On 06/16/2012 05:21 PM, hvlems at zonnet.nl wrote:
My Multia runs VMS. With 128 MB and a 2.5" disk it runs for two hours
and after that it crashes. Yes it runs too hot. The pedestal broke
some time ago and I"d rather not operate it horizontally. Initially
the system just had 40 MB and I wouldn't recommend that for VMS. My
Alpha Server 300 runs at the same clock speed and that system is a
lot faster. Off hand I can't recall whether the systems have the same
cpu and board logic.
Ahh, I know those machines well; I ran three or four of them here for
a long time, as general "utility" servers. One was my mail server, one
was my web server, one ran DNS and other network infrastructure stuff.
They were great machines. I just gave the stack of them (but retained
one =)) to a friend at VCF-East last month.
Good little machines, and reasonably power-efficient and compact while
still having enough PCI slots to do useful things.
They are based on the 21064A; considerably faster than the 21066 at
the same clock speed. I don't recall what chipset is wrapped around it.
(in either case)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
I've cleaned out a few entries in my bridge config. They were non-active entries, but in case someone have been off for a while, and now tries and it don't work, check with me if I commented you out. I'll happily reenable you, I just want to keep the list down a little bit...
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
My Multia runs VMS. With 128 MB and a 2.5" disk it runs for two hours and after that it crashes. Yes it runs too hot. The pedestal broke some time ago and I"d rather not operate it horizontally.
Initially the system just had 40 MB and I wouldn't recommend that for VMS.
My Alpha Server 300 runs at the same clock speed and that system is a lot faster. Off hand I can't recall whether the systems have the same cpu and board logic.
Hans
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
Sender: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:52:44
To: <hecnet at Update.UU.SE>
Reply-To: hecnet at Update.UU.SESubject: Re: [HECnet] [Simh] Pi VAX Cluster
Yes it was. I had several of them, and I had fun with them. Until I
learned of the 21066's performance issues and UDB design's thermal
problems, I had high hopes of replacing half of our datacenter
(thousands of machines) with these little boxen.
Fortunately I was able to take one or two home after we decided not to
do that. :) I never ran VMS on them, but I did run Digital Unix, which
worked well. I later tried Linux, but in those days, on Alphas, half of
the processor cycles were spent in the alignment fixup trap handler, so
even waiting for keystroke echo was painful...not a good sign for a
processor clocked at 166MHz or 233MHz! I went back to Digital Unix in a
hurry!
-Dave
On 06/16/2012 03:46 PM, Kari Uusim ki wrote:
I agree absolutely. It was a good beginning though.
Kari
On 16.6.2012 21:33, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/16/2012 02:31 PM, Kari Uusim ki wrote:
Unfortunately the Multia was way too early for the customers. Nobody
seemed to understand the the point with a minimal design.
A few years later it would have been a real success.
Well...a few years later, with better cooling, and with something
other than the 21066 as its CPU. That chip had a memory controller
designed by the "NEW GUY!" and it was slower than pissing tar. The
21064's memory bandiwdth is far superior.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Yes it was. I had several of them, and I had fun with them. Until I
learned of the 21066's performance issues and UDB design's thermal
problems, I had high hopes of replacing half of our datacenter
(thousands of machines) with these little boxen.
Fortunately I was able to take one or two home after we decided not to
do that. :) I never ran VMS on them, but I did run Digital Unix, which
worked well. I later tried Linux, but in those days, on Alphas, half of
the processor cycles were spent in the alignment fixup trap handler, so
even waiting for keystroke echo was painful...not a good sign for a
processor clocked at 166MHz or 233MHz! I went back to Digital Unix in a
hurry!
-Dave
On 06/16/2012 03:46 PM, Kari Uusim ki wrote:
I agree absolutely. It was a good beginning though.
Kari
On 16.6.2012 21:33, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/16/2012 02:31 PM, Kari Uusim ki wrote:
Unfortunately the Multia was way too early for the customers. Nobody
seemed to understand the the point with a minimal design.
A few years later it would have been a real success.
Well...a few years later, with better cooling, and with something
other than the 21066 as its CPU. That chip had a memory controller
designed by the "NEW GUY!" and it was slower than pissing tar. The
21064's memory bandiwdth is far superior.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
I agree absolutely. It was a good beginning though.
Kari
On 16.6.2012 21:33, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/16/2012 02:31 PM, Kari Uusim ki wrote:
Unfortunately the Multia was way too early for the customers. Nobody
seemed to understand the the point with a minimal design.
A few years later it would have been a real success.
Well...a few years later, with better cooling, and with something
other than the 21066 as its CPU. That chip had a memory controller
designed by the "NEW GUY!" and it was slower than pissing tar. The
21064's memory bandiwdth is far superior.
-Dave
On 06/16/2012 02:31 PM, Kari Uusim ki wrote:
Unfortunately the Multia was way too early for the customers. Nobody
seemed to understand the the point with a minimal design.
A few years later it would have been a real success.
Well...a few years later, with better cooling, and with something
other than the 21066 as its CPU. That chip had a memory controller
designed by the "NEW GUY!" and it was slower than pissing tar. The
21064's memory bandiwdth is far superior.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Yes, there are only SCSI interfaces inside the Alpha Multia.
There has been a 340MB SCSI 2,5" drive as an option in some models.
I agree about the external disks, but if attaching a long cable (e.g. 10ft) and putting the disk box under the table can improve the looks. :)
Unfortunately the Multia was way too early for the customers. Nobody seemed to understand the the point with a minimal design.
A few years later it would have been a real success.
Kari
On 16.6.2012 19:07, Bob Armstrong wrote:
A 2,5" disk might produce a little less heat, but it seems to be too much
anyway.
Doesn't it require a SCSI disk, though? 2.5" SCSI disks are unobtanium
these days. And the Multia is such a cute little box - using it with
external drives ruins the whole effect.
I have a couple of UDBs/Multias too and way back when being able to run
"all three" operating systems (Windows, Unix and VMS) on the same hardware
was pretty amazing.
Bob
.
El 11/06/2012, a les 13:43, gerry77 at mail.com va escriure:
able to find...
Please, note that I'm really not versed in TOPS-20 configurations so I shall
write about TOPS-10 only. :)
(...)
2) LAT. LAT works fine in TOPS-20. In TOPS-10 LCP tells me LAT is
active, but it does not work (does not even announce itself). How do I
enable LAT in TOPS-10?
Well, I'm using a homemade LAT-enabled monitor and I have the following in my
SYS:SYSTEM.CMD file (among other things):
(...)
(Notice the NORUN parameter!)
Thanks a lot. It kinda worked, but I got these messages when I tried to llogin:
$ llogin bitxt1
? INTTNF SYS:TTY.INI not found
BITXT1 19:54:50 TTY5 system 3600
Connected to Node Line # 770
.LOGIN 100,2
.R OPSER
[OPRPAF Processing auto command file]
?OPRALF LOOKUP failure 0
*
Well, I was able to figure out by myself. The SYS:TTY.INI file had (don't know why) <057> protection. I changed it to <055> and I got the familiar prompt after llogin.
So thanks-a-lot. :)
Anyway you'd still have to discover why your monitor has crashed... You can
see a log of your dumps by running CRSCPY interactively and giving it the
REPORT command at the CRSCPY> prompt.
One more thing to work on :)
Jordi Guillaumes i Pons
jg at jordi.guillaumes.name
HECnet: BITXOV::JGUILLAUMES
A 2,5" disk might produce a little less heat, but it seems to be too much
anyway.
Doesn't it require a SCSI disk, though? 2.5" SCSI disks are unobtanium
these days. And the Multia is such a cute little box - using it with
external drives ruins the whole effect.
I have a couple of UDBs/Multias too and way back when being able to run
"all three" operating systems (Windows, Unix and VMS) on the same hardware
was pretty amazing.
Bob
Pi seems to be very interesting. I have to order one as well.
Speaking about the Multia; I've been playing with my Multias (166 & 233MHz) and found out that the rumors about it having thermal problems is true, but only when there is an internal disk drive. When using external disks, they haven't been overheating even if running Windows NT 4 for several hours. I think the development team was too ambitious when they placed a 3,5" drive inside the already crowded case. A 2,5" disk might produce a little less heat, but it seems to be too much anyway.
I'll do more testing soon like running VMS, Digital Unix, using add-in PCI boards, etc. A few years ago I installed and booted VMS and DigitalUnix. So both can be run on the Multia even with DECwindows.
If running the Multia without the (vertical) stand might cause more thermal load inside the case. Haven't tried that so far, but that's worth testing as well.
If anyone is interested, I can send him more information.
Kari
On 14.6.2012 9:46, Boyanich, Alastair wrote:
I see. I would've imagined they were worse. I do recall early in the
piece when the 233 ev45 (?) multia came out to replace the 166Mhz one, I
was called in when one went fut in the office at "Not Nice O'Clock" as
one was left on with NT4.0 and the "Okay to power off" (or what ever the
message was) screen which had been shutdown by one of our punters and
the idle loop was a busy one which after many hours of max current draw
had allowed the machine to put in a credible impersonation of the
Chernobyl disaster and had emitted enough toxins to trip the fire alarm.
There was words spoken with the employee and a call to DEC who amazingly
replaced it on the quiet. I suspect they were worried about fires in
offices for a while.
Al.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On
Behalf Of Mark Benson
Sent: Thursday, 14 June 2012 4:05 PM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] [Simh] Pi VAX Cluster
On 14 Jun 2012, at 00:45, Boyanich, Alastair wrote:
Someone needs to revive the VT525 case and make a DEC Multia again
with
an i7 in it. Should last about the same length of time thermally. :P
Al.
Actually, with the right fans, a Multia-shape/size case would be fine
with a n i7
in. They are very thermally efficient.
--
Mark Benson
http://DECtec.info
Twitter: @DECtecInfo
HECnet: STAR69::MARK
Online Resource & Mailing List for DEC Enthusiasts.
.
