13 Dec
2015
13 Dec
'15
2:40 a.m.
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?
Regards
Rob
13 Dec
13 Dec
12:06 p.m.
On Dec 12, 2015, at 11:40 PM, 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?
I?ve used the WQESD/04 card on my PDP-11/73, if you don?t have SCSI, and have ESDI drive,
it totally rocks! If you have SMD drives to plug into this, you can probably make one
drive appear as several drives.
I?ve sense upgraded to a SCSI card, and use removable drive trays.
Zane
12:42 p.m.
On 13/12/2015 07:40, Robert Jarratt 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?
Two of my pdp-11s came with large SMD drives, albeit with Emulex
controllers rather than Websters. They're not uncommon. The
controllers typically use large drives to emulate two or more smaller
types - in my case, RM06s.
--
Pete
14 Dec
14 Dec
8:09 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"
11:46 a.m.
On 2015-12-13 1:40 AM, Robert Jarratt 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?
Not completely unusual. Our company had a pair of Microvax IIs, in rack
mount form, that shared a pair of SMD drives in another rack mount
chassis. The cards used to interface to the 8" drives were EMULEX QD33
MSCP-compatible SMD/SMD-E disk controllers. I would have one of these up
and running right now, except that the power supply in the drive chassis
died the last time I tried it and haven't had time to fix it. I believe
the drives are from fujitsu. I believe the drives were mainly used as
NFS mounts for other UNIX boxes.
-Jon
2:42 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jon
Auringer
Sent: 14 December 2015 16:46
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Webster WQSMD/04 Qbus SMD Controller
Not completely unusual. Our company had a pair of Microvax IIs, in rack
mount form, that shared a pair of SMD drives in another rack mount
chassis.
The cards used to interface to the 8" drives were
EMULEX QD33 MSCP-
compatible SMD/SMD-E disk controllers. I would have one of these up and
running right now, except that the power supply in the drive chassis died
the
last time I tried it and haven't had time to fix
it. I believe the drives
are from
fujitsu. I believe the drives were mainly used as NFS
mounts for other
UNIX
boxes.
I have had a few replies now. So it seems that it wasn't that unusual to
connect up these big drives to a MicroVAX II. Can't see myself ever having
the space, or a strong enough floor, for such a drive though, and I suspect
they are not that easy to find in any case, but it would be nice to see such
a beast in action.
Regards
Rob
3:45 p.m.
On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:42 PM, Robert Jarratt
<robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote:
I have had a few replies now. So it seems that it
wasn't that unusual to
connect up these big drives to a MicroVAX II.
In the late 1980s, your choices for uVAXII disk were essentially,
5.25" DEC RD drives, which topped out at 154MB, or external drives,
often 8" or 14", and unless you were tied to DEC-only (and went with
an QDA50 and first an RA81, then RA82, then possibly RA90, etc), your
next choice was some 3rd party controller and the drives to match. If
the goal was > 150MB, that often meant Fujitsu SMD drives, but then
later, large-capacity 5.25" ESDI drives started to appear.
I have a bit of both with my VAX 8300... a KDB50 with a real RA81
(because we already had that when we got the used 8300 in 1989) then
some years later, I landed a 5"-tall 3rd party disk box with ESDI on
the inside and SDI on the outside. ISTR mine has 2x 600MB ESDI, so
it's 3X the storage of the RA81 in 1/2 the volume, in less than 1/4
the weight, and probably 1/5 the power. :-)
-ethan
3144
days inactive
3145
days old
6 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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auringer＠tds.net -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
huw.davies＠kerberos.davies.net.au -
pete＠dunnington.plus.com -
robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com