DEC/VG Datasystem/System Industries/Western Dynex

[Jay West]

Found something rather oddish (for this place) at one of my usual junk 
hunting grounds. Thought I'd post about it here and see if anyone had any 
interest. More importantly, I was wondering if people might be able to fill 
in background on what this system probably contained.

DEC H960 Rack with 861C power controller, both side panels present. Back 
door present, but 8x10 hole cut in back. There is a DEC header panel at the 
top which is shiny silver on the front with the text "VG DataSystem 2000" 
screened on it. There is a chassistrak railset, looks like one would use for 
an RX02 but it's inner rails only. The 861 power cable was cut on the plug 
end. There was also the condor fan and cabling. This rack had a 1/2 height 
dec filler panel and I snagged that myself, along with the two (and only 
two) filler panel stud mounts. At the back of the rack was some custom 
interconnect stuff, obviously used to connect the machine to the outside 
world.

There was a rackmount box (removed from rack but available). I believe it to 
be a disk controller of some sort. It had a tag on it saying "RKA1-3, 
RKB1-3, SYS & DSK?" {the DSK was fuzzy, may not have that right). On the 
rear is a 2 position toggle switch marked "NORMAL" and "FORMAT". The front 
of the unit said System Industries, and on the back it said "Model 
3040-3051". From the back of this box were about 4 or so long ribbon cables 
that I was told went to the disk drives (can't verify this for sure).

Lastly there were two identical disk drives, obviously Western Dynex drives 
even though they had "System Industries" on the front. I remember them from 
microdata days. They were labled XDD-6222-TA45F, 2400RPM, 200TPI. Each drive 
had a piece of removable media the media was visually the same as RL02 media 
from the top. One said "scratch disk, all data here will be lost". The other 
had a lable that read "VG 2035 F/B Release 7.3 bootable". "UCC system before 
converting to rel 8 in Jul 82". Both drives include mounting rails. One 
drive appears to have had the fan on the rear removed. The drives appear to 
be in fair condition, but probably are just good for parts.

If anyone is really interested in any of it, let me know and I'll put you in 
touch with the shop. I may be interested in the dynex drives if they could 
be used on my Microdata. If no one takes the rack I may see if he'll sell me 
just the condor fan. I'm curious if anyone knows about VG datasystem 2000 or 
System Industries.

Jay West