> On Fri, 12 Jan 2001, NetBSD Bob wrote:
> > and cooling?  It looks like 48VDC, at maybe 10 amps?  IFF that
> 
> yup, its 48VDC

Great!  I can wangle that up easily off local power at 10-20 amps
off batteries......(A Battery Powered VAX 7000!... That would be neat!).
 
> > Anyway, who has power input requirements and cooling requirements
> > for the CPU chassis on the VAX 7000 line?
> 
> hmm. The DEC7000, which is the VAX7000's AXP counterpart (just a CPU swap
> made the upgrade) has this to say from the Alpha AXP systems handbook:
> 
> 'maximum usable power' 1500W (what this means??)

That means it is the maximum power the 48 volt bus will supply, or
about 30 amps.

> 'heat dissipation, system cabinet
>  -fully configured 5200W
>  -minimum configuration 1000W'

I am not worried about heat dissipation, since I use my VAXentoyz to
heat my basement anyway.

Minimum configuration means that it will run a minimal system at
1000 watts, or 10 amps plus heat losses plus regulator losses off
the 110v line.  That is not so bad for a home mainframe box!  (:+}}...
 
> i assume the 1500W figure is for power available to devices like disks ,etc
> in the cabinet.. 1kw is a nice round number, so mybe it uses less, but
> still, i dunno if a 48VDC 10A supply would cut it.. still, thats the 
> specs for the alpha variety, anybody have a late edition VAX handbook? 

I did some playing with the StorageWorks cabinet bits (the half of the
VAX 7000 I got last Friday).  I was going to clean up some of the dozen
HD's for use on my NetBSD VAXentoyz, and mounted one up on the VAX to
do the low-level format on it.  Guess what!  It came up already with
4.2BSD filesystems and disklabels!  That had me puzzled, a bit.
I did a dd of the bits onto a spare drive, just to keep from mucking
up the originals.  Then noted that file said the stuff was not VAX!
On a lark I loaded it up on an Alpha 3000/300 crate, for another look.
It booted but immediately crashed.  Enough booted, though that it looked
like it was Alpha bits rather than VAX bits.  OK, methinks, now I am
getting confused.....  I had stopped the dd in the middle of the drive,
since it had run all night dd'ing, and I figured something was not right.
Anyway, I saw a generic kernel in the root fs, and saved a copy of the
vmunix as vmunix.7000 (VAX 7000 in case it was strange bits), then
mv's a copy of its genvmunix to vmunix.  Then I tried another boot.
It booted Digital Unix P4.0.....on the Alpha!  It died with the
half root system, but I was able to get it up into single user and
patch the root passwd, and then tar off from the original drive the
usrfs, onto the half-dd'd one.  Reboot, and Bingo!  Running Alpha
with running Digital Unix P4.0, from the VAX7000 crate on the 3000/300
crate.

So, is this VAX 7000 critter I have half of, and hope to get the other
half of, this week, really just an Alpha?????

Need input!  Need input!

Any insights into what this critter actually is, would be appreciated.
IFF it is an Alpha, I sense it might be able to run NetBSD, with some
potential success.  IFF it is a VAX, it is strange?  Could it still
run NetBSD?  How do I find out what exactly IS the architecture of
this critter?

Thanks

Bob