VAX 11/750 rescued, alas...

[Paul Anderson]

Send me a wish list- I should have most of them.
Paul


On 10/5/07, J Blaser <oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org> wrote:
>
> The gods smiled upon me, and I was chosen to rescue the DEC VAX 11/750
> that Richard alerted us too about a month ago.  Yesterday I went up to
> collect it.  I think most of us, during a pickup, are mindful of just
> getting the load onboard and away, and it was the same way for me with
> this pickup.  Besides, the unit was literally stuffed so tightly into
> the front corner of their storage that there was no way to examine the
> innards at that location.  A few images can be found at:
>
> http://www.rogerwilco.org/VAX11-750
>
> Once back on homebase, I finally got a chance to open up the unit.  To
> my horror (it is October, after all), I find just a single board
> installed in the CPU backplane, and one loose q-bus board!  The first is
> a System Industries 9700-6301 with the following significant chips:
> Signetics N8X60N, AMD AM9128 (x2), Motorola MCM93L422PC (x4), TI
> SN74S181N, and about a dozen TI 82S137s with little numbered stickers on
> each.  Otherwise it's loaded with TTL logic chips.  There are no headers
> or other connectors on board, just the backplane fingers.   I have no
> idea what this board is.  I openly admit that I'm a complete {non-uVAX |
> massbus | unibus} novice.  The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, which
> I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel interface.  I'll have to
> do a little scouting on Bitsavers and Manx to see if I can turn up
> anything useful.
>
> Anyway, sadly, this box is not much more than an empty carcass, without
> any brains.  It clearly was sacrificed to keep other systems alive.
> Still, I would dearly love to populate the backplane(s) and light this
> baby up, but I guessing I'll be hard pressed to find anyone with a whole
> set of spares that I could somehow convince into letting them go.
>
> I don't want to lose an opportunity here, and I'm not saying that I have
> my eye on the local metal recycler just yet, but what am I going to do
> with an empty chassis?!  Now, I should say that the donor was extremely
> nice, and offered to pass along anything related that eventually turns
> up as they dig deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20',
> literally boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure I
> should hope for much.
>
> Am I foolish to ask?  Anyone with a spare set of VAX 11/750 modules?
>
> - Jared
>
>