Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

30 Sep 2007

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 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen?
   From: "Dan Snyder" <ddsnyder at zoominternet.net>
   Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:32:23 -0400
     To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>

 To all,

 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. 
I have a 3000/300X, AS1000A 5/333, VX42 Multia, EB164-based-system, and 
an AlphaServer 2100 4/275RM that's probably going to be parted out (too 
big, I have no racks, and periodically I have to open it up and tap on 
the CBUS-I/O backplane connection). If anyone's interested . . .

Alphas are nice machines, fast, interesting, and SRM is nice and pretty 
standard, so no more "what's the console support on this model?" 
moments. Bad side - WNT and the NT-only models. Half-flash can make for 
some fun times, too, but the only machine I have with half-flash is the 
EB164. The one I've had the most problems with is probably the VX42 - 
for some reason, when the PROMs are loaded with the OVMS-capable SRM 
and the battery dies, it will not come back up until the PROMS are 
re-flashed to the old Multia firmware and updated again. This took some 
figuring out...

I have a brace of VAXen, too (one 3100/76 and one 4000/200), both of 
which are run off of serial (there really isn't much of a reason to 
have graphics on a VAX anyway). My biggest surprise was the fact that 
the 4k (SOC, 5VUPS) is often as responsive as the 3100/76 (Rigel, 7.6 
VUPS). I wouldn't advise a Qbus-based machine for a first-timer, since 
disks are hard to come by (fortunately Boeing had a HSD-05 in their $5 
bin that I was able to hack up into the BA430 chassis. For some reason 
the disks don't register sometimes at first power-on- perhaps I need to 
wire in a reset button for the HSD- I'm not sure there).

...
  OpenVMS
 and Digital Unix are the OS of choice.

Naturally :-) .