BA23 vs. BA123 vs. 42" cabinet?

From: Doc Shipley <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Sat Apr 6 13:09:48 2002

Hi, all.
  I went last night and picked up (OK, dragged, while groaning) the
MicroVAX Terry Murphy posted for rescue Thursday night.
  I'm fairly certain he hadn't ever used it, as the description was not
terribly accurate. There was no DELQA, several of the cab kits aren't
there, memory is only 16M, etc. Nice haul, anyway. The thing came in a
42" elephant-ear cabinet, which is in fair cosmetic shape, and without
plugging it in, I'd guess good to excellent functional shape. Some QBus
boards I can't ID, and the other goodies that came with, I'll post
separately.

  So.
  I'm not enamored of the idea of running a 240VAC rack in my garage if
not necessary. That leaves me with two other ideas.

1) The "drawers" are simply BA23 enclosures, right? Any reason I can't
use the primary enclosure as a stand-alone unit? It's going to be
running a minimal set of hardware:

KA655 CPU
Dataram 63016 16M RAM
DMV11 (simply to occupy the last CD slot)
DEQNA/DELQA (whichever I can scrounge cheapest, first)
TQK50 (undecided)
RQDX3 (with probably only the RX50 or an RX33 attached)

  That _is_ the right bus order, isn't it?
  Will either the power requirements or cooling be a problem? What if I
decide to run the RD54 instead of the TK50? Is it OK to run the BA23
without skins, lying flat?
  And, if I want to run the second backplane and extra drives, can I
just stack them?

2) I can put all the above in the BA123 lurking downstairs. But it
seems a huge waste of space & power over the BA23. Plus, I don't have
cooling vanes for the dual cards in the added CD slots, or enough
D<mumble>11 boards to go around. Plus, the BA23 I can wedge into my
office, but the BA123 would have to live in the garage.

  Advice, discussion, points I've missed, all welcome.

        Doc
Received on Sat Apr 06 2002 - 13:09:48 BST