>Does the DELUA have the higher performance mode? I have the DEUNA and
>DELUA manuals, and see very little difference in the interface.
Those are unibus (non Qbus) and outside my expereince beyond knowing
one of the two is better than the other but I forgot which. Apparently
they
are very different inside despite the common interface.
Allison
> I guess I'm looking for advice from the list members to whom
> this stuff is "old hat". How you shop around for systems of this nature,
> how easy it is to interchange hardware, where you manage to find your
> systems, what to look for, what to avoid. Things like that.
I think the most important thing for the new collector is obtain "Complete"
systems. Trying to restore an unfamiliar system by piecing together
componets can be quite trying. I rarely collect a new system unless it has
the OS, and ALL the hardware.
Steve Robertson
<steverob(a)hotoffice.com>
From: Ethan Dicks <ethan_dicks(a)yahoo.com>
>> Cheap as far as I know. The key thing is despite claims if the DEQNA
>> you have is working, whats the rush to dump it.
>
>Isn't there an issue with VMS obsoleting the DEQNA?
Remember the discussion of a few days ago. Well the rule for VMS
is DEQNA is not obsolete, just unsupported. FYI, unsupported
does not mean there is no driver only that the supplied on has not
been updated or rigerously tested in those version so dont call and
complain if it dont work. It went unsupported with V5.0.
>This one was free, as was the uVAXII it was in (RA81, KDA50, 9Mb, etc)
Use it. The DELQA and DEQNA have nearly identical modes with the delqa
adding a higher performance one(plus reliability). For VMS prior to
7.x it does work and for 7.2 mine seems ok.
Allison
From: THETechnoid(a)home.com <THETechnoid(a)home.com>
>I don't know anything about VMS.
>
>VMS boots and all, but it does not recognize my framebuffer and so won't
>run DecWindows yet. How do I fix that?
Read "HELP DECWINDOWS"
The boot process does not have to recognize the framebuffer, you run
DECWINDOWS as a process. FYI it's possible it's not installed.
>Of all the drives I've tried, the only one that worked was an old
Quantum
>210mb. I'd like more flexibility. Any hints on what I need to do to a
>drive to make it run on this machine? They generally are 'seen', but
VMS
>bombs when I try to install.
Gotta INIT them first.
>Even though I've got cdrom drives that are jumperable for 512byte
blocks,
>none worked properly but the original RRD40 which is slower than molasis
I have two toshibas 2x scsi that work killer so maybe the CDrom is ????!
>in February, the only RRD40 we have got, and it requires some wierd cart
I
>don't have. The only way I can change cd's is to disassemble the drive,
>draw the disk out with hemostats, and slip the replacement in.
You need a tray, they can be found. it's not that unique.
>Basicly, I need a primer on VMS, and someone to corrospond with who
knows
>his/her stuff.
Try the HELP utility, if that cant answer you question then try here.
Really,
it's kinda cryptic just like manpages but once you get into them you find
a lot of info.
That and a grey wall is handy too (VMS DOC set for V5 is grey binders
about 10 linear feet of them some 17 volumes.)
Allison
See "http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=466646805".
He wants $100 opening bid which I think is about 10x to much but if you're
desperate.... BTW you MUST have the proper controller cards and software
to use these. The MDS's DO NOT come with a controller for the dual drives.
The single integrated drive is contolled via the I/O control card and it
will not operate the external drives.
Joe
From: Ethan Dicks <ethan_dicks(a)yahoo.com>
>Well my recent (last night) experience suggests that what you remember
is
>true. I was refitting my BA123 with a CPU, 8Mb of PMI memory, my
one-and-
>only DEQNA and an RQDX3 and stuffed into it a bootable RD54 from a
VS2000
>that happens to have VMS 5.5 and some stuff to fire up a LAT server and
>clustering. The startup bitched mightily about the presence of the
DEQNA
>and casual reading of the error messages seemed to tell me that VMS 5.5
>cluster manager did *not* like it one bit.
the DEQNA went unsupported because of clustering. Part of the problem
was
packet errors that required a driver that encapsulated data to insure the
errors would be caught. That was a huge perfomance hit on eithernet
which
by disk standards then was slower, and didn't need further slowing. That
added to the DEQNA being an really old PDP-11 design that outlived
a lot of revs (L5 is the last I know of) meant a newer and less cranky
design was wanting.
I'd not use it in a cluster unless I had to but V5.5 was when clusters
started to protest (they can be forced).
>Because the machine is standalone at the moment, I didn't pay much
attention
>to it all. Eventually, I do need to get something working with Qbus and
>Ethernet (so I can begin to make physical backups of some 9 track tapes
I
>have sitting here). I'll have to either stuff a KDA50 in this beast and
>use my MDA SDI<->ESDI box (dual 1.2Mb disks) or hang a couple of RD53s
>off the RQDX3 and limit myself to one or two tapes at a time before
shooting
>them down the pipe.
Don't cluster them, make it peer to peer and it should go fine.
>Ah the good old days...
Look at the bright side... unlike winders we know what the solution is,
winders may also have that knowledge in 10 years.
As if we'd care by then. ;)
Allison
I was searching for more info on the Inel MDS and found this ad for a
free one. "http://www.dazed.org/blazermate/". There just one hitch, it's
located in NSW, Australia. I don't know any more about it. If someone
picks it up leet me know.
Joe
