Vax Rescue in Adelaide.

From: Computer Room Internet Cafe <netcafe_at_pirie.mtx.net.au>
Date: Fri Dec 18 08:13:19 1998

Hi all,

Just had a chat yesterday with the VMS System Manager at a big
national company in Adelaide.
He used to admin the Vax system we have at my School, when it
was with it's original owners.
Heard about this on the unofficial S.A. VMS Managers "old boy"
network, a wonderful resource, and it was mentioned I should contact him
as his company is retiring a Vax 6410/6240 Cluster next month.
It's just come off DEC maintainance and is still in service at the moment.
I expressed an interest, and it now seems likely, pending final approval by
the PTB at his company, that it will be ours gratis.
Just pickup and take away. They dropped a couple of others at a scrap yard
last month as well. Probably could've had them too if we'd known. Seems
there are a
couple of HSC70's and a mixed bag of RA70's, 90's and 92's in the haul.
Plus a TA79.

I did a deal with a scrapyard earlier for 2 "spares" boxes, a 6440 with
a full XMI card fit, including the CI, Ethernet and DSSI cards, (it has no
BI
backplane at all). 128Mb of RAM.
Also a very beatup, (front door torn off) but probably still functional
6240, with
ditto ram and a more low end BI card fit. (CI, TK70, Ethernet etc)
I have to pick that up end of next month too. At this rate, I'll have more
6000
spares than Digi^H^H^H^H Compaq.
The 6440's card fit (or perhaps the 6440) will migrate to the 6320 box
at the school, and give it a big boost in performance, and the 6240
will move in as a standby/testbed box.
(This leaves a 6220 and 6320 for me to play with here. :^)

I'm still looking for a PDP11, Vax 11/780 or similar, and IBM and Prime
Mainframes
of some description for the "Hall of the Dinosaurs" Computer Museum I intend
to start here.
I'll include some smaller stuff, Microvax's and the like, but that's being
done in several
places already, so I'm going to concentrate on the real big stuff.
FWIW, I'm using a VAX 8530 + CIBCI Cabinet and a TA78/TU78 as a room divider
in the cafe,
and a HSC50 and another same size cabinet with 3 RA81's in it as a counter.
They get some very interested looks, and some classic double takes too.

Cheers

Geoff Roberts
Computer Room Internet Cafe
Port Pirie
South Australia.
netcafe_at_pirie.mtx.net.au
Received on Fri Dec 18 1998 - 08:13:19 GMT