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- Path: sparky!uunet!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!cc.usu.edu!ivie
- From: ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
- Subject: Re: VAXstation questions...
- Message-ID: <1992Jul29.101544.57605@cc.usu.edu>
- Date: 29 Jul 92 10:15:44 MDT
- References: <1992Jul21.185430.12950@nic.unh.edu> <1992Jul23.031251@aminet.uucp>
- Distribution: usa
- Organization: Utah State University
- Lines: 37
-
- In article <1992Jul23.031251@aminet.uucp>, barrett@aminet.uucp (Keith Barrett) writes:
- > In article <1992Jul21.185430.12950@nic.unh.edu>, tch@kepler.unh.edu (Travis C Hayes) writes:
- >>I pulled an old VAXstation I case out of the dumpster yesterday and I
- >>wondered if anyone knows anything about these machines. I got 4 boards
- >>with it (don't know if they work): 2 4M memory boards (150ns yuck!),
- >>and a set of 2 boards linked with a 50 pin flat ribbon cable (I'd love
- >>to know what this is, there's a prominent flat chip on it that just says
- >>SEEQ).
- >
- > The information in the artwork etching that appears along the edge of the PC
- > boards is more helpful than the chip stamps.
- >
- > My guess, since you named the memory boards already, is that the other 2
- > boards are the CPU and disk controller (KDA-50)
- >
- > The memory boards MUST be located in the 1st 2 slots of the system
- > (and if I remember, they also needed a ribbon cable)
-
- I think the VAXstation I is based on the MicroVAX I which is a pure Q-bus
- multi-board processor; that is, the processor boards would be the ones
- connected by the ribbon cable and the memory would be standard Q-bus memory.
- If that's the case, 2 4MB boards is incorrect; the most that you can put on
- the Qbus is 4MB, so you couldn't have 2 boards each containing 4 MB in there.
-
- I suspect that he's got the CPU, the memory, and the cabinet and nothing else.
- The disk controller etc. were probably pulled to put in other machines.
-
- I think the MicroVAX I is supposed to have about the performance of an 11/730.
- And you can't put more than 4 MB of memory in it, so you can't put in enough
- memory to run a recent version of VMS. This is fine, though, since the recent
- versions of VMS probably don't support it.
-
- If you can find a disk controller and an old enough version of VMS lying
- around, it'd make a nice home machine.
-
- Roger Ivie
- ivie@cc.usu.edu
-