VAX 11/750 rescued, alas...

[Ethan Dicks]

On 10/7/07, Jochen Kunz <jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:07:03 -0600
> J Blaser <oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org> wrote:
>
> > 2. Is the L0005 or the L0008 preferred?  Which one is easier to use
> > with  VMS?  With NetBSD?

There are no OS dependencies that I am aware of, beyond how much
physical RAM you have to stuff into the box.  We ran 4.0BSD and 4.1BSD
(and VMS 3.4, I think) on an 11/750 w/2MB.  When our leased system
went away, I added the extra memory line to the backplane and took
that same 11/750 to 8MB, where it still remains.  On that machine, we
ran VMS 4.x and various versions oUltrix.

> > (Gee, a random thought just hit me...is there ULTRIX  for this beastie?)
> There should be ULTRIX for the 11/750.

There is.  Finding it might be tricky, though, and I forget what
versions run on the 11/750, but ISTR we started with Ultrix 1.1
sometime around 1988 (and it wasn't particularly new then).

> An other option is 4.3BSD-Tahoe. You can get it from TUHS or the CSRG
> CDs. Once I instaled it on a MV II, that was upgraded to a MV III+ after
> install. It was really fun to work with that old software. (And it felt
> much faster then NetBSD. No surprise, given the 15 years of software
> developement in between. Though, NetBSD is astonishing efficient on
> "old" hardware, yet giving contamporarily features like IPv6.)

Unless you are a dedicated DEC masochist, I can recommend exploring
4.3BSD-Tahoe vs Ultrix.
But for me, even though we did run both BSD and VMS back in the day,
if I were going to pay to power a Unibus VAX, I'd set it up to run VMS
and leave BSD to more generic hardware.

-ethan