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15586 discussions

by bqt＠softjar.se

Been away a few days, so late into the game. But anyway... On 2013-07-15 16:21, Bob Armstrong wrote: My 11/730 is not happy the electronics work great and are even fairly easy to fix, but keeping disk drives on the thing working is proving to be a challenge. Right now it has two RA81s and one has quit completely ( servo fine position error ) and the other is flaky. The original R80 on the RB730 had the HDA die years ago and I ve never been able to find a replacement. Saw the talk about the R80. I believe that either an RA80 or RM80 could provide the bits for the R80, but finding either would be difficult today. RA81 is probably easier to deal with, but those are also getting rare. I have several vintage SMD drives, including a couple of nice CDC 9715 drives, that I was thinking about using to replace the RA8x drives. I have not one but two UNIBUS SMD controllers an Emulex SC21 and a Spectra Logic 121 that I thought would do the job, but after reading the fine print yesterday that turns out not to be true. Both controllers emulate RH11s with RM0x drives attached, which is fine if you re a PDP-11 but VMS has never supported that configuration. Right. [Before anybody says Wait RM05s are supported by VMS, that s only partly true. VMS supported MASSBUS disks on a RH750 or RH780 controller, but VMS has never supported the RH11. Emulex actually sold a special VMS driver for their card, but I don t have it and besides, VMB still wouldn t support it. The Spectra Logic manual only talks about PDP-11 OSes and carefully avoids ever mentioning VMS.] Not surprising, since the RH11 do not really fit into the world of VAXen very well. I ve got some RA7x drives, but there s no easy way to mount them or supply power to them. I m not sure if there ever was a rack mount chassis for RA7x drives. There was for RA9x drives, but those I don t have. I also have two RC25 drives and several AZTEC controllers, but those drives were horribly unreliable even when they were new. Neither works, and fixing them or getting removable media for them is hopeless. Others already mentioned the rack box for RA7x drives. Nice hardware, if you can find it. It is the same size as the RA9x drives, but fits four RA7x drives each. With RA73 drives, you'll pack a whopping 8G on each rack location. Fairly impressive for its day. You just needs plenty of controllers... :-) Does anybody have any other ideas? Who else has an old UNIBUS VAX? What are you doing to disk drives? SCSI has already been mentioned. On the 8650 I "have", there is UDA-50 with RA92 and RA73 drives, and CI, which in the end leads to more SCSI disks.... But you can't hook CI to a 11/730 either... I ve actually had the 11/730 for about fifteen years now I restored it out of parts from two different 730s that were scrapped. It s been fairly easy to keep running except for the drives, and although it s admittedly a bit slow, it s a cool machine. It is horribly slow... :-) Johnny

12 years, 5 months

VS100s, was Re: [HECnet] Drives for a VAX-11/730

by lee.gleason＠comcast.net

On 07/15/2013 11:00 AM, lee.gleason at comcast.net wrote: >> My first home machine was an 11/725, to which I added an RB730 >> controller , and I used it with an RM80 for a number of years, until >> power problems killed a bunch of boards in it. I hated losing it, since >> I had also added a VAXstation 100 workstation peripheral to it - at the >> time it was a pretty exotic setup for use at home. I'm still hanging on >> tothe VS100 gear, in case another Unibus VAX comes my way. > Do you have the VS100 interface board? I saw one on eBay a couple of >months ago, and I slapped myself in the forehead really hard. ;) I had >a VS100 for many years, and gave it away around 1993 because I could >never find the interface board for it. When I saw that board hit eBay, >I really wish I'd kept the VS100.. Yep, hung on to the board. I actually had to be a detective to get the interface board - when I bought the VS100 box and monitor, from Eli Hoffman, it didn't include the board. I had to call them, see who sold the monitor and box to them, and then trace through that organization to find the department and person who had surplused the original system, and buy the board from him. Since these days, I have a lot more interest in RSX than VMS, and the VS100 never worked past VMS 4.7 anyway, I'm hoping I run across a UNIBUS 11 some day and see if I can write enough of a driver to get it to draw pictures. Since I have the VS100 sources, it's registers are pretty well documented. -- Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR Control-G Consultants lee.gleason at gmail.com

12 years, 5 months

Copying RL02 image under RSX

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2013-07-12 22:12, Bob Armstrong wrote: Check that the transport lock isn't engaged. ... and that the belt tensioner isn't released. Sorry - neither is the case. Not that easy... It was worth a try. :-) Anyway, I can't say my experience of the RA81 are that they are that unreliable. You have the glue issue, but that is a different kind of problem. Otherwise they have been pretty good. The RA60 on the other hand is very finicky. But if it has developed problems I don't have many suggestions. I assume you already know about the diagnostics port. Johnny

12 years, 5 months

Drives for a VAX-11/730

by bob＠jfcl.com

Clem Cole [clemc at ccc.com] wrote: We had both SI and Emulex controllers (SBI based) ..... but I did not think those will work on a 730 The 730 has a "built in" disk controller, the RB730. Other than that there was no special bus (e.g. SBI) for the 730 and all peripherals were UNIBUS. No SBI based controller will work in a 730. performance based customers No performance based customer would have even considered a 730 - it's tied with the MicroVAX-I as the slowest two VAXes ever made. The 730s claim to fame was the small size and low cost. You have to remember that it was designed in the late 70s and shipped in the early 80s. I worked at DEC at the time and I saw one around 80 or 81, and I remember that at first I thought they were putting me on. I couldn't believe that they'd put an entire VAX into a box that size! I thought it was really just another PDP-11 and someone had hacked the front panel graphics - after all, it looked just like a 11/24 or 44. But it was a real VAX, and it's still the smallest UNIBUS VAX ever made. Bob

12 years, 5 months

Drives for a VAX-11/730

by clemc＠ccc.com

We had a number of CDC 9766 & Fujistu Eagle drives at UCB on the 780s and 750s. I don't remember special cables other than the two SMD cables from the controller. We had both SI and Emulex controllers (SBI based) for them, and I do remember there was a preference for one over the other, but at this point I do not remember which was considered better. I think is was the Emulex ones - but I did not think those will work on a 730 - we never had them at UCB. By the time of the 730 was released many (??most??) performance based customers were abandoning Vaxen and moving to Masscomp, Sun, and Apollo (68K based) because the 730 was expensive and so much slower [I used to goad one of the lead 730 designers that the 730 was the greatest gift to the UNIX / 68K community, because it meant most anyone could easily beat a "Vax" in a benchmark]. Actually it was interesting time, you could tell a lot about a firm in their advertising. The solid firms with products that lasted would benchmark against the 780 or 785, the weaker ones would use a 730 and talk about it being a "Vax" and then in fine print say it as 730. Clem On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 10:14 PM, John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> wrote: From: "Bob Armstrong" <bob at jfcl.com> >As I remember, the RM02/3/5 were CDC 9760-something drives, which were SMD. >Of course it's possible that the DEC OEM versions had customized interfaces. Yes, DEC made a bunch of gratuitous changes, although it might be possible to duplicate them with another drive. IIRC they reversed the polarity of most/all of the signals on one cable (it's differential so you can fix that by swapping wires), and the direction of the unit-select lines is reversed (so the plug in the drive tells the RM adapter what Massbus unit to be, rather than telling the drive what SMD unit to be). I think there are a few other things but the basic I/O interface is the same. My 11/730 has a UDA50 + RA81 instead of the RB730, and was bootable last time it was anything-able, FWIW. So I'd think a CDU720/etc. would work fine too. John Wilson D Bit

12 years, 5 months

Semi-OT: adding IPX to the Cisco mesh

by uusimaki＠exdecfinland.org

On 15.7.2013 23:29, Sampsa Laine wrote: What's the name of the product, going to grep through the SPL CDs I have.. The latest one is a part of the Pathworks V6.0 kit. The (complete) kit is called PWRK060. When finding products on the SPL distributions, there is a very helpful web site which you might want to use: http://de.openvms.org/spl.php?product_name=netware&upi=&platform=&condist_i… Kari

12 years, 5 months

Drives for a VAX-11/730

by wilson＠dbit.com

From: "Bob Armstrong" <bob at jfcl.com> As I remember, the RM02/3/5 were CDC 9760-something drives, which were SMD. Of course it's possible that the DEC OEM versions had customized interfaces. Yes, DEC made a bunch of gratuitous changes, although it might be possible to duplicate them with another drive. IIRC they reversed the polarity of most/all of the signals on one cable (it's differential so you can fix that by swapping wires), and the direction of the unit-select lines is reversed (so the plug in the drive tells the RM adapter what Massbus unit to be, rather than telling the drive what SMD unit to be). I think there are a few other things but the basic I/O interface is the same. My 11/730 has a UDA50 + RA81 instead of the RB730, and was bootable last time it was anything-able, FWIW. So I'd think a CDU720/etc. would work fine too. John Wilson D Bit

12 years, 5 months

Drives for a VAX-11/730

by bob＠jfcl.com

Boyanich, Alastair [Alastair.Boyanich at au.fujitsu.com] wrote: Was there ever a UNIBUS DSSI controller or were they all XMI only ... ... don't know about UNIBUS, but there was a QBUS DSSI controller - the KFQSA, M7769. I've got one of those in a uVAX-III. I'd use a UNIBUS one if I had it (I even have some spare RF drives) but otherwise the RA7x/RA9x drives seem easier. Bob

12 years, 5 months

Drives for a VAX-11/730

by bob＠jfcl.com

lee.gleason at comcast.net wrote: I remember poring over the drawings for the RB730 at the time, wondering if a plain non-DEC SMD drive would have worked .... Yeah - I was wondering the same thing. The RM80 Technical Manual doesn't seem to be online, but the RM MASSBUS Adapter Technical Manual http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/EK-RMA… has a lot of information about the RM80 too. It looks like the RM80 used the same MASSBUS Drive Control Logic box as the RM0x drives. As I remember, the RM02/3/5 were CDC 9760-something drives, which were SMD. Of course it's possible that the DEC OEM versions had customized interfaces. The RB730 Technical Manual is also online http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/vax/730/EK-RB730-TD-001_VAX-11_7… and it has a description of the R80 interface, but this version doesn't look that much like SMD to me. Bb

12 years, 5 months

Drives for a VAX-11/730

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On 07/15/2013 10:21 AM, Bob Armstrong wrote: I have several vintage SMD drives, including a couple of nice CDC 9715 drives, that I was thinking about using to replace the RA8x drives. I have not one but two UNIBUS SMD controllers an Emulex SC21 and a Spectra Logic 121 that I thought would do the job, but after reading the fine print yesterday that turns out not to be true. Both controllers emulate RH11s with RM0x drives attached, which is fine if you re a PDP-11 but VMS has never supported that configuration. ... I ve got some RA7x drives, but there s no easy way to mount them or supply power to them. I m not sure if there ever was a rack mount chassis for RA7x drives. There was for RA9x drives, but those I don t have. There are rackmount chassis for RA7x drives. They hold four drives, two in the front and two in the back, and each take up half a rack width...meaning a pair of these chassis, holding up to eight RA7x drives, is about the same size as an RL02/R80/RA81/etc. I have a bunch of these. I'm hanging onto them (I have a LOT of machines here) but they're not tough to find. Let me know if you'd like me to take some pictures of them so you can more easily identify them when they pop up. That said, though, I have a shortage of SMD drives here, and you said you have a bunch of those; I MIGHT be interested in some sort of a swap at some point. Does anybody have any other ideas? Who else has an old UNIBUS VAX? What are you doing to disk drives? I have an R80 on my 11/730 and an RA81 (though now dead) on my 11/750. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

12 years, 5 months

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