It appears that the engineers at DEC who designed the VAX4000-200
power supply may have been short on functional brain cells. Although
due to a lack of MMJ or RJ-14 (I'd just cut the tabs off) connectors,
I can't properly test this VAX, I thought I'd at least power it up,
check the PSU and look at the LEDs. This was foiled by the need for a
special power cord, or at least a, literally, hacked power cord.
For those who haven't seen this PSU mains connector, it looks sort of
like illustration A below, where the 'o' represents a piece of
plastic sticking out to block a standard cable from being plugged in.
- -
o- -
- -
A B
Did DEC have a reason for doing this, other than to be able to extort
money from people who need replacement power cords, or to sell them
new systems when they make replacement power corde obsolete?
--
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 Sun Jul 22 2001 - 12:36:43 BST