Today's Exciting Acquisition & Microvax 3100 Question

From: Anthony Clifton - Retrocomputing.com <vaxcat_at_retrocomputing.com>
Date: Mon Jun 18 22:43:35 2001

>> The expansion box appears to contain a TK50 drive as it had a TK50
>> tape in it. To be honest, I've never seen a TK70. So could it be a
>> TK70 with a TK50 tape in it? Can a TK70 read/write a TK50 tape?
>
>I'm assuming it's a Half-Hieght drive? If so it's a TZ30. I'm not aware of
>there ever having been a SCSI TK70.
>
It's a half height drive. Ah, so a TZ30 is just a SCSI TK50? Can I use the
tapes I write in my TK50 on my MVax II? (I lost track of DEC stuff after
the MVax II. Kinda sad really.)

>Erm, not sure why you'd want to. If you're going to have a real OS on the
>MicroVAX 3100 (VMS), I'm not sure if you'll be able to write out NetBSD
>anyway. Remember my motto, it's a VAX, it should be running VMS! :^)
>
I'm not opposed to this. Of course, then I'd probably use one of the Suns
for a uucp gateway. Though, if I'm really serious, I should probably just
allocate a linux box to the task.

I suppose I'm not completely against running VMS on it though I can't
afford the hobbyist license right now. ($100 isn't it? Or is that for the
Unix hobbyist license?) I used to do ALOT of stuff on VMS Vaxen and have
even toyed with the idea of having a nice one around to telnet into just
to say I can. I'm just not sure I'd want to USE it for anything, however.

I suppose I feel the same way about Vaxen that I do about Intel boxes.
Perfectly acceptable hardware, horrible default operating systems.

Intel - Linux
Vaxen - NetBSD =-)

Anthony Clifton
Des Moines, Iowa
Received on Mon Jun 18 2001 - 22:43:35 BST