This brings back so many memories - not all of them good.

Maybe in this nonexistant museum of antiquity we need to take a category
approach to VAX sounds, like

Engineering - The sounds I remember most.....
* the sound of the vacumn collapsing yet again on a TU78 during fast
rewind, after having changed every module, all the vacumn sensors and the
capstan motor (only to later find that there were a few flaky capstan
motors doing the repair circuit), or
* the sound of a disk head ploughing in to the edge of a platter of an
EDS400 (?? a CDC Massbus drive) and the subsequent shriek of at least 10
heads crashing (and the gut feeling knowing how long these things take to
fix), or worse
* the sound of the same type of drive crashing when another Engineer drops
a VAX manual on the top cover of the drive, or
* the sound the first generation of RA81's used to make when the glue came
unstuck inside the HDA and they went AWOL, or
* the sound of an 11/780 booting off an RX01 diskette drive, or
* the sound the MIS Manager made when a system went down in the middle of
payroll processing at 2.00am !!

Operator - more pleasant sounds, like...
* the sound of a TU77/78 loading and unloading, or
* the sound of an RA60 winding up and launching it's heads, or
* the sound of an RA81 stopping, or
* the sound of a computer room full of disks accessing their little hearts
out.

Sights should also be added, like...
* the sight of an 11/780 toppling over on a collapsing raised floor, or
* the lights and power going off in the whole BIG computer room when you
turn a 750 on for the first time - only to find you wired one of the phases
to earth.  The associated sound was nice too, absolute peace and quiet, -
for the 20 seconds it takes until the operations staff to make it into the
room, or
* the LED sequence during startup on a MicroVAX.

From my days as a VAX Engineer, and I wasn't actually too bad at it.......

regards
andrew
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" , Groucho Marx