I have monitored the postings and know of a few collectors of VAXen, all types it seems.
The
PDP family is popular too. What about Alphaservers? some are by classic definition at
least
10 years old such as the 1000/1000A and 1200 series. Alphastations definitely qualify like
the
200/250/255/500 series. I collect most of the Alpha family as I use them frequently.
OpenVMS
and Digital Unix is the OS of choice.
I have:
3 x Vaxstation 2000 - 6MB
2 x Vaxstation 3100 Model 76 16MB/24MB
1 x Microvax 3100 - 16MB
1 x Microvax 3100 Model 40 - 24MB
1 x Microvax 3100 Model 80 - 16MB
1 x Microvax 4000-100A - 128MB
2 x Dec 3000 M600
1 x Alphaserver 1000A
1 x Alphaserver 2100 4/275
All run VMS - the Alphaserver 1000A also has NT but I've never worked
up the enthusiasm to find out how to break into it. The Alphaserver 2100
also has Digital Unix - I keep threatening to delete this but I have
kept it around in case I need to make use of it for porting something
unixy to VMS.
The Microvax 4000-100A runs fine when it's cold but croaks once it heats
up with most of the useful console commands generating errors and
providing no help in diagnosing the problem. Some random attempts to
narrow down the problem with a can of freezer were not successful.
One of the Microvax 3100s had an intermittent problem with its SCSI
interface which has now turned permanent. The model 80 died in the
middle of a self test and can't be persuaded to do anything now. I
haven't had any success in locating a list of the diagnostic led codes,
only for the earlier models which seem to have quite different firmware.
The two Dec 3000 machines both failed in service before I got them.
Nothing appears on the console and as far as I recall, the diagnostic
leds count down as far as F0 and then stop.
The Alphaserver 2100 worked fine when I first got it but some time ago
began powering itself off intermittently due to a problem with the main
fan which started varying its speed erratically. At one point the machine
was all but unusable but now the problem appears to have gone into hiding!
I would be interested in obtaining more memory, cpu and a spare fan
for the 2100, possibly also a decent graphics card and a redundant power
supply for it.
I would also be interested in finding out about what I could do with the
Qbus interface on the 4000-100A and what bits and pieces would be needed
to get started with this. I presume at a minimum, I need one or two oddball
cables, a backplane of some sort and a power supply. I would like to get
hold of one or two small DSSI disks as the ones that came with this machine
both died.
I am located in Dublin, Ireland - unfortunately there don't seem to be many
other classic computer nuts located nearby.
Regards,
Peter.