On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 04:26:45PM -0700, Zane H. Healy wrote:
> If it's only every few years you've had far better luck than me. The
> longest I've been able to keep an RD53 running was about 3 days.
In commercial use, when SRC had MicroVAXen, we never lost an RD53 (that
I know of - they might have had to swap one out when I wasn't working
there at one point). I have that MicroVAX, and its RD53 is still good.
OTOH, I do know that others have had problems.
> As long as you don't mind dealing with the troubles involved in a
> dual-height /73 CPU, they aren't to hard to come by. Of course if you do
> get one you'll want a third party disk controller w/bootstrap, and a DLV11J
> for your console ports. It's a pain, but it works.
I haven't played with a dual-height /73 - I take it, it's like the dual-height
KDF-11 (11/23) CPU, nothing but a CPU? (Some of my F-11 boxes have that CPU
and a BDV11, others have the 11/23+ quad-height CPU).
> Until I upgraded to a
> Quad-Height /73 CPU, I kept a Webster ESDI board in the system for the
> bootstrap even though it didn't have any disks attached and the system disk
> was on a SCSI controller.
Ah... interesting solution. These days, of course, it's trivial to keep
a bootstrap on another machine, talk to the -11 via terminal emulator
(Kermit...) and force-feed any bootstrap you want over the console line.
> > I would love to find an 11/8x or 11/9x, but I'm not holding my breath. At
>
> Ditto. Actually what I *really* want is one of the newer Mentec CPU boards!
I'm not even _dreaming_ about those... I'd be happy to get a hand-me-down from
someone else who _did_ just get one.
> Let me guess it's out of a DECserver 550, if so it's a /53.
I got it as a bare board, but that sounds right.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 15-Sep-2004 02:20 Z
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Received on Tue Sep 14 2004 - 21:25:22 BST