On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:46:08 -0500 Joe <rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com> wrote: There are many different variants of "PowerStack" boxen. I have a "PowerStack I" and a "PowerStack II". They are PeeCeeish looking minitowers. There is a PReP architecture PCI/ISA mainboard with PPC604 inside. Seems you have one of the older VME based machines. Well, as the name Power_Stack_ implies, you can stack an expansion chassis on top. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

At 18:46 09/01/2004 -0500, you wrote: Ah ha someone else :-) If it's one that looks a bit like this (googled) one here: http://www.itsinfonet.com/e_gif.htm then yep, you just stacked expansion units on top until you were done. I had a customer in the early 90s that had one of these with about five expansion units on top; mostly hard disc expansion. I remember it having several 600Mb hard discs, the biggest they could get at the time. ISTR it ran a Unix SVR4. I wrote some very nifty software that scanned their previous sales history, and could do tailored mailshots depending on such curious parameters as products that customer had NOT bought previously :-) [only send special offers on a product to people who didn't buy it already, that way you don't offer discounts to people you don't need to, who carry on buying at higher price! sneaky] Their sales director had some really daft combinations of conditions I ended up writing a RPN based language to drive the reporting engine in order to accommodate them Anyway, I've actually got one too, with one expansion unit on top, sat in a box that I picked up elsewhere, which I've not so much as powered up yet. Is there anything to worry about with these ones? I KNOW it's not been touched for at least eight years, and possibly longer. At some point I'll hook it up to the network and see if I can get it to do something useful! At least it's small enough to have out and I can hide it in my server cupboard. I'm presuming it's got a serial tty connection on it somewhere? I've no idea what IP address it might have (though could find out, if it broadcasts anything, by watching the network, I am sure.) Anybody have any info on getting root on these things out there? Would it be better to put NetBSD on it? (I use FreeBSD for most everything else network-wise, so probably less alien to me than anything else.) Rob

Hi, Joe, *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 09-Jan-04 at 18:46 Joe wrote: Yes indeed. I used to service the 'PowerStack' VME version systems. What you have there is one of two possible configurations. One system type was made with a PowerPC 603 chip, if I recall, and the other was done with a VMEbus, designed to run with MVME187 or 197 CPU boards. The expansion configuration you describe is exactly that. The PowerStack series were expanded by popping off the cover, and locking in another module. I think you could have at least four, possibly a max of six (it has been at least 11 years since I've seen one). They use SCSI exclusively for peripheral expansion. No Idiotic Drive Electronics in these monsters! OS-wise, they were both designed to run with Motorola's System V Unix release. I don't recall if other OS's will run on them. That's all I remember. Perhaps others will pipe up with corrections or additions. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?"