Gaps in the collection

[Ethan Dicks]

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 11:36:26PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
> > or disk/tape drives that work with it... I mean... I like VMS and I've been
> > using it for 20 years, but unless I want to plug in a particular peripheral,
> > I'd rather run a desk-top-sized machine than a rack, just for power/heat
> > reasons (for the record, I use the 8300 because I have a stack of VAXBI
> 
> 
> For an alternative viewpoint, the only VAXen I'd want to run at home are
> the 11/730 and the 11/780 family (11/780, 11/782, 11/785). The reason is
> those are the only ones I can actually understand the internals of --
> they're built from standard chips (non-protected PALs in the 11/730,
> admittedly), rather than custom gate arrays or worse). 

That's a fair argument.  I was happy to get an 11/725 again last year (I
used to have one that I loaned to a "friend" who neglected to tell me that
his company was being sold and it went out the door to the new owners.  By
the time I learned about it, it was too late).

I've never had the chance to work with any of the 11/780 family.  I know
about them academically, but not personally.  If I had to choose, though,
I'd probably pick an 11/730 or 11/725 over the larger systems, even though
there's a serious difference in memory capacity and horsepower, just because
of power/heat issues.

Of course, if I had a MASSBUS disk or tape I needed to fiddle with, that
makes the choice for me.

-ethan

-- 
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S      Current South Pole Weather at 07-Aug-2004 01:40 Z
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Ethan.Dicks at amanda.spole.gov     http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html