Earlier this evening, I went down the basement to do some
laundry and noticed that one of the lightbulbs had burned out, over
where I keep some of my computer equipment. I only walked back there
with the intention of changing the light bulb, but, after the
discussions about VMS and VAXen, I noticed my VAX 4000-200 sitting,
all forlorn, under the basement steps, and underneath a TRS-80, which
was underneath an HP 9825B.
The VAX deserved better than that, to be closer to my sound equipment,
PERQs, Sun Sparcserver 1000, Sun Ultra, Sun 4/110 and it's stack of
four shoeboxes, a Microvax and PowerMacs, etc. Moving it, however,
wasn't easy, but I didn't think about that. Firstly, there was a
rather narrow passagway in front of the VAX---just, barely, wide
enough for the VAX, since opposite the VAX is shelving. Just past the
shelves is a not-easily movable tall file cabinet, just inside the area
where I wanted to move the VAX to.
One little problem: to get the VAX to its destination, I couldn't move
the filecabinet too easily (no place to move it to!). Caddycorner to
file cabinet was a stack of equipment consisting of: as a base, a
MicroVAX and Sun 3/150; sitting horizontally on top of those was a Sun
4/110, and on top of that were three Sun shoeboxes and one aftermarket
shoebox. Atop the four shoeboxes was a Sun Ultra-1, and on top of
that an 8mm tape drive. That entire stack was a few inches too close
to the file cabinet to get the VAX through, even if removed from its
base. I ended up disassembling that entire stack, and cabling, moving
it back some distance, and reassembling it. But wait, that wasn't all
of the fun! :-) Where I wanted to put the VAX was another pile of
equipment, consisting of an HP-9000/300, an Apollo DN3500, a Sun 3/60,
an IBM PC-AT and, on top of that, the little lightweight (sarcasm
intended) Sun SparcServer 1000, with a PC monitor on top of that. The
SparcStation 1000 now sits atop the VAX, with the other equipment
being put where the VAX was. All of that was done in very cramped
quarters... reminds me of that little game where one shuffles the
little red and white numbered squares about to get them in the right
order.
All that work just because a light-bulb needed changing! Sound
familiar? BTW, it only took one day for Encompass to issue my
new membership ID. :-)
--
Copyright (C) 2003 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd_at_rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Wed Feb 18 2004 - 22:52:10 GMT