"asporner@eagle.ibc.edu" "Andy Sporner" writes:

>I am anticipating getting into a situation where I will have some space
>for a "real" piece of Iron (VAX that is).  What I don't know is what is
>out there that is:
>
>        1.  Cheap enough (haul it away or otherwise).
>        2.  Runs Net/BSD VAX (obviously).
>        3.  Has a reasonable amount of power to be interesting (~10 VUPS).

I think your requirements cannot curently be met!

Your VUPs requirements rule out the 11/7xx, 86x0, 82x0/83x0 and 85xx right
away. The VAX 8700 doesn't meet your requirements either but the 8800 does,
assuming that NetBSD has SMP support. (Does it? I don't know). If it does, then
the 8820, 8830 and 8840 meet your needs too. The VAX 6000-400 series and
upwards will also meet your requirements as will any VAX 7000/10000 system: but
the 6000s are relatively cheap whereas the 7000/10000 are unlikely to be prime
candidates for disposal.

There was also a VAX 9000 of some sort waiting to be hauled away only a few
months ago. Now that would be quite some beast!

I haven't seen any mention of any NetBSD support for any of these systems, but
the docs are readily available for several of the widgets and CPUs so you could
have some fun adding support :-)

These days, if you want real CPU power you need to look at the VAX 4000-500 and
up and the the VAX 4000-10x. Or maybe the VAXstation 4000 machines. However,
these don't qualify as *BIG* iron.

Antonio

Antonio Carlini                            Mail: carlini@marvin.enet.dec.com
DECnet-Plus for OpenVMS Engineering
Digital Equipment Corporation              Worton Grange, Reading, England