4 Oct
2016
4 Oct
'16
10:57 p.m.
A generous list member gifted me a DEC 3000 model 400 early alpha system. This is my first
alpha and I'm excited to play around with VMS and Tru64 however he warned me that it
was having some memory issues when he retired it several years ago. It does indeed appear
to have some bad ram. I'm wondering if anyone on the list has memory modules
they'd be willing to part with.
5 Oct
5 Oct
2:14 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Cody
Swanson
Sent: 05 October 2016 03:57
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: DEC 3000 model 400 memory
A generous list member gifted me a DEC 3000 model 400 early alpha system.
This is my first alpha and I'm excited to play around with VMS and Tru64
however he warned me that it was having some memory issues when he
retired it several years ago. It does indeed appear to have some bad ram. I'm
wondering if anyone on the list has memory modules they'd be willing to part
with.
Someone in France was offering some on Nekochan recently.
Regards
Rob
2:39 a.m.
On Tue, 4 Oct 2016, Cody Swanson wrote:
A generous list member gifted me a DEC 3000 model 400
early alpha system. This is my first alpha and I'm excited to play around with VMS and
Tru64 however he warned me that it was having some memory issues when he retired it
several years ago. It does indeed appear to have some bad ram. I'm wondering if anyone
on the list has memory modules they'd be willing to part with.
Assuming this DEC 3000 is the model with the memory daughter boards
populated with endless rows of (expensive and hard to find) proprietary
100 pin SIMMs,yes I have some extra memory and daughter boards.
Though wikipedia tells me that the 400 model only has two such daughter
boards, for a total of 8 sticks.
For comparison, inside my 3000 700:
http://archives.smbfc.net/uploads/retrocomputing/DEC3000_inside.jpg
A couple of fully populated daughter boards:
http://archives.smbfc.net/uploads/retrocomputing/DEC3000_mem.jpg
I have to grab them from the garage, but I'm pretty sure I have a couple
fully populated daughter boards ready to go, though I don't remember the
capacty of the sticks that are in there. I do remember, that the way the
SIMMs are banked is counter-intuitive, so be sure to read the
docs as you swap memory round.
Anyway, I'm happy to send them to you for testing. If they solve your problem,
we can work something out.
--Jason
11:26 p.m.
Assuming this DEC 3000 is the model with the memory
daughter boards
populated with endless rows of (expensive and hard to find) proprietary
100 pin SIMMs,yes I have some extra memory and daughter boards.
Though wikipedia tells me that the 400 model only has two such daughter
boards, for a total of 8 sticks.
Yes, it does have the proprietary unobtainium ram which is why I came to cctalk. :-) It
has 4 long daughter boards, each with two rows of two modules. I was lucky enough to get
the manuals with the system. The manuals state that the bottom rows of slots combine to
form memory bank 1 and the top rows combine to form bank two. The memory test was failing
after a considerable amount of time with an ECC error so I took a gamble and removed the
memory from bank 2 (8x100 pin dimms) and now the machine boots to OpenVMS and appears to
be stable. This has reduced the total memory to 32MB which I'd like to at least
double. I gather these systems can hold up to 512MB.
For comparison, inside my 3000 700:
http://archives.smbfc.net/uploads/retrocomputing/DEC3000_inside.jpg
Yours looks exactly like what the layout of my 400 looks like except I have a framebuffer
card.
http://www.sysop.ca/media/DEC3000/dec3000_memory.jpg
A couple of fully populated daughter boards:
http://archives.smbfc.net/uploads/retrocomputing/DEC3000_mem.jpg
I have to grab them from the garage, but I'm pretty sure I have a couple
fully populated daughter boards ready to go, though I don't remember the
capacty of the sticks that are in there. I do remember, that the way the
SIMMs are banked is counter-intuitive, so be sure to read the
docs as you swap memory round.
Anyway, I'm happy to send them to you for testing. If they solve your problem,
we can work something out.
Excellent, thank you. I will mail you off-list.
2847
days inactive
2848
days old
4 comments
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participants (3)
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jason＠smbfc.net -
lists＠sysop.ca -
robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com