Its a fairly quick machine, _for a VAX_.

Given your comment about the M38, I have to wonder what it is you would get 
out of owning a VAX? If you want something that is "alternate architecture" 
but still moves along like an x86 box then I suggest you skip the VAX and 
find yourself a nice Alpha machine. VAXen have a unique and hugely powerful 
machine code, the ultimate expression of CISC if you will, and they are 
available cheaply.
What they aren't is "fast" by nearly anyone's standard these days.

That being said, the 4000/90 (vs the 90a) is a reasonably fast for a VAX 
and can take SCSI peripherals which is a plus. They don't suffer from the 
1G boot drive limitation like the 3100's do. They take a non-standard DEC 
memory that is fairly easy to find in 4MB chunks but less available in the 
nicer 16MB chunks. A 32MB system (full memory of 4MB modules) is a fun VMS box.

If you want to play with the weird and wonderful Qbus cards then you'd need 
to wait for a 4000/100 or some Qbus based VAX. Also note that you'll need 
an AUI-10Bt tranceiver but you've probably already got one for your 3100/M38

--Chuck


At 08:22 PM 1/4/02 +0000, Tim Franklin wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>I'm currently looking on ebay (.co.uk, not .com) at a Vaxstation 4000/90,
>which I'm thinking of acquiring, but I can't find a lot of info on this
>machine.  From the hardware reference linked from the NetBSD site, I find it
>rated at around 10 times the vups of my only previous VAX, a vs3100/m38,
>which was on the borderline between usefulness and skip-ready, but that's
>about it.
>
>Does anyone have any pointers to more info on this box?  Size?  'Standard' /
>max ram?  I believe it's SCSI, so it should be fairly easy to whip up a
>couple of drives from the spares bin.  Given an internet connection, is it
>likely to be of use as anything other than a paperweight?
>
>Sorry if this is readily-available info and I'm looking in the wrong places,
>I'm something of a VAX-newbie, just enjoy playing with as many different
>architectures as I can get my hands on...
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Tim.