Need SCSI interface for Microvax 3400

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Mon Oct 2 12:08:02 2000

At 11:43 AM 10/2/00 -0500, Bob wrote:
>If it's gonna cost that much (way more than I can afford to spend on it)..
>can anyone point me to a recent vms distribution on TK70 tape so I can
>use the tape drive?

I didn't say it _had_ to cost that much, just that it could :-). I got my
CQD-443/TM for free as it came inside a 3400 I rescued from certain death.
But there is certainly a time/cost function at work. If you wait patiently
and let everyone know what you need then things pop up from time to time.
Unpredictable though.

The interesting question this raises of course is how one might go about
creating a "release" disk on TK70 (I've got TK70's in all my VAXen and
TK85's in a couple). Just this past week I was experimenting with creating
a standalone backup tape to "mass install" but discovered that while this
may work for the OS it definitely does not work for the layered products.
In particular things like BASIC and ADA tend to build system definition
tables based on the system they are installed on and when you move that
data to a new system they are inevitably "wrong" and the compiler asks to
be re-installed from the save sets. I know I can put together a TK70 with
standalone backup and VMS 7.2 on it. That part works fine.

--Chuck
Received on Mon Oct 02 2000 - 12:08:02 BST