On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 01:59:46PM -0500, Brian Chase wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Witchy wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know how uncommon the MicroVAX I is these days?
>
> They're fairly uncommon as VAXen go, I think mainly because so many
> people opted to upgrade them to MicroVAX-II systems. I only know of
> one or two people aside from myself who have a MicroVAX-I, and mine
> doesn't have any OS loaded at the moment.
I have one sitting in a closet and one sitting on my workbench at home.
The spare is in an untested state, but the one sitting out boots uVMS 4.2
from its RD52. We used it as a final test for Qbus COMBOARDs (the initial
test platform, an 11/03, is sitting on top of it). Software Results Corp.
bought it new when they were first released (c. 1984?). They also bought
another one that they did pay $17,000 to upgrade to a uVAX-II. Both of
these have had the older, defective wiring harnesses replaced, one after
stinking up the manufacturing area. It was quite charred when removed.
One of the biggest limitations is the fact that they use Qbus memory and
are limited to 4MB. In general, unless you have a particular fondness for
them for their place in history, for "real" work, a uVAX-II is much more
useful. OTOH, it's easy to pull the CPU boards, put them on a shelf, and
reversibly "upgrade" a uVAX-I to a Micro-PDP. :-)
(the other big limitation, at least to me, is the fact that the low-level
format on disks attached to an RQDX1 is not compatible with RQDX3 and
similar controllers like what's embedded in the uVAX-2000, or the Professional
series).
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 07-Jan-2004 19:10 Z
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Received on Wed Jan 07 2004 - 13:18:39 GMT