New VAX 6000 toys. - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

16 Oct 2002

...
 The main difference with this box is that it's not
as expandable as a
full VAX 6000.  The big ones have ample space within them for disk
drives, tape drives, and BI bus card cages.  I think the full VAX 6000s
come standard with one, maybe two BI bus card cages. 
My VAX 6000 is no longer here, so I have to go on memory. Pretty much all
there is in a standard 6000 is a row of PSUs at the top, a row with the
VAXBI and XMI busses and - right at the bottom - a converter/coditioner
that takes the incoming power feed and presents it to the rest of the box.
There is a large gap with plenty of air in it. About the only thing you could 
use it for was a late-breaking internal storage addon. Every 6000 I've
seen had external storage (mostly via CI, since that's what big customers
were expected to do).

Internally it cannot have been much wider that 19" so I would guess that the
rack-mount version would be about the same but without the large wad
of air :-)

...
 These rackmount boxes only have an XMI bus.  I suppose
it'd be possible
to hang BI busses off of this with an external box; that's if you needed 
Is there no space for a VAXBI? My box had an XMI to the right and two
VAXBIs to the left (IIRC).

...
 on comp.os.vms say that it's easy to boot this type
of system over an
ethernet based VAXcluster.  Your disk I/O will be bottlenecked by the
speed of the ethernet.  I'm planning on running mine this way initially. 
I've done this - it works well. Especially nice is botting from an
InfoServer for upgrades etc. 

Antonio
arcarlini(a)iee.org