[olug] (OT) What to do with a VAX

[Kevin Lanik]

There are two VAXen, one is a 4000/400 and the other is a 4000/300. They were used in tandem (correct term?) so the 300 will not run without the 400 (although the 400 will run without the 300). The 300 was essentially an extra cabinet/backplane for storage drives. I doubt this was a stock configuration and I don't know what boards are in them for certain but I do know that they are DSSI bus and at least one has SCSI b/c that's what the external storage tape used. I doubt that I'll try to get them speaking together again, and I'll only use the 400 for computing so if the PS from the 300 will work for you it's yours (although I'll hang on to the cabinet...much smaller than the 11/780 http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~vance/www/vaxbar.html but maybe a VAX minibar?) Anyhow, those are the specs for the most part.

 -Kevin Lanik

 

Is the silly thing turbochannel? If so, chuck it. Turbochannel bussing has ZERO support. (Popular DEC Vax/VMS boxes that were TC were Model 900 and Model 300). On a TC machine, you have to use the serial terminal for the console to get it the OS installed. This can be a SERIOUS pain if you don't know what you are doing (or don't have a genuine serial terminal laying around). Although, if you have a license for OpenVMS, VMS is a really nice OS. You might stick with that (although I don't know any open projects that run on VMS. Our VMS machine has to run all proprietary servers. :( ). I'm sure my group would take it for parts :) (We lost a power supply out of one of our Model 300 3000s to lightening. The sole survivor houses an archive of software that we like to have around for documentation purposes.) I'd be real interested to hear what you do with it. Carl Lundstedt UNL


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