10 Oct
2003
10 Oct
'03
8:04 a.m.
Alex White wrote:
I've been planning a monster like this, 4 small backplanes mounted
in a hacked-around wide cabinet, 4 processors running as a VAXcluster
over Ethernet... Been done before?
If you're running them as a LAVC (Local Area VAXCluster, used to be any
cluster using Ethernet instead of CI) then this was done all the time
and I'm sure still is. They probably haven't called them LAVC's for
years and years, though.
If you're saying you're going to interconnect the backplanes per the
discussion here and in MicroNote #26, then if people did it it was a
not a very common thing. And as others have pointed out, the normal
OS candidates won't have support for it. That's not a reason to stop
the project, just be aware of the necessary effort.
--S.
10 Oct
10 Oct
10:01 a.m.
If you're running them as a LAVC (Local Area
VAXCluster, used
to be any cluster using Ethernet instead of CI) then this was
done all the time and I'm sure still is. They probably
haven't called them LAVC's for years and years, though.
Which reminds me, when the extension to ethernet clusters was
first cooked up they were going to call it Local Area Vaxcluster,
and obviously shorten it to LAV. Luckily someone in the UK
suggested that "I'm just setting up a JOHN" is how it would
get parsed over here and the name sprouted a new capital
letter.
Now back to weird ways of reducing MicroVAX performance ...
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org
13 Oct
13 Oct
7:26 a.m.
On Friday 10 Oct 2003 6:04 pm, Steven M Jones wrote:
Alex White wrote:
I thought it too obvious a project for it not to have been done.
No, just four totally seperate 4-slot Q22 backplanes sharing a common PSU
(OK, i'm hardly going for 5x9 uptime and redundancy here!) in a largish
deskside case and clustered over thinwire - was going to look for KA660s
so I could share a DSSI disk too. Could multiple hosts use a SCSI bus?
Unfortunately the amount of VAXen (and therefore available CPUs) over here
in the UK is a LOT smaller than in the US!
alex/melt
I've been planning a monster like this, 4
small backplanes mounted
in a hacked-around wide cabinet, 4 processors running as a VAXcluster
over Ethernet... Been done before?
If you're running them as a LAVC (Local Area VAXCluster, used to be any
cluster using Ethernet instead of CI) then this was done all the time
and I'm sure still is. They probably haven't called them LAVC's for
years and years, though.
If you're saying you're going to interconnect the backplanes per the
discussion here and in MicroNote #26, then if people did it it was a
not a very common thing. And as others have pointed out, the normal
OS candidates won't have support for it. That's not a reason to stop
the project, just be aware of the necessary effort.
--S.
8:54 a.m.
No, just four totally seperate 4-slot Q22 backplanes
sharing
a common PSU
(OK, i'm hardly going for 5x9 uptime and redundancy here!) in
a largish
Wouldn't this just be essentially 4 BA23s in a rackmount type
of enclosure? If so, they would each have their own PSU. I
don't know about the various configs that DEC sold officially,
but the ones I put together by scrounging round the lab were
always stacks of BA23s and a distribution panel of some sort.
deskside case and clustered over thinwire - was going
to look
for KA660s
so I could share a DSSI disk too. Could multiple hosts use a SCSI bus?
AFAICR the KA660 will happily work in a BA23 but if you want DSSI
you need the proper cab kit, which needs a BA2xx or BA4xx case.
So now you are back to back-to-back mounted BA213 or BA430 in a rack.
Unfortunately the amount of VAXen (and therefore
available
CPUs) over here in the UK is a LOT smaller than in the US!
Nah. You just need to look harder, or more likely, for longer. They
crop up but you have to work at it. There's plenty of stuff on
reseller's shelves and it will all become available over the next
ten to twenty years or so as they close up shop or move on to
other things. The real problem will be what to do when that happens:
do you save both the VAX 8650 and the VAX 9000 and how can you
have them both running on the Internet at the same time.
Of course, if you're not in this for the long haul ... :-)
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org
9:30 a.m.
On Monday 13 Oct 2003 6:54 pm, Antonio Carlini wrote:
Well, i'm looking at what's available to me *now* and that's an old
collector friend of mine with quite a few PDP11 Q18/22 backplanes and
R400X cabs (amongst other things!) who's thinning his collection down
rather drastically...
Whoops, I totally forgot about the magic DSSI backplane >_< thanks for
reminding me!
I haul these things around with me from University flat to University flat.
The girlfriend is happy for my collection to grow - she passed me an ebay
UK link to a 6200 a few months or so ago and said that she'd quite like to
have one around *grins*
alex/melt
No, just four
totally seperate 4-slot Q22 backplanes sharing
a common PSU
(OK, i'm hardly going for 5x9 uptime and redundancy here!) in
a largish
Wouldn't this just be essentially 4 BA23s in a rackmount type
of enclosure? If so, they would each have their own PSU. I
don't know about the various configs that DEC sold officially,
but the ones I put together by scrounging round the lab were
always stacks of BA23s and a distribution panel of some sort. deskside case
and clustered over thinwire - was going to look
for KA660s
so I could share a DSSI disk too. Could multiple hosts use a SCSI bus?
AFAICR the KA660 will happily work in a BA23 but if you want DSSI
you need the proper cab kit, which needs a BA2xx or BA4xx case.
So now you are back to back-to-back mounted BA213 or BA430 in a rack. Unfortunately
the amount of VAXen (and therefore available
CPUs) over here in the UK is a LOT smaller than in the US!
Nah. You just need to look harder, or more likely, for longer. They
crop up but you have to work at it. There's plenty of stuff on
reseller's shelves and it will all become available over the next
ten to twenty years or so as they close up shop or move on to
other things. The real problem will be what to do when that happens:
do you save both the VAX 8650 and the VAX 9000 and how can you
have them both running on the Internet at the same time.
Of course, if you're not in this for the long haul ... :-)
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arcarlini＠iee.org -
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meltie＠meltie.com