🚀 go-pugleaf

We recently bought 6 Vaxstation 3100's. Our goal was for each
to have one local RZ23 disk. But, in DEC's infinite wisdom,
Vaxstation 3100's aren't sold this way. They either have 2 RZ23's or
none at all. So, we bought 3 with no disks, and 3 with 2 disks 
thinking that we would take one disk out of each of the 2 disk systems
and put them in the diskless systems. (I should add that we also bought
3 disk controllers since the diskless systems don't come with them).
I volonteered to move the disks around.

This turned out to be easier than I had thought. With the help
of my coworkers, we did the first disk transfer. It took a little
while to find where all the screws and connectors go. But, after
this, I got very good at moving disks around and installing
disk controllers. I got to the point where I could take a disk out
and put it in a new system in about 20 minutes. Since I'm not very
good with hardware it would take an experienced person less time.

The moral of this story is that you should not hesitate to buy
similiar combinations of diskless and 2 disk Vaxstation systems
if your goal is to end up with 1 disk systems.

Note that I have absolutely no experience with adding 3rd party
drives to Vaxstation 3100's, a topic which has been briefly discussed
on this group without any resolution, as far as I remember. Given
how easy it is to add drives to Vaxstation 3100's, I'm very interested
in hearing about people's experiences with 3rd party drives.

If all goes well in a few weeks I'll be able to post a description
of what's required to add 3rd party memory to Vaxstation 3100's. From
what I saw when changing the disks, this looks like it will be easy.

Jon Forrest
forrest@sybase.com
{pacbell,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!forrest
415-596-3422