--- Adrian Graham <agraham_at_ccat.co.uk> wrote:
> > > I assume you mean something like a VAX 11/730 rather than
> > the ol' Austin
> >
> > And what's wrong with an 11/730? It's a nice little machine...
>
> I love the 730 - it was my first VAX; I remember us being annoyed that we
> couldn't upgrade to VMS V4 because we only had half a meg :)
Nothing money can't fix. I have an 11/730 in storage that we built up to 5Mb
RAM, the internal RB80/RL02 combo, and a BA-11 on the side for extra goodies.
It was ordered the week it was announced from DEC because we needed a cheap
VAX for product development. It was how we discovered that its internal
slots are not wired the same as a DD-11DK backplane - the original Unibus
COMBOARD(R), commonly called the COMBOARD I, does not work in the CPU backplane
of an 11/730 or anything identical to it (there are a couple of CPUs with
the same configuration). I have one "modified" COMBOARD I on the shelf - it
has a mass of wires to route the Unibus signals from one set of fingers to
the other. It was a design problem on our end; someone read one set of Unibus
signal maps and assumed it was gospel. The COMBOARD II product was built
with the Unibus signals coming from the right places. In the literature,
the different slots are named "MUD" (Modified Unibus Device) and "SPC" (Small
Peripheral Controller). Without reading the labels on the CPUs, I forget
which ones crop up in which machines (when I was making these boards on a
daily basis, I used to know, but I claim mental bit rot on the details this
far out).
We used that 11/730 until the last days of the company. For application
compatibility purposes, our 11/750 was running VMS 4.6, but we needed to
link our product under VMS 5.x for our more modern customers. To that
end, I put VMS 5.3 (I think) up on the 11/730, hooked the machines together
via 56K DECnet and wrote into the build scripts the ability to copy the
objects and privved MACRO code from the 4.6 box to the 5.x box, link and
copy back the executables. Building the product used to be a full time
job. When I was done, it was a single command (and about 6 hours!)
Fun little box. Prior to its life as a linker, it was the first box I
ever installed UNIX on - Ultrix 1.1. I also put up UUCP and net news
on it, before the Great Renaming. Somewhere I still have some articles
from the newsgroup net.micro.amiga. We took it down for a few months,
and when we once again fired up UUCP, all the articles were going into
the Junk directory. Mich hair-pulling and hand-wringing later, a buddy
of mine at Ohio State casually mentioned that all the newsgroups had
changed named recently and would I like a copy of the new newsrc? Doh!
As I continue to improve and upgrade my classic space at my Farm, this
box is one of the ones that I intend to set up early. I cut my teeth on
a lot of stuff on this guy. I was very happy to take it with me when I
moved on.
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd_at_iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is:
http://penguincentral.com/
See
http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
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Received on Mon Jul 17 2000 - 09:41:42 BST