This morning a truck arrived with a box for me weighing about
140lbs. :-)
Please note: quite some time ago, I mentioned ordering something from
a company called Techs R Us, in Texas, via E-Bay that, hadn't arrived
yet. There was a reason for the (very) long delay in the shipping of
this computer system; the lady who owns the computer business selling
it had a health problem and was unable to ship it at the time. That
apparently explains negative feedback on E-bay for her company. She's
a very pleasant person to speak with, and does return telephone calls,
although not always right away... so, if you order anything from her,
please be patient. It may take a long time to arrive, but you should
receive it. What I received today arrived in excellent physical
condition; not even a dent in the packing box. Has anyone on this
list been to her store in Dallas Texas?
The aforementioned system was sent via Craters and Freighters, and USF
Worldwide delivered it after they called ahead a couple of days
ago. The two men on the truck asked where I wanted it, and they
carefully placed the box in that location. Much better service than
UPS!
After pulling all of the heavy wire staples out, opening up the box,
removing big pieces of styrofoam and lots of foam packing chips, a VAX
4000-200 in heavy bubble wrap became visible.
After extracting the VAX from the box and unwrapping it, I discovered
the following: a rather ordinary VAX with what appears to be 16MB of
RAM, a KA660 CPU and two 300MB DSSI disks... and other interesting
bits described below.
Seeing what appeared to be terminated miniature SCSI connetor and a
centronics connector, I was hoping to find a SCSI board in the system, but
no such luck.
...what I did find, however: a dual height board labeled "Talon
Technology Corporation" connected to a DB15 connector. This board has
various numbers on it; not sure which one the model number is. Some
of the numbers are: 100501-2, 01B14 and 1242344. Does anyone know
what sort of critter this board is?
The other somewhat interesting find: a set of boards labeled M3135-01,
M3135-02 and M3136. The M3135 boards appear to be something called
DECVoice and the M3136 connects the M3135 to T1 telephone service. Is
anyone familiar with these? It is correct to guess that this won't
work with a regular home telephone line?
Once I finish disassembling it, extract any spiders and move it inside
the house, I'll check it out, and see if it boots up. ...that is, if
I can find any place to put it, which I should have thought of before
buying it many months ago. Alas, it has neither a tape drive nor a
CD-ROM drive. There's one cable that looks like the type that
attaches to to a TK50 or TK70 drive, but no power connector in sight.
Am I going to need a tray for the tape drive that plugs into the
sockets on the backplane?
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd_at_rddavis.net 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.rddavis.net beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Sat Jul 21 2001 - 11:39:05 BST