indestructible. I have about 30 of
them :)
This is what I know about the system so far --
it's got three RZ26 drives
in it, although one appears to have died, since SHOW DEV only reports two
installed. If I were to replace the failed one, do I need to get my hands
on another Digital drive, or will any SCSI drive work with VMS? Also, I've
heard that some vaxes (or was it VMS, or both?) have limits on the size of
the drive it will work with...what would work best in this system?
The 3100 will
not be able to boot off drives larger than 4GB, because of
how their ROMs address the sectors. Once booted, the OS takes over, and
they have no real limits. So.. make sure the OS boot area "lives" below
that size, and you're fine. Very old ROMs have a 1GB limit, but rather
than going with those, just swap the ROMs :)
Also, DEC drives are good, but any good SCSI drive will do. Many people,
me included, use Seagate HAWK drives (2GB, 3.5", 1" low-power), which now
come dirt-cheap.
My VAX came with VMS 5.5-2 installed, but I'd like
to go ahead and get the
hobbyist license and move to 7.2. Will my little VAX handle it? It's got
16 megs of memory and about 2 gigs of hard disk space (unless I can coax
that other RZ26 into working...)
16MB is pushing the limits for 7.x. I believe it
*does* run, but it will
be slow as hell, and probably slower than that :) Try to stick to 5.5 or
6.x, or find more memory. The machines has a 32MB limit, by the way.
Also, I don't have a CDROM, or a place to put it
in the case. Again, if
I get an external SCSI case, does it or the CDROM I put in it need to be
specific to the VAX?
External cases work find (it IS just regular SCSI...) but
there's a catch.
For reasons unknown to me, DEC decided to fit these machines with their
own weird "external SCSI" connector. Meaning, you need a very special
cable (BC36 I believe) converting from their connector to the regular
Centronics-like connector. If you have or can get that, no problems.
Otherwise, either mount the CDROM drive inside the chassis, or fix your
own "external" cable using a soldering iron and some patience.
The VAX is like most systems of its class: it requires a CDROM drive
able to handle 512-byte sectors. That obviously includes the DEC
drives, but also those from Sun, SGI, IBM and a truckload of modern
drives (Toshiba, Plextor) and, for some reason, many CD-R and CD-RW
drives.
Thanks in advance for your help! I'm really
looking forward to putting
this machine back into service...
Yeah!
Cheers,
Fred (just done with fixing up the old DEC laptop ;-)
7625
days inactive
7632
days old
17 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
allain＠panix.com -
bshannon＠tiac.net -
chrisc＠addpower.com -
dtwright＠uiuc.edu -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de -
jruschme＠comcast.net -
meltie＠meltie.com -
pcw＠mesanet.com -
tosteve＠yahoo.com -
waltje＠pdp11.nl