22 Apr
2021
22 Apr
'21
9:05 p.m.
On 4/22/21 11:03 AM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
I love the idea of a pure-BI VAX. Our 8250 is by no means fast, but I
love it just the same.
We have an
8250 at LSSM. I don't know if it's capable of loading
microcode patches from console media, but I can tell you that it doesn't
require console media to come up.
There's an 8350, DIVISI, on HECnet but I don't power it up much. Can't
remember if I ever tried booting it without the console diskette. It has some interesting
features, being both a dual-CPU system and also the smallest BI bus VAX, but other than
that it's just not all that exciting... Oh, and it's super annoying to work on the BI
bus card cage, since you can't run it with the cover off. It has airflow sensors and
it'll shut down if you remove any of the chassis skins.
True. I had to rig the sensors on ours to work on it.
And while I love the design in general, upward-facing backplane slots
sure are a pain. It took me DAYS of work to get some never-before-used
BI slots functioning in that machine due to schmutz in the slots.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA