<> It seems the 11/730 is not very popular. How hard is it to come about
<> operating systems for these?  I assume they are only available second han

You kidding?  They sold loads of them as they were small and cheap and 
would run the same stuff that it's bigger brothers could.  It's not fast
by VAX standards but as a netbooter, firewall, or router they were common 
long after they to were considered slow for other uses.  Why? they were 
small, and ran forever with little attention.  Or as sone cutomer put it, 
cheap to keep and small enough for trivial tasks.

<It's not too easy. You need licenses for them so you really can't put them
<up on an anonymous FTP site. :-( If you want Ultrix (hey, it's better than

Dec has made versions 5.x->6.1 available via CDrom for a trivial fee and the 
license is available to all decus members for free(just sign up it's free).

<However you could probably get an OpenVMS hobbyist license without too
<much trouble. But you still have to get the media. You can get OVMS 6.2 on
<CDROM but that won't do you much good. (Is there anyway to net boot an 
<11/730???)

A 730 can boot via the eithernet using DEC mop protocal.  I believe serial 
DDCMP lines are supported as well.

A 730 is slow but generally compact as older vaxen go and like most vaxen 
from the 780 on it's sorta like the 386sx/16 as compared to the P6, they 
will both run the same stuff at differing speeds

I would think if Netbsd runs on a 750, a 730 should fly well too.

Allison