31 May
2002
31 May
'02
6:12 p.m.
The pallet in the upper right of the second picture are the three UPSs.
The Pallet in the upper left of the second picture is the HP 7820? Which I
think is actually a 7920 50 Meg removable pack disk drive. My 1981 HP
catalog lists them at $14,000 to 18,000 new.
The pallet on the bottom right of the second picture is the HP 2608 printer,
a 400 LPM printer. In 1981 list price was $9,900.
The pallet in the lower left of the second picture is a printer in a crate.
It does not look like another HP printer from what little I can see.
I think the first picture is a MicroVAX system with the RA Disk drive on the
top. I think it is the one listed at $154,000+ and called disk memory unit.
1 Jun
1 Jun
12:29 a.m.
At 02:12 AM 6/1/02 -0400, you wrote:
The Pallet in the upper left of the second picture is
the HP 7820? Which I
think is actually a 7920 50 Meg removable pack disk drive. My 1981 HP
catalog lists them at $14,000 to 18,000 new.
[...]
The HP disk drive should be saved. There are very few
left because they are
such good clean aluminum and gold scrap. Those older HP drives are $$$ in a
scrappers eyes and they would not even think of offering it to a collector.
Few survive. Some even came with a HP-IB interface.
Apparently Norfolk has at least three 7920s, exclusive of this lot. See
http://www.govliquidation.com/auction/view?auctionId=57058
Cheers,
Dan
www.decodesystems.com/wanted.html
2:10 a.m.
New subject: DEC SDI drives (was Re: What is this? Looks like maybe a VAX of some sort..)
--- Innfogra(a)aol.com wrote:
I think the first picture is a MicroVAX system with
the RA Disk drive on
the top. I think it is the one listed at $154,000+ and called disk memory
unit.
A single DEC RA81 was $26,000, MSRP, in mid-1984. At this point, you'd
have to be pretty hard up for an SDI disk to want to pay real money
for one. I have a couple. I don't use them unless I _really_ have to.
They have a 30A momentary surge at spinup, and draw many amps (spec'ed
at 8A) when running. From a megabytes/megawatts standpoint, they are
at the bottom of the SDI curve.
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
8:45 a.m.
New subject: DEC SDI drives (was Re: What is this? Looks like maybe a VAX of some sort..)
Ethan Dicks wrote:
Right, I have one RA81 and one RA82 and that's all I can/want to fit.
I do like SDI disks though. RA90s are my standard disks for my VAX
6000s and they are fun. The nice thing about RA82s is that you can
show them to people and say that they have almost the same capacity
as a CD ROM drive (and they have the same shape, only scaled by a
factor of, let's say, 8 to 10. Then you can open the hood just like
in my car, check the alternator belt and I just haven't found the
oil dip stick yet :-).
I do want to get an RA60 some time, but as you say, it's a big deal
with buying and shipping. I actually know where a few are rotting in
the mud, but it's always the problem buying stuff from a scrap yard,
you can end up paying more than in a happy hour on eBay for something
that may be in much worse shape (rotten in the mud.) The weird thing
about it is, the raw scrap value may not be that high, and those places
tend to never actually capitalize on the scrap value. They let the
stuff sit in the yard for decades. That's good on the one hand, so it
stays somewhat conserved for the real desperate to pick up and pay for
anyway. I guess the number one resourde you need as a scrapper is
real estate and a second source of income, so you don't need much
cash flow.
BTW: I have a bunch of RA60 platters that wait for their mother ship
to come some time in the future. Now, I never tried those platters.
But on visual inspection I do see one concentric scratch of about
10 degrees length on each platter. That is the mark of a head crash,
right? Does that mean that these platters are drop dead, never to
be used again? Or is it just a few sectors that are killed that way?
Is the slight roughness of the surface there going to damage the
r/w heads on a working drive? If so, is there a way to polish this
spot to make the rest of the platters useable?
cheers,
-Gunther
--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org
--- Innfogra(a)aol.com wrote:
I think the
first picture is a MicroVAX system with the RA Disk drive on
the top. I think it is the one listed at $154,000+ and called disk memory
unit.
A single DEC RA81 was $26,000, MSRP, in mid-1984. At this point, you'd
have to be pretty hard up for an SDI disk to want to pay real money
for one. I have a couple. I don't use them unless I _really_ have to.
They have a 30A momentary surge at spinup, and draw many amps (spec'ed
at 8A) when running. From a megabytes/megawatts standpoint, they are
at the bottom of the SDI curve.
12:43 p.m.
New subject: anyone ever had an RA8x on top of a short rack?
Since we were chatting about RA80s has anyone of you had an RA8x on
top of a short rack? I have put on up onto my HSC90 but I found that
they don't actually slide into the rack but the top panel of the rack
is removed and then you can open the hood of the RA8x without
pulling out the "drawer". This is a perfect arrangement for an RA60.
However, I think there are some minor special parts that fill the
gap between the side panels of the rack and the actual drive. Does
anyone of you have those spare lying around somewhere or know where
one might get those?
Thanks,
-Gunther
--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org
4 Jun
4 Jun
3:34 a.m.
New subject: anyone ever had an RA8x on top of a short rack?
--- Gunther Schadow <gunther(a)aurora.regenstrief.org> wrote:
Since we were chatting about RA80s has anyone of you
had an RA8x on
top of a short rack?
Never done that. I've never wanted to lift them that high. :-)
I have put on up onto my HSC90 but I found that
they don't actually slide into the rack but the top panel of the rack
is removed and then you can open the hood of the RA8x without
pulling out the "drawer". This is a perfect arrangement for an RA60.
The 42" cab for the RA60 was a little different than the standard, IIRC.
It had extended-length sides, and was set up to have the top of the
upper-most RA60 accessible without sliding it out. The extra length
is to accomodate the long drive and still provide room for SDI cables
at the rear (and perhaps a cable support arm, I forget if the RA60s
used them)
However, I think there are some minor special parts
that fill the
gap between the side panels of the rack and the actual drive. Does
anyone of you have those spare lying around somewhere or know where
one might get those?
I have no spares and would have no idea where to get such things except
a scrapper who hadn't yet cut his racks into handfuls of metal chips.
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
1 Jun
1 Jun
12:54 p.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
Hi,
I told you I got that VAX 4000-200 (not quite in my hands yet but
soon.) But I really want to make it the fastest VAX around, i.e.
that would be a -700 or something, right? Is such upgrade done
simply by replacing the CPU blade? Or is there anything different
about the Q-bus, PSU or whatnot?
NetBSD's highest line of VAX is the -300 or -500, right? This is
going to be my machine to build NetBSD kernels (I have basically
given up on doing difficult development jobs on the VAX6000s. They're
too slow. I have been trying three times to build GCC-2.98 and it
failed every time. It's actually not so slow if you can do a parallel
make, however, with GNU make and the -j option things get confused
when bulding GCC. I think GNU make doesn't do a good job of keeping
track of the dependencies between the parallel jobs, or, may be,
the way the GCC makefiles are written they might escape GNU make's
ernest attempt in synchronizing the parallel jobs.
BTW: I remember Jason Thorpe said at BSDcon 2002 that NetBSD
would soon be using GCC-3.0's full featured cross-platform
compiling capabilities. Is that done already? I gues the best
way for quick kernel build and debug turnaround would be doing
it on my Laptop, which is by far my fastest machine.
thanks,
-Gunther
--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org
12:51 p.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
On Sat, Jun 01, 2002 at 07:54:51PM -0500, Gunther Schadow wrote:
I told you I got that VAX 4000-200 (not quite in my hands yet but
soon.) But I really want to make it the fastest VAX around, i.e.
that would be a -700 or something, right? Is such upgrade done
simply by replacing the CPU blade? Or is there anything different
about the Q-bus, PSU or whatnot?
a /200 is completely non-upgradeable to the other 4000 models. a /200 is
completely QBus, and the /300 and up use the PELE backplane. it is however
the fastest QBus vax. ;)
NetBSD's highest line of VAX is the -300 or -500,
right? This is
i though michael got it working on a 105a? those are damn fast. is the 600
and 700 working? for some reason i though michael got them working as well.
-brian
--
Besides, statistics are different for computers. Experience has taught
me that if you see one instance, it's an anomaly. If you see two, you're
fucked. :-) -- Peter L. Wargo --
2 Jun
2 Jun
1:41 a.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
the 600 works, the 700 is only a faster version of the [456]00, with a
2 meg cache instead of the 512 on the 600 and 128k on the [45]00. AFAIK the
700 works too.
isildur
On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, Brian Hechinger wrote:
i though michael got it working on a 105a? those are
damn fast. is the 600
and 700 working? for some reason i though michael got them working as well.
12:16 p.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
NetBSD's
highest line of VAX is the -300 or -500, right? This is
i though michael got it working on a 105a? those are damn fast. is the 600
and 700 working? for some reason i though michael got them working as well.
1 Jun
1 Jun
1:16 p.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
I told you I got that VAX 4000-200 (not quite in my
hands yet but
soon.) But I really want to make it the fastest VAX around, i.e.
that would be a -700 or something, right? Is such upgrade done
simply by replacing the CPU blade? Or is there anything different
about the Q-bus, PSU or whatnot?
The -500 and up use a BA440 chassis, which has special slots
for the CPU and memory.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman(a)dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/
2 Jun
2 Jun
3:47 a.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
correction.. thats -300 and up.
Eric Dittman wrote:
I told you I
got that VAX 4000-200 (not quite in my hands yet but
soon.) But I really want to make it the fastest VAX around, i.e.
that would be a -700 or something, right? Is such upgrade done
simply by replacing the CPU blade? Or is there anything different
about the Q-bus, PSU or whatnot?
The -500 and up use a BA440 chassis, which has special slots
for the CPU and memory.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman(a)dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/
3:35 a.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
correction.. thats -300 and up.
Oops, you are right. I was thinking about the -500 and up
needing the second revision of the backplane.
I told you I got that VAX 4000-200 (not quite in my
hands yet but
soon.) But I really want to make it the fastest VAX around, i.e.
that would be a -700 or something, right? Is such upgrade done
simply by replacing the CPU blade? Or is there anything different
about the Q-bus, PSU or whatnot?
The -500 and up use a BA440 chassis, which has special slots
for the CPU and memory.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman(a)dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/ 
1 Jun
1 Jun
2:34 p.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
Hi Gunthar,
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the only way to upgrade the
4000/200 to a 4000/705a is to replace the backplane in the chassis. The
4000/300 and above only run in the BA430 chassis (whereas the 4000/200
could run in the BA213 and BA215)
Sometimes a /300 has the faster backplane, all /400's and above do.
--Chuck
At 07:54 PM 6/1/02 -0500, Gunther Schadow wrote:
Hi,
I told you I got that VAX 4000-200 (not quite in my hands yet but
soon.) But I really want to make it the fastest VAX around, i.e.
that would be a -700 or something, right? Is such upgrade done
simply by replacing the CPU blade? Or is there anything different
about the Q-bus, PSU or whatnot?
2:38 p.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
On Sat, Jun 01, 2002 at 07:34:59PM -0700, Chuck McManis wrote:
Sometimes a /300 has the faster backplane, all /400's and above do.
i thought it was wider not faster? (64-bit data path vs. 32-bit)
-brian
--
Besides, statistics are different for computers. Experience has taught
me that if you see one instance, it's an anomaly. If you see two, you're
fucked. :-) -- Peter L. Wargo --
2 Jun
2 Jun
7:30 p.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
Chuck McManis wrote:
Hi Gunthar,
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the only way to upgrade the
4000/200 to a 4000/705a is to replace the backplane in the chassis. The
4000/300 and above only run in the BA430 chassis (whereas the 4000/200
could run in the BA213 and BA215)
Sometimes a /300 has the faster backplane, all /400's and above do.
Well, Chuck, I should have payed attention to this. But at $5
purchase price I guess a 4000/200 is good enough. I just had
second thoughts before paying $200 for shipping this thing.
Now, suppose I could find a /300 packplane from a parts seller,
how could he tell the difference between the faster/wider and
the traditional Qbus one? Also, if that was clear, what accessory
parts should I make sure I also get, like special cables,
different power supply cables, mounting hardware, that sort of
stuff?
thanks,
-Gunther
--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org
3 Jun
3 Jun
5:13 a.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
Well the cool thing is if you get the CPU and memory you can "upgrade" you
MicroVAX II to a much faster box! :-) And postage should be affordable. Now
I don't generally like to see working systems parted out but a KA660 (that
is the VAX 4000/200 CPU) for $5 is a great deal.
--Chuck
At 02:30 AM 6/3/02 -0500, Gunther Schadow wrote:
Chuck McManis wrote:
Hi Gunthar,
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the only way to upgrade the
4000/200 to a 4000/705a is to replace the backplane in the chassis. The
4000/300 and above only run in the BA430 chassis (whereas the 4000/200
could run in the BA213 and BA215)
Sometimes a /300 has the faster backplane, all /400's and above do.
Well, Chuck, I should have payed attention to this. But at $5
purchase price I guess a 4000/200 is good enough. I just had
second thoughts before paying $200 for shipping this thing.
Now, suppose I could find a /300 packplane from a parts seller,
how could he tell the difference between the faster/wider and
the traditional Qbus one? Also, if that was clear, what accessory
parts should I make sure I also get, like special cables,
different power supply cables, mounting hardware, that sort of
stuff?
thanks,
-Gunther
--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org
2 Jun
2 Jun
3:44 a.m.
New subject: Upgrading a VAX4000-200 to a -500, -700 etc.?
To upgrade a 4000/200 to a faster cpu, you need to replace the entire
backplane, the /200 was the last machine in the 4000 series that was 'all
qbus'... the /300 and later were a new 'pele' bus for the cpu and memory and
qbus for the rest. I have a 4000/700a, and its VERY fast...
Gunther Schadow wrote:
Hi,
I told you I got that VAX 4000-200 (not quite in my hands yet but
soon.) But I really want to make it the fastest VAX around, i.e.
that would be a -700 or something, right? Is such upgrade done
simply by replacing the CPU blade? Or is there anything different
about the Q-bus, PSU or whatnot?
NetBSD's highest line of VAX is the -300 or -500, right? This is
going to be my machine to build NetBSD kernels (I have basically
given up on doing difficult development jobs on the VAX6000s. They're
too slow. I have been trying three times to build GCC-2.98 and it
failed every time. It's actually not so slow if you can do a parallel
make, however, with GNU make and the -j option things get confused
when bulding GCC. I think GNU make doesn't do a good job of keeping
track of the dependencies between the parallel jobs, or, may be,
the way the GCC makefiles are written they might escape GNU make's
ernest attempt in synchronizing the parallel jobs.
BTW: I remember Jason Thorpe said at BSDcon 2002 that NetBSD
would soon be using GCC-3.0's full featured cross-platform
compiling capabilities. Is that done already? I gues the best
way for quick kernel build and debug turnaround would be doing
it on my Laptop, which is by far my fastest machine.
thanks,
-Gunther
--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org
1 Jun
1 Jun
1:19 p.m.
New subject: prices of things, (was Re: DEC SDI drives (was Re: What is this? Looks like maybe a VAX of some sort..))
On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, Gunther Schadow wrote:
Ethan Dicks wrote:
>>I think the first picture is a MicroVAX system with the RA Disk drive on
>>the top. I think it is the one listed at $154,000+ and called disk memory
>>unit.
>>
>
> A single DEC RA81 was $26,000, MSRP, in mid-1984. At this point, you'd
Is there a resource on the web that shows the original list prices for
various classic machines or options? I would be tickled to know the
original value of my various classic pieces of equipment (even just the
DEC ones if not all including IBM or HP).
In general, I was not there when they were purchased, or out of high
school or college in most cases.
Anti Flam War Disclaimer: I have not invented a time machine nor plan to
relate the original prices to absurd ebay auctions.
--
2:47 p.m.
New subject: prices of things, (was Re: DEC SDI drives (was Re: What is this? Looks like maybe a VAX of some sort..))
Paul Thompson wrote:
Is there a resource on the web that shows the original
list prices for
various classic machines or options? I would be tickled to know the
original value of my various classic pieces of equipment (even just the
DEC ones if not all including IBM or HP).
In general, I was not there when they were purchased, or out of high
school or college in most cases.
Anti Flam War Disclaimer: I have not invented a time machine nor plan to
relate the original prices to absurd ebay auctions.
No flame war risk. I think that's one of the major tickles with
collecting old big iron, i.e., that the stuff in my basement and
garage once was worth 10 times as much as my house costs today,
or just about so. And it's just a short time ago, like 10 to 20
years.
regards,
-Gunther
--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org
3 Jun
3 Jun
3:49 a.m.
New subject: DEC SDI drives
Gunther,
sure, this is one of the fine moments that you can enjoy as a collector:
:-)
Gunther Schadow wrote:
Right, I have one RA81 and one RA82 and that's all I can/want to fit.
I do like SDI disks though. RA90s are my standard disks for my VAX
6000s and they are fun. The nice thing about RA82s is that you can
show them to people and say that they have almost the same capacity
as a CD ROM drive (and they have the same shape, only scaled by a
factor of, let's say, 8 to 10. Then you can open the hood just like
in my car, check the alternator belt and I just haven't found the
oil dip stick yet :-).
My trouble with it is that the "hood" always bounces back on the rear
part of my head, because the pressurized gas retainers have lost their
magic smoke in the cause of the years. I am convinced it's impossible
and perhaps even dangerous to repair (i.e., to repressurize) them, but
is there a known good source for spare parts?
Without looking: are these parts the same type in a RA80 and in a RA82?
I don't want headaches every time I adjust belt tension...
--
Andreas Freiherr
Vishay Semiconductor GmbH, Heilbronn, Germany
http://www.vishay.com
1 Jun
1 Jun
5:03 a.m.
Innfogra(a)aol.com wrote:
The HP disk drive should be saved. There are very few
left because they are
such good clean aluminum and gold scrap. Those older HP drives are $$$ in a
scrappers eyes and they would not even think of offering it to a collector.
Few survive. Some even came with a HP-IB interface.
Fortunately, we resuced a couple of drives like this along with
some HP-1000 systems a few weeks ago. They went to a collector
in York (northern England). We even managed to find the alignment
fixtures and the special gadget with lights and switches that
you need if you're going to do maintenance work on the drive.
--
John Honniball
coredump(a)gifford.co.uk
8189
days inactive
8192
days old
21 comments
12 participants
participants (12)
-
Andreas.Freiherr＠Vishay.com -
cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com -
coredump＠gifford.co.uk -
dan＠ekoan.com -
davebarnes＠adelphia.net -
dittman＠dittman.net -
erd_6502＠yahoo.com -
gunther＠aurora.regenstrief.org -
Innfogra＠aol.com -
mrfusion＠uranium.vaxpower.org -
thompson＠new.rr.com -
wonko＠4amlunch.net