Sweet.. New toy..

[David Holland]

FWIW, (To restart a old thread) 

I stumbled across this website.  

http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/computers/vaxen/vax_faq.html

It appears the "upgradable" VAX-4300 backplane is part #54-19354-01  
(As printed on the little sticker next to the right most Q-bus(?)
slot) 

No serial numbers involved, but you do have to open it up.  :->

Finally getting around to cleaning the VAX.  The dust isn't too 
bad.  Nicely made machine, good steel frame.  Backplane is on par w/ 
my Crimson's backplane. :) 

Ciao, 

David

On Fri, 24 Dec 2004, Witchy wrote:

> >> with a ribbon cable doing the cpu/memory interconnect while
> >> the later ones
> >> used the zero-force type white socket blocks found on the likes of the
> >> HSD/HSZ RAID controllers and Alpha 1200 CPU modules.
> >
> > Are you sure about that? I thouht the only difference was that
> > more wires were connected on the later backplane. You were
> > supposed to be able to use anything (including a KA670) in
> > the later backplanes but only a KA670 in the earlier one.
> 
> We've got several 4000 series VAXen in the workshop and one of them has
> this backplane, I'm sure it's a 4000-505 or something of that ilk. I'm
> back home in Newcastle for the festivities now, but I can mail the poor
> saps left at work tomorrow and ask them to check :) I can also check my
> own 4500 assuming the wind doesn't stop me getting to the garage tomorrow!
> Oh, the levers that hold the boards in are on some sort of ratchet
> arrangement from what I remember, it's been a few months since I was last
> delving into the internals.
> 
> > If the difference was physically obvious, why rely on telling
> > people the serial number range to distinguish one from another
> > when simply looking would have done?
> 
> because end users weren't allowed to pull their machines apart to check?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- 
> adrian/witchy
> Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
> www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?
>