VAX 9440

[Lee Courtney]

LCM has successfully restored and is running multiple large vintage
systems. Not easy, but doable.

Lee C.

On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 7:55 AM Jim Manley via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> Evan said it was in service until a couple of months ago, so it should
> power up OK, if it could all be electrically and mechanically stitched back
> together carefully.  The question is probably, could they afford the power
> bill?  We have a bunch of Crays and CDCs at the Computer History Museum,
> and if they were operational, we'd probably have to take up a special
> very-large-hat-passing collection just to pay the power bill for the
> multiple,- multi-ton refrigeration units (at least one was about a
> seven-ton unit, IIRC)!  Then, there's the problem of replacement parts for
> when, not if, things fail, not to mention the labor expertise and
> availability.  It's one thing to replace discrete transistors in our IBM
> 1401, but, it's quite another to desolder and yank various little black
> rectangles off extremely dense circuit boards without destroying anything
> else ... and then solder in a replacement, if you can find one not already
> firmly attached to another board with another kind of failure.  That
> assumes that problems can even be isolated, although at least more modern
> systems tend to have self-diagnostic capabilities, at least above a certain
> level of functionality, or lack thereof.
>
> On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 3:26 AM Pontus Pihlgren via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> > That is a behemoth!!
> >
> > Did you ger that huge powerforming thingy that goes
> > with it?
> >
> > Are you crazy enough to atempt a power-up?
> >
> > /P
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 09:55:07PM -0500, Evan Koblentz via cctalk wrote:
> > > The VCF museum took delivery of a VAX 9440 today.
> > >
> > > It arrived in two 28-foot trailers. Here's our forklift driver
> > > beginning to unload the first truck:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E-Q5xrsYXyjrZEZh92xIBhlStvvNUcRV/view?usp=sharing
> > >
> > > Here's a teaser picture of the main cabinet:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bEpSMzBEeOvuDnzPQ9Npc7iYmDhjZq8c/view?usp=sharing
> > >
> > > The full system is 30-40 feet long when it's all set up! It is in
> > > pristine condition and was in service at a defense contractor until
> > > a couple of months ago.
> > >
> > > Rumor has it that we arranged for another one to land in Dave
> > > McGuire's Large Scale Systems Museum collection, and a third to be
> > > with Bob Roswell's System Source collection. :)  Perhaps they'll
> > > post updates too!
> >
>


-- 
Lee Courtney
+1-650-704-3934 cell