5 Aug
2004
5 Aug
'04
8:08 a.m.
I would kill
for a VAX 6000 in the UK. Mmmmm... *dribble*
:D I walk past a 6000-410 every time I go upstairs here, and there's a
7000 just round the corner in stores. They're both backup machines for a
customer though so you can't have 'em. I'm still
a student though, so i've not got a permanent base
to keep one at. And I thought a uV-II in a BA123 was a
bastard to heft around every end-of-academic-year...
BA23 is the way forward, though still bloody heavy. 
5 Aug
5 Aug
11:18 p.m.
On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 05:08:44AM -0800, lists(a)microvax.org wrote:
Bastard. Dibs! ;)
Not to be critical (I own several VAXen myself including an 8300), but can
you explain the appeal of a 6000 at home? I agree they are cool boxes
that are fun to work on (a lot more fun than Nautilus-based machines in my
experience), but to me, a particular model (of anything from DEC) has appeal
because of the bus type (or none for pre-1970 machines) or memory capacity
or disk/tape drives that work with it... I mean... I like VMS and I've been
using it for 20 years, but unless I want to plug in a particular peripheral,
I'd rather run a desk-top-sized machine than a rack, just for power/heat
reasons (for the record, I use the 8300 because I have a stack of VAXBI
COMBOARDs that I helped design and did all the programming (firmware/device
driver, etc.) for - if I don't want to fiddle with VAXBI stuff, I fire up
a MicroVAX).
Again... not a criticism, just curious about what makes the 6000 line
interesting to you.
I always liked the BA123 because you could mount a TK50 and a couple of drives
in there and not have boxes and cables running everywhere. Rack mount boxes
are great, of course, but our uVAX-II rigs were always a pain because of all
the goodies we had to hang off of them to get them upgraded to the point where
we could do some development of our products on them.
It's not so bad, I guess, if you have a SCSI card and put a 600MB SCSI drive
inside the BA23 where you normally find an RD53 or RD54. If you are stuck
with RQDX3 controllers (like we were), getting enough disk space becomes a
mess.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 06-Aug-2004 04:00 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -79.5 F (-62.0 C) Windchill -118.8 F (-83.8 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 11.3 kts Grid 094 Barometer 675.6 mb (10792. ft)
Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
I would kill for a VAX 6000 in the UK. Mmmmm...
*dribble*
:D I walk past a 6000-410 every time I go upstairs here, and there's a
7000 just round the corner in stores. They're both backup machines for a
customer though so you can't have 'em. BA23 is the
way forward, though still bloody heavy.
I was just chatting to Greg this morning about swapping my worldbox for a
BA23. Sad to see it go because it's so pretty and noisy, but I can rack a
BA23 and get some work out of it. 
6 Aug
6 Aug
5:36 p.m.
or disk/tape drives that work with it... I mean... I
like VMS and I've been
using it for 20 years, but unless I want to plug in a particular peripheral,
I'd rather run a desk-top-sized machine than a rack, just for power/heat
reasons (for the record, I use the 8300 because I have a stack of VAXBI
For an alternative viewpoint, the only VAXen I'd want to run at home are
the 11/730 and the 11/780 family (11/780, 11/782, 11/785). The reason is
those are the only ones I can actually understand the internals of --
they're built from standard chips (non-protected PALs in the 11/730,
admittedly), rather than custom gate arrays or worse).
-tony
8:54 p.m.
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 11:36:26PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
That's a fair argument. I was happy to get an 11/725 again last year (I
used to have one that I loaned to a "friend" who neglected to tell me that
his company was being sold and it went out the door to the new owners. By
the time I learned about it, it was too late).
I've never had the chance to work with any of the 11/780 family. I know
about them academically, but not personally. If I had to choose, though,
I'd probably pick an 11/730 or 11/725 over the larger systems, even though
there's a serious difference in memory capacity and horsepower, just because
of power/heat issues.
Of course, if I had a MASSBUS disk or tape I needed to fiddle with, that
makes the choice for me.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 07-Aug-2004 01:40 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -72.3 F (-58.0 C) Windchill -122 F (-85.59 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 23.3 kts Grid 032 Barometer 671.6 mb (10945. ft)
Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
or disk/tape
drives that work with it... I mean... I like VMS and I've been
using it for 20 years, but unless I want to plug in a particular peripheral,
I'd rather run a desk-top-sized machine than a rack, just for power/heat
reasons (for the record, I use the 8300 because I have a stack of VAXBI
For an alternative viewpoint, the only VAXen I'd want to run at home are
the 11/730 and the 11/780 family (11/780, 11/782, 11/785). The reason is
those are the only ones I can actually understand the internals of --
they're built from standard chips (non-protected PALs in the 11/730,
admittedly), rather than custom gate arrays or worse).
7449
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7450
days old
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