VaxStation 2000 PSU info needed - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

16 Apr 2001

From: Richard Erlacher &lt;edick(a)idcomm.com&gt;
...
   To start with
the switcher in question is 1987 design maybe earlier.
 The MV2000 was available in 87 or 88 if memory
 serves. And even if I'm wrong it's very definitely pre1990.
 AND there's no reason to believe that because it behaves as I described,
it's
...
 because of an obsolete design.  It's quite likely
that they didn't want the
...
 supply kicking on unless there was a load.  PC supplies
were designed that way
...
 ... of course that was in 1980 ... 

PC supplies would overvoltage and crowbar there was no intelligence in
their design or applied to it.

...
 From what I observed, the DEC rotatin memory subsystems
were
ALWAYS of old technology, i.e. used SMD after nobody else
would ship SMD devices, and didn't start to use SCSI until forced
to do so by market demand and not until long after third-party
competitors had been beating them in the marketplace. 

Whats wrong with SMD?  It was better than SCSI-1, and SCSI-2.
 And there was no third party standard for SCSI at all until the late
80s.
Even then DEC had far faster technologies and regarded it for low
end slower systems.

...
 It was EMULEX, IIRC, that forced them out of the
'70's with their
disk drive subsystems.  I wasn't aware that DEC ever built a disk
drive.  Their products seemed to me to be rebadged and 

Then you arent aware.  All the RA8x and 9x were DEC as were the
initial RZ2x series and a long list of others.  They did off the shelf
stuff
too but then that was usually for the smaller packaged systems
or where time was a market driver.

...
 repackaged drives from other makers, only at 10x the
current
price.  Those DEC labels were surely expensive. 
Much of it markup but also a fair amount getting the vendor to fix
errors spotted by DEC, getting it to comply to spec and in many cases
getting it to pass FCC.

Allison