9 Mar
1999
9 Mar
'99
8:55 a.m.
Hi,
----------
From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: YANU - uVax
Date: Tuesday, March 09, 1999 1:08 AM
At 10:39 PM 3/8/99 -0800, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>You are joking about wanting to "upgrade" aren't you? The only reason
I
>can think of to do that is to attach a RX50, since you've already got a
>very good ESDI controller.
I have all the controllers/rx50 ...
I never used it. ESDI disks are easy to get, more capacity, ....
Yes, the only reason I want to add the RQDX3 is to
have a monitor prom
supported bootable device with removable media. One of the uVax has the
Exabyte on it (I don't know if the Viking will boot it or not) and the
other has no media at all (although it does have a TK50 controller so if
I
could find a TK50 drive that would work.)
A TK50 is cheap, and you can boot from.
I'm going to try to net-boot NetBSD on it since I
don't have any other
VAXen to cluster it with. If that is successful then perhaps it won't be
such a big deal, but I dislike computers that have a
fairly high
infrastructure overhead before you can get them running.
?!?!?!?!
Sorry, i have 2-3 uVax here, all of them have only cpu/mem/ethernet. All of
them are working fine. "infrastructure overhead" ????
just my .0002 cents.
cheers,
emanuel
9 Mar
9 Mar
11:35 a.m.
At 07:55 AM 3/9/99 -0700, emanuel stiebler wrote:
I have all the controllers/rx50 ...
I never used it. ESDI disks are easy to get, more capacity, ....
I know, I've got a nice ESDI controller.
A TK50 is cheap, and you can boot from.
And the source is ... ?
(I wrote:
... I dislike computers that have a fairly high
infrastructure overhead before you can get them running.
?!?!?!?!
Sorry, i have 2-3 uVax here, all of them have only cpu/mem/ethernet. All of
them are working fine. "infrastructure overhead" ????
In order to use a diskless uVax you need a MOP server, an ethernet, and a
disk image stored on the network. That is "relatively high overhead". In
order to use a PDP-8 you don't need anything but the computer that is "zero
overhead."
My point was that at some point I will pass this computer on to another
caretaker and that person may need to re-format, reboot, re-install, etc
and I would like to be able to hand off everything needed to do that.
--Chuck
12:54 p.m.
In order to use a PDP-8 you don't need anything
but the computer that
is "zero overhead."
Sure, if you want to toggle code in on the front panel.
You can do that on your uVAX as well. But the front panel is a dumb
terminal.
Thus for equivalent functionality, you only need one item more than you
would on a PDP-8. (OK, two items if you count the serial cable.)
You'll probably say that you don't want to type in all of the VMS object
code by hand, but I'd venture that you don't really want to toggle in
OS/8 either.
Eric
2 p.m.
Eric, you definitely qualify on this one. Semantically, you are exactly
correct as usual. So is there a paper tape OS for the VAX?
--Chuck
BTW, as an update I got the WQESD to see "see" the disk and I've
successfully formatted it and "structured" it. Now to netboot NetBSD to see
if UNIX can see it...
At 06:54 PM 3/9/99 +0000, Eric Smith wrote:
Thus for equivalent functionality, you only need one
item more than you
would on a PDP-8. (OK, two items if you count the serial cable.)
2:22 p.m.
So is there a paper tape OS for the VAX?
Not that I know of.
If you can't get set up for netbooting, I think I may have a TK50 drive
(non-SCSI) that I could lend you for use with your TQK50.
The RQDX3 would let you use an RX50, but it's not clear to me that this
buys you very much. I don't think you can install VMS, Ultrix, or NetBSD
from RX50s. At least, I've never heard of it being
done.
Eric
9436
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