Ive just cut a notch in regular cords for mine, and never had anby trouble.
Though i dont have a real meter to test it with, my guess is that for 
example a uv3 in a ba123, with about 5 qbus slots filled, and 4 wren-7s, 
uses about 450 watts, and a vax 4k600 with 2 3.5" disks and 4 qbus cards
uses maybe 400 watts. you really dont need the mega-beefy cables, this 
was just the typical DEC overengineering..
Even with a relatively thin power cord, ive had both machines on 24 hours a 
day for months on end with no problem, no warming up of anything, etc.. 

the only thing to be sure of is that the cable you carve up is well made 
enough to not expose conductors when you go carving.. :-)

isildur

On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, M J Dowden wrote:

> At 5:15 PM -0400 4/28/2002, Dave McGuire wrote:
> >
> >   This thing will draw nowhere near 11A...this is typical the DEC
> >overspec dance.  Mine draws like 3A peak.  But anyway, that power
> >connector is a high-current IEC that is used on lots of
> >things...smaller VAXen, big Cisco routers, stuff like that.  There's
> >an even beefier one, square with three parallel blade pins, that is
> >used on SGI Challenge and Onyx deskside cabinets.  They're the same
> >family as the ordinary power cables that everything else uses, just
> >beefier.  They shouldn't be too difficult to find.
> 
> 
>      This is true, but the plug has a notch in it (at least the one on 
> my 4000/300 does). It would be best to find an exact replacement, but 
> some people have taken well-made regular cords and made a notch in 
> them. I ASSUME that there were no problems (or we would have read 
> about it).
> 
> -- 
> M J Dowden <mjdowden@panix.com>
> PGP key: <http://www.panix.com/~mjdowden/keys.shtml>
> No Microsoft products were used in the preparation or transmission of 
> this message
>