Cool... Wait until you try to power the 8600 beast up... got your own nuke plant? Great box... and you can run RT11 v5 on the front end as an adventure games box!! If you're lucky it's an 8650 by now. That was a field upgrade. Bill --- Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@pechter.dyndns.org

On Wed, 23 May 2001, Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote: Good lord and good luck. I just spent a day moving, among other things, a VAX 8600. It's not fun, but it sure does look cool :) Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

I am interested in these, depending on the processors and options. -- Eric Dittman dittman(a)dittman.net

There's a few of us interested. Also, let me know if you ever get enough power to power up the 8600. That's a very slickly built Vax... probably the best one from a packaging maintenance and design standpoint. Bill --- Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@pechter.dyndns.org

I hope you realize that with a MicroVAX II, especially in a BA123, the most desirable part is the chassis itself, even if it's not all there. It took two BA123's and some loose parts from a friend for me to have a complete chassis with all the panels. So I've got one good BA123, and one that can be used, or can be a parts donor to the other. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

I figured that might be the case. Which is why I brought it up. The thing to remember is that a BA123 from a MicroVAX II makes a *VERY* nice starting point towards building your own PDP-11. I'm sure there are lots of people that will disagree, but a MicroVAX II is a real dog, I'd rather use it as a parts donor for a PDP-11, and run VMS on a 4000 class VAX (either a VAXstation 4000, or a VAX 4000/*) if I'm running it on a VAX at all. Of course the thing to remember is I've got my VMS boxes doing real work, and I'm more interested in the Operating Systems than the hardware in most cases (old PDP's with full front panels being the exception). Zane PS I'm not trying to start a flamewar, it's just my opinion, and largly based on the fact that MFM disks are the standard for MicroVAX II class machines (and yes I've got several that are still VAXen, including a VAXstation II/RC that won't be a parts donor (hey, it was my first VAX if nothing else)).

With a KDA50 a MicroVAX II should be a fairly sweet system, IF you can find the disks. My MicroVAX III has one in it. In my case the only 4000's I've got are VAXstation 4000's (VLC, 60, and 90), but I've been wanting a nice VAX 4000 to replace my MicroVAX III. Now I'm not so sure. If you get the document scanned in, I'd be *very* interested in a copy. In your case I'd recommend trying to find an ESDI controller, if you don't already have one. Something like a WQESD/4 (my personal favorite) would greatly increase your disk capacity. Of course it sounds as if you're planning on eventually setting it up with a KDA50. My biggest VAX size-wise is my MicroVAX III, it's in a large 3rd Party rack mount with two RA7x boxes (one has two RA72's the other two RA73's). It also can have hooked up a pair of RL01's and a pair of RL02's. The downside is it's currently in the back of my storage unit until I get a house. When I was running it, it was my PDP-11 Archival system. My longrange plan for it is to add SCSI and throw on a SCSI 9-Track I've got if possible (had to give away my TU-81+ thanks to a serious lack of space). I'd planned on upgrading this system to a VAX 4000 series machine when I got the chance, now you've got me wondering if a RLV12 will work in a VAX 4000. Zane

Hey everyone, Anybody have a spare RA70 or compatible they'd like to sell? One of mine takes itself offline right at the front panel at power up so I'm guessing its fried. Is there such a thing as a QBus controller for generic Pertec tape drives? I agree the mVII is a tad slow but it sure is 'built' in the electro-mechanical sense. John A.

Jerome Fine replies: Maybe where you live that is true, but I can't say that anyone here in Toronto except for myself thinks that way. And no one seems to be close enough to be interested in two dead BA123 boxes that I have had for the past two years. In one case, I am reasonably confident that the "power" capacitor in the circuit to convert the AC to DC is no longer there - at least just the two ends of the wires were all that were left after that "magic smoke" disappeared. The other box will no longer allow me to boot the M8189 board that I used for a test. I would be VERY happy to trade the two non-working power supplies for one working one. I suppose that if that does not happen within a year, anyone can have both boxes for local pickup. Anyone interested? I also have a number of ESDI disk drives and RQD11-EC controllers that I would be interested in trading for either one 11/93 or the hardware needed to set up ether net between the PDP-11 and a PC running E11. I also have a number of RL02 disk packs and perhaps 2 RL02 drives. Eventually, all the stuff in the basement must be sorted and either trashed or given away or traded. Since I only use hardware to run PDP-11 software, nothing special is required - as long as I can lift it with one hand for at least ten seconds - convert that to 600 seconds for you younger fellows. One thing that I would like to repair is a real DEC TU-58 (tape drive) in the external box. These were often used with a PDP-11/44. The one I have does not seem to work any longer and on occasion, I need to test the DD(X).SYS device driver with real hardware to make sure it works with new versions of the software. Also, can anyone help with finding boot ROMs that can handle the TU-58? I suspect that I would put the boot ROMs in a multi-function board in a Qbus backplane to boot with a dual 11/73 (M8192). In the meantime, once I can get the TU-58 to work again, I will connect it to the COM2: port on a PC and use it to boot RT-11. Think about that. A 25 year old tape drive with a total capacity of 250 KBytes running a 25 year old operating system (for a CPU that originally ran at about 2 MHz) now running on a PC clocking in at 1.4 GHz with a 30 GByte hard disk drive. And the bottleneck is the serial cable between the TU-58 and the PC running at 9600 baud or about 1 KBytes per second transfer rate - to say nothing of the SERIAL search time between the different 512 blocks on the tape that looks like a disk drive - DD(X).SYS - to the rest of the RT-11 operating system software. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine