3 Jun
2005
3 Jun
'05
3:52 p.m.
Subject: Re: Simulated disk drive for RT-11?
From: David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.mv.com>
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 14:20:56 -0400
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Cool. Where do I get a BA11 4 slot box? It sounds like just what I
need. Anyone have one they'd like to sell (or trade for an 11/23 and
RX02 drive)?
They are not very common, four slots were a tight fit to make a
useable system. I have a one with a bad PS that I'm saving for
repair parts for the good one.
The one ugly fact was with all four slots filled with RAM and DLV11j
plus CPU that meant every boot required entering by hand the TUboot.
The alternate was CPU, two MXV11 one with TUboot rom.
The nicest configuration is a BA23 deskside case as then you can put
in a RQDX2/3 and have a floppy and a small (30mb) hard disk easily.
Allison
3 Jun
3 Jun
3:58 p.m.
Or maybe I should just run simh... I'm not really a hardware guy anyway!
On Jun 3, 2005, at 3:52 PM, Allison wrote:
Subject: Re: Simulated disk drive for RT-11?
From: David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.mv.com>
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 14:20:56 -0400
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Cool. Where do I get a BA11 4 slot box? It sounds like just what I
need. Anyone have one they'd like to sell (or trade for an 11/23 and
RX02 drive)?
They are not very common, four slots were a tight fit to make a
useable system. I have a one with a bad PS that I'm saving for
repair parts for the good one.
The one ugly fact was with all four slots filled with RAM and DLV11j
plus CPU that meant every boot required entering by hand the TUboot.
The alternate was CPU, two MXV11 one with TUboot rom.
The nicest configuration is a BA23 deskside case as then you can put
in a RQDX2/3 and have a floppy and a small (30mb) hard disk easily.
Allison
6 Jun
6 Jun
1:06 p.m.
David Betz wrote:
Or maybe I should just run simh... I'm not really
a hardware guy anyway!
You could make one like DEC used to: Take an 8-slot backplane, and
fill in four of the slots with epoxy. You now have a 4 slot backplane.
On Jun 3, 2005, at 3:52 PM, Allison wrote:
Subject: Re: Simulated disk drive for RT-11?
From: David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.mv.com>
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 14:20:56 -0400
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Cool. Where do I get a BA11 4 slot box? It sounds like just what I
need. Anyone have one they'd like to sell (or trade for an 11/23 and
RX02 drive)?
They are not very common, four slots were a tight fit to make a
useable system. I have a one with a bad PS that I'm saving for
repair parts for the good one.
The one ugly fact was with all four slots filled with RAM and DLV11j
plus CPU that meant every boot required entering by hand the TUboot.
The alternate was CPU, two MXV11 one with TUboot rom.
The nicest configuration is a BA23 deskside case as then you can put
in a RQDX2/3 and have a floppy and a small (30mb) hard disk easily.
Allison
1:35 p.m.
On 6/6/05, Kevin Handy <kth at srv.net> wrote:
You could make one like DEC used to: Take an 8-slot
backplane, and
fill in four of the slots with epoxy. You now have a 4 slot backplane.
Ahhhhgggg! Ever seen that with a BA123? Makes you cry... DEC didn't
want their graphical workstations being converted to departmental
server use, so they plugged up the extra holes in the backplane to
prevent expansion. For a while, one could order a virgin backplane
from spares, but they eventually caught on (then they
stopped hosing
workstation customers so much ;-)
Fortunately, I've only ever seen it at a DECUS (DEC-owned demo
machines); none of the machines I've worked with or personally owned
were broken this way.
-ethan
3:16 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
Ahhhhgggg! Ever seen that with a BA123? Makes you
cry... DEC
didn't want their graphical workstations being converted to
departmental server use, so they plugged up the extra holes in
the backplane to prevent expansion. For a while, one could
order a virgin backplane from spares, but they eventually
caught on (then they stopped hosing workstation customers so
much ;-)
Fortunately, I've only ever seen it at a DECUS
(DEC-owned demo
machines); none of the machines I've worked with or personally
owned were broken this way.
This was the (thankfully) short-lived VAXstation II/RC. The
one I saw came in a BA23, not a BA123. There were companies
around that would (allegedly) remove the epoxy (or whatever
it was they used) and hence restore full functionality.
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org
7:26 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
On 6/6/05,
Kevin Handy <kth at srv.net> wrote:
You could make one like DEC used to: Take an
8-slot backplane, and
fill in four of the slots with epoxy. You now have a 4 slot backplane.
Ahhhhgggg! Ever seen that with a BA123? Makes you cry... DEC didn't
want their graphical workstations being converted to departmental
server use, so they plugged up the extra holes in the backplane to
prevent expansion. For a while, one could order a virgin backplane
from spares, but they eventually caught on (then they stopped hosing
workstation customers so much ;-)
Fortunately, I've only ever seen it at a DECUS (DEC-owned demo
machines); none of the machines I've worked with or personally owned
were broken this way.
Antonio Carlini wrote:
This was the (thankfully) short-lived VAXstation II/RC.
The
one I saw came in a BA23, not a BA123. There were companies
around that would (allegedly) remove the epoxy (or whatever
it was they used) and hence restore full functionality.
Just so I could say I tried, I once spent a few
hours attempting to remove the epoxy - not a cost
effective use of my time. I suspect that these
companies were more likely to have either purchased
a replacement backplane or found a damaged BA23
with a good backplane and removed the good backplane.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
--
If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail
address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk
e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be
obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the
'at' with the four digits of the current year.
10:25 p.m.
On 6/6/05, Jerome H. Fine <jhfinexgs2 at compsys.to> wrote:
By the way,
as Antonio states below, this backplane is an 8 * 4
slot from a BA23!!!!!!!! Maybe Ethan's finger slipped
and added an extra "1" after the "BA"?????????????
I can't see that DEC would have converted a BA123,
but I guess that DEC could have done anything at that.
I did not slip - my recollection was that it was not only the BA23
that DEC gummed up... since the BA123 was so expandable (drives _and_
cards) compared to the BA23, that they didn't want someone to buy a
GPX-II for less money than a MicroVAX-II in a BA123, then ignore or
remove the graphics cards and turn the former workstation into a nice
departmental server.
If you were around in those days, you may care to skip the rest of the
message, but if you are wondering what they were thinking, read on...
Back in the day, an unlimited MicroVAX-II in a BA-23 came out at
around $20K (possibly a few $K more), but workstations were well under
$20K. Memory was a big throttle for being able to use the system for
more than a single user (1MB on the CPU board, 2 PMI slots available
in a BA23, with 16MB being max for the KA630) If one could keep the
machine to a max of 9MB, then it effectively limits how many people
can be productive on it. It wasn't until the MicroVAX 2000/VAXstation
2000 that DEC implemented a CPU protection scheme (a jumper on the
motherboard shows up as a detectable variation, so if one is willing
to crack the case - not a problem with something this old - one can
flip-flop a VS2000 to a MV2000 and back). With the KA630 design
(MicroVAX-II), there was no way to enforce a marketing/licensing
scheme except by limiting expansion the hard way.
-ethan
7 Jun
7 Jun
4:34 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
willing to crack the case - not a problem with
something this
old - one can flip-flop a VS2000 to a MV2000 and back). With
the KA630 design (MicroVAX-II), there was no way to enforce a
marketing/licensing scheme except by limiting expansion the
hard way.
They _could_ have fiddled with the console EPROM. That's
what they di later on with the MicroVAX 3100 vs the
VAXserver 3100 etc. Easier to reverse than glue in the
backplane, but harder to reverse than flicking a jumper!
I have no idea who thought up the glue trick, but I can
only hope they got what they deserved! (Hopefully the
genius who suggested slipping NOPs into the VAX 8500
microcode soon followed the same path!)
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org
7019
days inactive
7023
days old
7 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
a.carlini＠ntlworld.com -
ajp166＠bellatlantic.net -
dbetz＠xlisper.mv.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
jhfinexgs2＠compsys.to -
kth＠srv.net