Find of the day

From: cem14_at_cornell.edu <(cem14_at_cornell.edu)>
Date: Wed Sep 15 18:38:58 1999

On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Chuck McManis wrote:

> That would be your basic Microvax II all right.
>
> It is a lot of fun to run VMS or NetBSD on them.

I have nothing against netBSD, but I'd like to learn about VMS,
so I hope the hard drive has some version of it.

> Presumably you've got one with the Floppy drives in the front since I
> didn't see you mention the TQK50 controller or a 1/2" cartridge tape drive.

No, it has nothing but the hard drive in the front. The top bay is missing
its cover, so maybe there used to be one there.


> Console connects to the DB-9 in the back, standard serial port pin-out.
> Plug in a terminal and fire it up to see if it can get through post. You
> never know, it just may boot :-) Tony Duell would have you first carefully
> remove all the boards and unplug all the peripherals, and then power it up
> and test the voltages on the power rails, then plug in probably one board
> (enough to "load" the supplys a bit and test again) and then re-install and
> reseat everything and try booting it) But I only do that level of check on
> really old stuff.

The interior is somewhat dusty, but not too much. The card edges that go
into the slots did not look bad in terms of oxidation; I think that they
make positive contact. I wonder if power suply failures are common
for this machine... and if the expected lifetime of the capacitors is
long enough.

Thanks for the info; I am tempted to try turning it on.


Carlos.
Received on Wed Sep 15 1999 - 18:38:58 BST