DEC 11/45 build - advice sought, parts requested possibly.

[Jay West]

Ethan wrote....
> I understand wanting to keep to a single rack, but to be honest, back
> in the day, a single-rack 11/34 was pretty common, but the larger
> machines tended to have multiple racks, a BA-11 in addition to the
> CPU, etc.  A BA-11K holds up to 3 DD11DK backplanes, *lots* of space.
> You can also mount RK11D backplanes in there, or an RK611 for
> RK06/RK07... all commonly done on machines in the 1970s and 1980s.
I only have one RK05, and it's destined for my PDP-8E, and I'm unlikely to 
ever find more. Many list members have scads of them, but to me RK05's are 
pretty much unobtanium in my area.

> In terms of disk, RT11 can live just fine on floppies, but a disk is
> nice, even an RL01 or RL02 (5MB or 10MB).  Older versions of RSTS are
> OK on an RL02 or two; newer ones (v9, v10) may not fit on a system
> with a single RL02.  2.9BSD doesn't really fit in 10MB - you can load
> it, but there's no room for kernel sources.  Not sure about disk
> requirements for v6, v7, etc., but 10MB might be OK.
I'll go with either an RL02 or RA81.

> With leaving the top of the rack empty for cooling (probably not a bad
> idea in a non-machine-room environment), your options are severely
> limited.  If it were my system, I don't think I'd even consider trying
> to fit in a single rack, but I have a) empty H960 racks and b) space
> to set them up.
I have two other H960 racks, guess I'll have to add one to the /45 and make 
it a dual bay system. The other H960 will probably go to the 11/34 
restoration.

Thanks for the input!

Jay West