🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul23.031251@aminet.uucp>, barrett@aminet.uucp (Keith Barrett) writes:
> In article <1992Jul21.185430.12950@nic.unh.edu>, tch@kepler.unh.edu (Travis C Hayes) writes:
>>I pulled an old VAXstation I case out of the dumpster yesterday and I
>>wondered if anyone knows anything about these machines. I got 4 boards
>>with it (don't know if they work): 2 4M memory boards (150ns yuck!),
>>and a set of 2 boards linked with a 50 pin flat ribbon cable (I'd love
>>to know what this is, there's a prominent flat chip on it that just says
>>SEEQ).
> 
> The information in the artwork etching that appears along the edge of the PC
> boards is more helpful than the chip stamps.
> 
> My guess, since you named the memory boards already, is that the other 2
> boards are the CPU and disk controller (KDA-50)
> 
> The memory boards MUST be located in the 1st 2 slots of the system
> (and if I remember, they also needed a ribbon cable)

I think the VAXstation I is based on the MicroVAX I which is a pure Q-bus
multi-board processor; that is, the processor boards would be the ones
connected by the ribbon cable and the memory would be standard Q-bus memory.
If that's the case, 2 4MB boards is incorrect; the most that you can put on
the Qbus is 4MB, so you couldn't have 2 boards each containing 4 MB in there.

I suspect that he's got the CPU, the memory, and the cabinet and nothing else.
The disk controller etc. were probably pulled to put in other machines.

I think the MicroVAX I is supposed to have about the performance of an 11/730.
And you can't put more than 4 MB of memory in it, so you can't put in enough
memory to run a recent version of VMS. This is fine, though, since the recent
versions of VMS probably don't support it.

If you can find a disk controller and an old enough version of VMS lying
around, it'd make a nice home machine.

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu