Microvax II 'primer'?

[allison]

On 1/22/18 2:18 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote:
> I can't believe you 'just carry it into the house' all by yourself, 
> unless you are professional athlete.
> I also have a MicroVax II in the BA123 world box and it has wheels for 
> a reason!  The damn thing weighs 130 lbs!
> I took it to the VCF East last year, never do that again.  Too heavy.
>
Huge difference between BA23 and ba123 as the BA123 is about twice the 
size and internal board space.
I have both.  I can't lift a BA23 anymore, old back.


> When I got mine, it had only 3MB of memory and I found that I couldn't 
> install VMS 5.5-2 or 7.3 with that amount of memory.  I put in an 8 MB 
> board and 11 MB total was fine.
>
Sounds about right.

> You should make your own cable to connect the console to a PC or 
> terminal.  Its that odd.  I found the PC connection to be helpful 
> because you can log what you are doing.
>
> Yes, remove the NiCad battery.
>
Its easily replaced.


> The box I got had 3 RD53 disks in it and none worked.  I am using a 
> Viking SCSI controller and a SCSI2SD drive to boot the system.

RD53s had a problem with the head sticking against the stops.  I repair 
them, yes I open them
unstick it then remove the offending the rubber parts.

A Viking or CMD SCSI controller makes using larger and more modern disks 
easy.  A disk of 500 MB
will run a lot of users and VMS will not use much of it.

> I left the RX50 drives in and reconfigured the RQDX2 to address them. 
> They come in handy for getting the VMS hobbyist licenses in.
> The TK50 never worked.
>
It can be very handy.

> I put a DELQA in for networking, never tried a DEQNA.
>
If the DEQNA works use it Support is there through V5.4 and the driver  
is there for later but
unsupported (don't call FS!).   Delqa tens to be more reliable.

> I consider it an important machine in computing history.  It allowed 
> scientific researchers, like myself, to get off of remote mainframes 
> that billed at fantastic rates and compute in a more relaxed environment.
> BTW there is one in the Air & Space Museum in Washington DC.
>
I have two MicroVAXIIs on in BA23, the other as a BA123 (uVAXII/GPX).  
Also a few uVAX2000,
and a slew of uVAX3100s.   A 3100 can be handy as both a VAX and a boot 
host for the MicroVAXII.
I run the whole bunch in the winter for a few days each year (12 
systems) as a LAVC
(local area connected) VAX Cluster.  Much fun and about 1400watts of heat.

Allison

> On 1/21/2018 2:25 PM, Jules Richardson via cctech wrote:
>>
>> So, I picked up (and I did just carry it into the house, and now I 
>> hurt) a Microvax II from another list member yesterday. Cosmetically 
>> it's a disaster (BA123 has a cracked top panel, broken wheels, 
>> missing front door, missing right-rear panel) but internally it 
>> appears to be complete; board wise we have:
>>
>>   M7606 - CPU
>>   M7608 - 4MB ram
>>   M9047 - grant continuity
>>   M7504 - DEQNA ethernet
>>   M3104 - DHV11 8-port serial
>>   M7555 - RQDX3 disk controller
>>   M7546 - TX50 controller
>>
>> ... it's got a TK50 and hard drive (no idea of capacity).
>>
>> Operational status is a complete unknown, and I have absolutely zero 
>> knowledge about these systems - so my question at this stage is what 
>> background reading I need to be doing in terms of pre-powerup* 
>> checks, actually hooking a console, if there's a suggested minimal 
>> config I can use to diag the CPU, and then (assuming it gets to that 
>> point) how to actually use the thing (I'm assuming it was running VMS 
>> rather than Ultrix, but I don't know for sure). I'm wondering there 
>> aren't any handy tutorials out there, alongside whatever DEC docs are 
>> recommended.
>>
>> * e.g. for most machines I'd be thinking in terms of pulling all 
>> boards/drives, hooking up a dummy load to whatever PSU rails required 
>> it, and then at least running the PSU up in isolation first, but I 
>> don't know to what extent this machine requires some logic in place 
>> for the PSU to even run.
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Jules
>>
>>
>