Geoff Roberts wrote:

> Typical Cluster setup. Pity you didn't get the HSC and other bits too.
> I'd give you one, but it's a little far to ship it.

They keep using the HSC for their other VAXen and mostly Alphas
these days. This is the impressive thing about DEC that you can
always hold on to your stuff and migrade gradually. OTOH, I am
trying to avoid running a HSC for its power use ...

> > One has a bad power unit. I will use that one as a resource for spare
> > parts. Unless anyone wants to repair the power unit, that will go to
> the
> > junk yard.
> 
> Which PSU is crook?  The mains input box, the 300V supply or one of the
> LV supplies?

Yea, I will probably just put all this stuff in a big box and 
store it. If ever you come to Indianapolis, (er ... like to see the
race), you can have it :-).
 
> > One of the other machine's cabinets lacks a back door, so
> > I will even use the door from the machine with the broken power unit.
> > I'll save all boards, cables, and screws that I can get off easily.
> 
> These are like a meccano set, everything unbolts pretty well, but you
> will wind up with a mountain of screws and washers.
> They suffer from what we used to call in the domestic electronics
> servicing industry 'cousin effect' - the designer had a cousin who owned
> a screw factory.  :^)
> Someone once mentioned that a friend was attempting to build up one of
> these minus the cabinet, ie just the cages and psu's, it would be a
> little tricky, but probably possible, and it would make it a lot more
> compact.

Actually, I may have to do more screwing than I planned. I have a
nice space for old computer gear in my basement (doesn't it fit
neatly next to the washer dryer combo :-) but I just found that 
I can no way get the VAX through the doors into the basement. So,
I can either keep the stuff in the garage or I need to disassemble,
move, and reassemble. I am afraid that the machine will get hurt
in the heat and humidity of the Indiana summer, and will suffer
from cold in the Indiana winter if left in the garage. OTOH, I'm
afraid that when bringing it down in parts I might damage things
or get it messed up. Is there some way to get rid of 10 cm off
the cabinet's width without having to screw up everything?
 
> > I will hold on to the spare parts in order to trade them for other
> > interfaces if necessary. We should get one SDI and one DSSI interface
> > at least, if not an SCSI interface.
> 
> That would be good, the SDI would probably be the easiest to find,
> though not necessarily the easiest to support, with the
> XMI-BI stuff in the middle.

Actually I am pretty confident that it can be hacked to work.
I have some good documentation of how exactly this stuff works
:-)

> > Matthew Hudson offered to donate SDI disk drives and perhaps a DSSI
> > interface card. The SDI drives are heavy (64 kg, according to Geoff.)
> 
> If they are RA8x's, yes, big, awkward, heavy suckers, I can barely carry
> one on my own.  RA9x's are around 30kg, weighty but tolerable, quite
> reliable and 1/3 the power/noise of the RA8x's. The RA8x's are power

They are RA90s. You put RA90s in the bottom of your cabinet 
didn't you?

...
> RA7x's are house brick size/weight, with usual 5v/12v power, but you
> need at least the SA70 and the right SDI cabling (The cabling is the
> same for any SDI drive.)
> Trickier than it sounds, since you can't connect the black SDI's leads
> directly to the SA70 RA9x, RA8x, you need the cable and socket affair
> that is on the rack cabinet.  You should be able to find some without
> too much trouble, if the RA8x's are in cabinets, the same cable loom
> will work with the SA70 enclosures or RA9x drives.

Matt takes the drives out of an SF200 (? is that an enclosure?) So 
you're saying that it's critical to get all the cabling and connector
stuff with it, right? What is this SF200 and would it be adviseable
to keep the whole block rather than taking out individual drives?

> If you intend to do the 3phase-single phase conversion, you can save
> around 30kg by removing that bloody great autotransformer between the
> mains input box and the 300V supply.  It's surplus to the conversion.

Oops, since I'm in the U.S. I wouldn't have a 300V transformer or
would I?

Here are a few more questions:

- what are the dimensions and weight of
- - a star coupler
- - a VAX 11/780

- does a star coupler suck lots of power by itself?
- how much power does the VAX 11/780 consume?

- how could I get an 11/780? Might there be anyone trading an 11/780
  against an 8420?

thanks,
-Gunther