Well, it would be an understatement to say I was flooded with responses:
Thanks to all who responded (30 plus people), and forgive me if I don't
list all the names. Responses ranged from educated guesses (always
appreciated as a departure point) to detailed responses indicating some
hard-won expertise in the area. Responses also mixed philosophy and
Yankee Horse Sense with more purely practical disserations, essentially,
"Don't throw bad money after good (retire the VAX with diginity)" to
"Anything is possible if you open your tool kit and work weekends." The
perennial problem in the public sector (we are a State Funded
University) is that you cannot 'sell' anything -- it gets surplused, so
we cannot recycle the hardware for cash. And being a public secotr
entity, we are hard pressed to admit that anything has reached the
limits of it useful lifetime (including, regrettably, some employees).
No museum is better endowed than the basement of a public sector IT
center.
OS Support:
The short answer is that various OS' aside from VMS appear to have been
supported at various times on SOME VAX platforms and that is further
caveated by the particular hardware provisioned on the platform.
No Tru64 UNIX/Digital UNIX/DEC OSF1 ran on VAXen
ULTRIX 4.3A will run on a 6520
* responses indicating success running ULTRIX 1.2/1.4 on VAX Station II
* response indicating familiarity with 4.5 on VAX 61xx-65xx (not
officially on 66xx)
Hardware caveats (as recalled):
DSSI controllers not supported (as boot devices??)
CI Controllers and disks on HSC:s work well
ULTRIX cannot share data on HSC disks
BI-bus RA controllers (KDB50) work too
VAX6000 cannot boot ULTRIX via MOP
(2 options load from TK50 tape/load on other system and move disks)
NetBSD (
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/vax/index.html ) supports various
VAXen, not mine.
ms marked NEW! are only supported in NetBSD-current. Other systems are
supported in NetBSD 1.3.2.
VAX 11/780 systems
VAX 11/750 systems
VAX 8600 and 8650 systems
VAX 8200, 8250, 8300 and 8350 systems
MicroVAX II family systems
MicroVAX III family systems
MicroVAX 3200, 3300 and 3500 systems
MicroVAX 3600, 3800 and 3900 systems
VAXstation 2000/MicroVAX 2000 systems
MicroVAX 3100 systems NEW!
VAXstation 3100 model m10, m20, m30, m38, m40 and m48 systems NEW!
VAXstation 3100 model m76 systems NEW!
VAXstation 4000 model 60 NEW!
Linux -- I checked the ports page -- not yet.
--
Rohn Wood
Information Technology Resource Center
(406)243-2056
rohn_at_selway.umt.edu
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Received on Wed Mar 10 1999 - 18:30:42 NZDT