85mb Micropolis in a Microvax II?

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Mon Nov 23 09:35:43 1998

< I agree on the cable. It is amazing how it will smoke. I just have nev
< been willing to try putting 2 drives in. ( I have several BA123's for te
< beds and operating systems) I find them to be much easier on the hands
< Dan

In DEC systems there are three things I can say, Supported, Unsupported
and unimplementable. Of the three the last one is least common. An
example of the last one is connecting a DHV11 to a pdt11/150. It's
doable but, near unimplementable do to the lack of Qbus. The more common
situation is unsupported, IE: DEC didn't consider it marketable or test
it exactly that way. Two RDxx disks in a ba123 is an example. The yabut
is that a TK50 eats as much power as a RDxx. The assumption then was
one disk and floppy or tape for backup/installs. Later on external TK50s
or network backups made that need lower. Disk space however, was always
premium as network files systems (VIA eithernet or LAVC) are slow compared
to local disk. So if you observe configuration rules (power, bus fanout
and dma/interrupt grants) then two disk are very doable and the PS
is plenty heafty to do it. It's pretty hard to maxout a BA23 without
running out of slots in the box!

Allison
Received on Mon Nov 23 1998 - 09:35:43 GMT