Subject: Re: Upgrading a 4000/200
To: Henry R. Bent <henry.bent@oberlin.edu>
From: Lord Isildur <mrfusion@uranium.vaxpower.org>
List: port-vax
Date: 04/24/2002 13:36:59
meaning the cpus and memory are not qbus, they still have a qbus 
backplane, of course.. 
:)
isildur

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Lord Isildur wrote:

> the upgrade involved a backplane swap. the 4000/[34567]00s are not qbus. 
> (some 300s needed an upgrade to support the ms690s, too)
> 
> isildur
> 
> On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Henry R. Bent wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I'm going on a trek this weekend to pick up a VAX 4000/200.  It's in a BA440
> > enclosure with a TK70, 2 DSSI drives, and I believe some sort of graphics
> > option.  Of course I'd like to get NetBSD on it, but I'll need some sort of
> > Qbus SCSI adapter, right?  Aside from netbooting and NFS-mounting, of course.
> > 
> > My main question, though, is about upgradeability.  The /200 is somewhat
> > limited in its speed compared to other 4000 series systems, and I'd ideally
> > like to upgrade the machine to a /300 or /500.  Compaq claims (at
> > http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/archive/vax4000_200.html) that this
> > system is non-upgradeable.  However, my guess is that this info is based on a
> > /200 in a BA213 rather than a BA440.  So would it be possible to swap the
> > processor board with one from a /300 or /500 to achieve a faster machine?  My
> > apologies if this is an obvious question, but I'm pretty new to the world of
> > VAXen, having just come from experience with DECstations.
> > 
> > Thanks in advance!
> > 
> > -- 
> > Henry Bent                       henry.bent@oberlin.edu
> > Want the Stars Productions       http://www.wtsp.org
> > 
>