MicroVax II diagnostic tape? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

12 Aug 2007

At 12:53 AM 8/12/2007, Ethan Dicks wrote:
...
 On 8/6/07, Rick Murphy <rick at rickmurphy.net>
wrote:
  XT2190s (RD54s) aren't cheap, they're
noisy as hell, and
 aren't very big. 
How "not cheap" are they these days?  They are large enough for VMS
6.0 - I've done it.  OTOH, there wasn't any room left for anything
else, and I did have to trim off a few things to make it all fit, but
it does come up and boot on my rather-stock uVAX-II. 
They fetch $300 or more per drive on eBay.

...
 By even semi-modern standards, though, I'd agree
with you that 154MB
just isn't that much room for later versions of VMS or Ultrix, but VMS
5.x and on down fit just fine, if that's what you want to run. 
Yup. When I had a uVAX here I used three RD54s with VMS 5.4 on the 
first drive. As long as you're careful it works OK. Putting the swap 
onto another drive helps remove some of the space crunch. One advantage 
of these drives is that they're pretty reliable, unlike RD53s.

...
   As several
people have pointed out, you're far better off with non-DEC
 storage controllers and devices. 
Agreed.  I managed to locate a Qbus SCSI controller a while back, but
I've had other DEC machines in the queue head of any MicroVAX work, so
I haven't been able to put a system together yet. 
I tried for a SCSI controller for a long time but wasn't willing to pay 
the price. I eventually gave away the VAXen and just moved to SIMH.
         -Rick