22 Oct
2005
22 Oct
'05
3:14 p.m.
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, "Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com>
wrote:
I know of one person on the list who owns such a
beastie, I'm curious if
anyone else owns an 11/725 and would consider possibly selling/trading it?
You'll probably hate me for telling that I threw an 11/730 away less than
a year ago.
But it was in Sweden, and I doubt anyone would want to pay for the
shipping.
But the hardware I still keep around is much more interesting... :-)
Johnny
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
22 Oct
22 Oct
5:02 p.m.
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, "Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com>
wrote:
I will...
The 11/730 is one of only 2 VAX families (the other being the 780 and its
descnedants) that I consider to be truely repaiable.
I know of one person on the list who owns such a
beastie, I'm curious if
anyone else owns an 11/725 and would consider possibly selling/trading it?
You'll probably hate me for telling that I threw an 11/730 away less than But the hardware I still keep around is much more
interesting... :-)
Hmmmm.... I find the 11/730 to be a very interesting design. It's almost
all simple PALs.
-tony
23 Oct
23 Oct
4:42 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
You might well be right. Are the prints available anywhere?
The 11/730, of course, is mostly PALs (as I said) with some RAM as a
control store, 8 off 2901s as the ALU, and an 8085 (I think) to load the
control store, etc. One day I am going to look into modifying the
microcode of that machine...
The 11/730 has the major advantage for me that it's quite small (the CPU
is a single 10.5" box, and I cna easily lift it). There are other small
VAXenm but they all have nasty custom single-chip CPUs in them.
-tony
Hmmmm.... I find the 11/730 to be a very
interesting design. It's almost
all simple PALs.
Isn't the 8700/8800 mostly bitslice chips? 
9:25 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
I don't know. I've never looked. I'll see if I can find them.
Tony Duell
wrote:
You might well be right. Are the prints available anywhere? Hmmmm.... I find the 11/730 to be a very
interesting design. It's almost
all simple PALs.
Isn't the 8700/8800 mostly bitslice chips? The 11/730, of course, is mostly PALs (as I said) with
some RAM as a
control store, 8 off 2901s as the ALU, and an 8085 (I think) to load the
control store, etc. One day I am going to look into modifying the
microcode of that machine...
To what end? Increased performance?
Peace... Sridhar
24 Oct
24 Oct
midnight
The 11/730, of
course, is mostly PALs (as I said) with some RAM as a
control store, 8 off 2901s as the ALU, and an 8085 (I think) to load the
control store, etc. One day I am going to look into modifying the
microcode of that machine...
To what end? Increased performance? 
3:51 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
NO, just for fun... I doubt very much I could improve on the
performance for running the VAX instruction set. I have not looked at
the prints carefully enough to determine how much of the instruction
set is hard-wired (if any), I wonder if it would be possible to run a
different instruction set entirely.
I don't have an exact reference to hand, but one of the
"how we built VMS for the uVAX-II" articles in one of the
DEC Technical Journals describes how they made a VAX-11/730
behave as a (then only proposed) MicroVAX-II. They did this
to check the performance (and correctness) of the subsetting.
The 730 was chosen because it was entirely soft.
SO I guess you could make it do almost anything within
reason. Perhaps it could have been a faster PDP-8 than
the PDP-11/60 ... or given the 730's reputation, perhaps not :-)
Antonio
--
Antonio carlini
arcarlini at iee.org
The 11/730, of course, is mostly PALs (as I said) with
some RAM as a
control store, 8 off 2901s as the ALU, and an 8085 (I think) to
load the control store, etc. One day I am going to look into
modifying the microcode of that machine...
To what end? Increased performance? 
22 Oct
22 Oct
5:36 p.m.
On 10/23/05, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:
You'll probably hate me for telling that I threw
an 11/730 away less than
a year ago.
But it was in Sweden, and I doubt anyone would want to pay for the
shipping.
I would have been happy to pay shipping for the CPU boards.
-ethan
10:27 p.m.
Johnny Billquist wrote:
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, "Curt @ Atari Museum"
<curt at atarimuseum.com> wrote:
Sometime in the future, I wouldn't mind trying to put an 11/782
together. Anyone know where I might be able to find some information
about the interconnect hardware?
Peace... Sridhar
I know of one person on the list who owns such a
beastie, I'm curious if
anyone else owns an 11/725 and would consider possibly selling/trading it?
You'll probably hate me for telling that I threw an 11/730 away less than
a year ago.
But it was in Sweden, and I doubt anyone would want to pay for the
shipping.
But the hardware I still keep around is much more interesting... :-) 
11:38 p.m.
Sridhar Ayengar declared on Saturday 22 October 2005 09:27 pm:
Sometime in the future, I wouldn't mind trying to
put an 11/782
together. Anyone know where I might be able to find some information
about the interconnect hardware?
As I've been told by the hardware designer of the dual-vax, the 11/782
was a retarded design. Basically, just a small amount of dual-ported
memory stuck between two independent CPUs. The Purdue-designed dual-vax
is a lot more useful machine.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
6852
days inactive
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days old
9 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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arcarlini＠iee.org -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bqt＠Update.UU.SE -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
pat＠computer-refuge.org -
ploopster＠gmail.com