New VAX 6000 toys.

From: Brian Chase <vaxzilla_at_jarai.org>
Date: Mon Oct 14 18:18:01 2002

I've recently acquired two of those rackmount VAX 6000's that were being
sold on eBay. I paid more than I should've, but given the nature of the
systems, I'd have gone higher. Though they're still hefty, they are
very small and light in comparison to the full sized VAX 6000's.
They're still built like tanks, but I'm able to move one easily by
myself. Well, at least as long as I don't have to pick it up off the
ground. The other huge plus with these is that they're already wired up
for single-phase power--no hacks are required. The systems have Hubbell
Twist-Lock connectors: L6-20 (20A _at_ 250V). It'll be trivial to hook
these up to household dryer circuits in the US. In their present
configurations, they've each a single 6000-400 CPU, 384MB of RAM, three
XMI ethernet modules, an XMI FDDI module, and two XMI CI-bus modules.
My employer is planning on tossing out some of their old FDDI
concentrators, so it all works out rather nicely.

I'm still trying to determine if the XMI card cage is the original XMI
or if it's XMI-2. Looking at the back of it, some of the metal dividers
in the backplane are stamped with a date in 1991; this is after DEC
started producing the XMI-2 based VAX 6000 systems. If these do support
the 500 and 600 series CPUs, I'm planning on turning at least one into
the world's smallest VAX 6660. The other will be a VAX 6420 with two
vector processors. MUH HA HAH!!!

Another interesting thing with these systems is that they've Intel asset
tags affixed to them. I've often heard it stated that Intel operated
the production control systems at their fabs with VAX/VMS systems. I
don't know if these systems served in that capacity or not, but the guy
selling them is located only a few miles from Intel's Chandler, AZ
campus where several of Intel's fabs are located.

As a side note, I'm often disappointed with the packing jobs of the
bulkier gear I buy online. That's not the case with this seller. He
seems to be well equipped for shipping heavy items. The rackmount unit
was packed in a large box with thick foam surrounding it. The box was
also secured to wooden pallet and wrapped in plastic. It took me about
half an hour to unpack everything. He really went crazy with the
plastic wrap.

I believe he has more of these, three have already been put up on eBay.
I've got my two, so I'm done throwing money at them; I expect the others
will go for considerably less.

-brian.
Received on Mon Oct 14 2002 - 18:18:01 BST