Slightly OT: What to do with a DEC 3000/300?

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Wed Oct 10 10:13:45 2001

Rumor has it that Zane H. Healy may have mentioned these words:
>If the DEC 3000/300 is anything like a DEC 3000/300LX then you should be
>able to get some 72-pin true parity SIMMs and upgrade your RAM. If you can
>get it up to a minimum of 112MB it should work great. If you can get it up
>to 96MB it will work OK. Less than 96MB, and it will work, but will
>probably do a fair amount of swaping. OpenVMS V7.2 won't even load if
>you've got less than 64MB RAM.

The best price I found for that was around $29.00 per 32Meg stick -
Thatsalotsacash for an "old" machine (but better than the $69 that most
companies want)...

and Jonny the robot may have mentioned these words:
>Why not give it away? and anyone who wants it could pick it up?
>Mark

Why should I give away a computer I paid $225 for only one year ago (and
was worth it then...) ?? Besides, where I live there's not that many
"classic computer connoisseurs" around who could make use of this machine
-- prolly 20% of the classic computers in a 20 mile radius of my house are
*in* my house...

My TI-99/4A computers I'll give away -- My Timex Sinclair 1000 w/16K ram
upgrade I'll give away... If nothing else, I can use the 2Gig hard drives
on my VAXen - I plan on keeping those (they stack well... ;-)

And also, Iggy Drougge may have mentioned these words:
>Roger Merchberger skrev:
>
> >This machine will not (easily) run anything but Tru64 Unix or
> >OpenVMS/Alpha... primarily due to it's TurboChannel architecture.
>
>NetBSD has got TC and 3000/300 support.

 From the NetBSD page:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Known Bugs for the DEC 3000/300 port

Note that not all of the drivers have been thoroughly tested.

Since no frame buffer or keyboard is supported on DEC 3000/300-family
systems, you MUST use a serial console when running NetBSD/alpha on them.
See your owner's manual for information on how to configure your system to
use a serial console.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

That would make the 19" monitor pretty near useless, and if I really wanna
text-mode login for a weird, proprietary box, I can just telnet into my
TiVo, thanks... ;-)

Would VMS/Alpha swap more or less than Tru64 on this box w/64Meg? (There
was a *lot* of swap...) - I may keep the box for VMS to serve as a
"document server" so I can view my VMS documentation on CD - I've heard
DECWindows sets up very easily on the VMS/Alpha, but it's rather a pain on
the VAX (without dox, anyway...)

Hopefully, maybe then I'll be able to get past first base with VMS...

Thanks,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
Received on Wed Oct 10 2001 - 10:13:45 BST