At 02:10 PM 1/4/2009, you wrote: >I did, indeed, bring home a MicroVAX-II with no graphics for a couple >months. It was smashed by a shipper, and abandoned for months. >But, they eventually wanted it back for salvage. I had to buy a >KA-630AA CPU board for $6800, certainly the most expensive "toy" I'd >ever bought. Back in those days, you could buy an econo car for that >price. But, it ran RINGS around the PCs of that day! I also bought a >backplane, and a disk controller. > >You can see the monstrosity I built in a memory cabinet that was >originally attached to an IBM 370-135. This held 1-4 MB of Intersil >static RAM. I originally had two MB of the RAM, and was building a >32-bit CPU out of AMD bit slice components. I did have that machine >running, but writing the microcode and then an entire OS was looming as >a decade-long endeavor. So, when I got the VAX pieces, I decided to put >it in this cabinet. http://pico-systems.com/images/VAX.jpg > >The power supplies are on the left, behind the panel with the lights and >switches. You can monitor voltages and temperature and airflow sensors >from that panel. To the right are two 9-slot Q-bus backplanes stuffed >with boards. the silver boxes below are air plenums with two different >fan technologies in them. The CPU (right) has a motorized impeller, >with a brushless motor pulled from an 8" floppy drive. The left >expansion backplane has a tangential blower. Sticking out of this >plenum, you can see one of the airlow sensors. If the fan quits, the >system will shut down within 15 seconds. The 5" hard drive is below the >power monitor panel. The IBM blue door is seen edge-on at the right. >Partly hidden by the door is another rack with an open-reel tape drive >(1600/6250 BPI) on the bottom, an ADC rack that monitors the house >environmental stuff, and a little bus and backplane of my own design >that interfaces the ADC and other stuff. This has all been moved to the >PC and Linux, now. > >So, this system is a BIT bigger than DEC's pizza box systems! > >Jon
Dang! I guess you did! Not your typical home personal computer... ;-) We had a few Microvax's floating around here at the Lab when I first arrived here way back when. My first big iron sysadmin job consisted of managing a room full of Vax 6000 clusters, and another room full of HSC's and disk drives. Had to wear a jacket year-round, and ear muffs were my friends! VMS used to rule the Lab! Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
