by all means grab the machine! it doesnt use that much power, esp if you dont
have a lot of cards in it. eventually it will certainly be supported. 
(plus you _could_ run vms on it :) 
the machines size and the rating on the power supply and the three-phase 
inputs make you think the thing will heat your entire house, but actually
a 6000 machine only uses about 500 watts in a normal environment (where 
normal is 'not too many cards in it'. Typically dec's power supplies are 
rated for sometimes more than twice the real dissipaation of the machine. 

so, take that machine! :-)

happy hacking,
isildur

On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, Henry R. Bent wrote:

> Gunther Schadow wrote:
> > 
> > Henry R. Bent wrote:
> 
> > Yuck! So I will have to replace the backplane. Ah sheesh. And I thought
> > this would be a nice and easy way to a fast VAX.
> 
> Heh.  Exactly what I thought.  Then I learned the sad truth... you'd pretty much
> have to scrap an entire machine to upgrade this thing.  Of course, I'm not even
> using mine at the moment as it's providing a nice coffee table for the Oberlin
> College French House lounge :-P
> 
> > Sure, but I didn't think it was NetBSDable.
> 
> The home page claims the /705A is supported in NetBSD-current, but I can't find
> any confirmation of this.
> 
> > BUT
> > I'm going to flame you right here and now for letting a 6620 go away
> > without telling anybody about it! Flame, flame, flame, blistering heat,
> > there you go :0.
> 
> I suppose I earned that since I didn't provide an explanation.  I'm the
> president of the Oberlin College Linux (and free Unix) Group, and I could have
> leveraged my standing to get the machine as I'm close with the director of the
> computing center.  I highly doubt I could have had the machine if it was going
> anywhere other than my house or the local LUG office.
> 
> > Are you absolutely sure Ultrix was never supported
> > on the 6600?
> 
> You bet.  I'm 99% sure that Ultrix never supported the 4000 series in any form,
> or the 6600 series.  I dunno if other SOC VAXen (like the 4000 VLC or 3100/30)
> ran Ultrix - I'm not near my Ultrix 4.5 install manual.
> 
> > The 4000-200 is
> > a CVAX? Riegel? Oh darn, that would mean that my 6460 would still be
> > the faster one.
> 
> SOC (System-On-a-Chip) as I mentioned above.  And yeah, your 6460 at 36VUPs
> could run cicles around the 5VUPs /200.  My guess at the intended market of the
> 4000/200 is customers who neeeded direct and full Qbus support, but who were
> finding the uVAX II or 3800/3900 too slow.
> 
> -- 
> Henry Bent                       henry.bent@oberlin.edu
> Want the Stars Productions       http://www.wtsp.org
>