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Best choice for (relatively) inexpensive OpenVMS station?

R

retrobits

Experienced Member
Joined
May 22, 2007
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169
Location
Portland, Oregon, USA
Hi all,

I've been full of DEC questions lately - hope I'm not overdoing it :) Thanks for all the expertise on the board.

Having recently installed OpenVMS (hobbyist) on PersonalAlphaDS20, I'm excited to get back into VMS after about a 25 year break. It's a nice complement to the PDP-11 stuff.

The emulator is very nice, but I'd love to run the OS on some real hardware. Can someone recommend a (reasonably) inexpensive starter system for OpenVMS? I don't care if it's VAX or Alpha - either is fine.

Thanks!

- Earl
 
The Alpha Multia is a cute little machine. It is a little taller than a VT525 and in a very similar enclosure. I have one (but it doesn't get played with much.) It is very small, and uses SCSI, so it is easy to expand. It seems to have a laptop computer scale of integration inside to be so small. I'm not sure how hard they are to find anymore.

Lou
 
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The Alpha Multia is a cute little machine.
Click to expand...

I actually have one of those - not sure about it's current condition. The floppy drive may be toast, and the battery is definitely dead. I was testing it recently by using 3 AA cells connected to the battery area. From my reading, it seemed like OpenVMS was pretty tough to get loaded onto the machine. Do you have it running on a Multia?

- Earl
 
Ok, no laughing, but I have WinNT on it. It also has NetBSD. I seem to remember it was too light to run Ultrix.

The floppy drive is pretty cheap. It seems laptop grade.

The way I got anything useful (large) loaded was to connect a SCSI CDROM. I think it may be the CDROM that I now use on my 11.

Lou
 
I've heard (but haven't seen) that NT is a little sluggish on the Multia, because it was designed as a workstation-lite. However, NT did REALLY well on the workstation-class Alpha hardware I used in the mid 90s. In fact, it put our Intel boxes to shame. And, I'm actually considering putting NT 4.0 on the Multia I have, since it's got support built right in.
 
If you're still looking when you go to the next SRCS meeting I have a Microvax 3100 M20 I could bring if you're interested and maybe we could reach a deal on that. It's on the low end of the Vax scale and not the most exciting one to have.

-Glen
 
retrobits said:
From my reading, it seemed like OpenVMS was pretty tough to get loaded onto the machine.l
Click to expand...

It is and you are limited to a couple very specific releases. Some stuff doesn't work too. Tru64 UNIX is a much better choice for a Multia.

VAXStation 3100 aren't bad if you can get a hold of a 500mb-1GB SCSI disk. They are starting to get rare and 3100 wont boot off anything over 1gb and not even some 1gb drives. Under 500mb space is tight for installing everything.

VAXStation 4000 are better but, sell for too much. There are still people supporting and using them in the real world as crazy as that is to believe. The resellers pay a fortune for them. VS3100 are usually free. VS4000 go for like $500.

Alpha boxes suffer the same problem. Other than the Multia and DEC3000 the workstations are snapped up by companies supporting them at the craziest prices ever. Alpha servers go for next to nothing but, they are really heavy and cost a fortune to ship.

Maybe the Multia isn't that bad a choice if you can find the right VMS release and it doesn't cook itself. They had a bad tendency to overheat and burn up IC.
 
I found that NT actually runs fine on the Multia. I don't particularly remember having to be patient to wait for things to finish. The install was easy.

I heard about the Multia overheating problem. Fortunately I have the vertical stand (similar to the one for the VT525). The free convection (chimney effect) through the vertically oriented case seems to be OK.

Lou
 
If you're still looking when you go to the next SRCS meeting I have a Microvax 3100 M20 I could bring if you're interested and maybe we could reach a deal on that. It's on the low end of the Vax scale and not the most exciting one to have.
Click to expand...

I won't be able to make it to the November SRCS meeting - have a family thing going on. Dec 22 is a possibility. Just curious, what is the configuration of the 3100? I understand a max of 32 MB can go into those - so it probably would just barely run (non-graphical) OpenVMS 8.4? I suspect an earlier version would run better...
 
retrobits said:
I won't be able to make it to the November SRCS meeting - have a family thing going on. Dec 22 is a possibility. Just curious, what is the configuration of the 3100? I understand a max of 32 MB can go into those - so it probably would just barely run (non-graphical) OpenVMS 8.4? I suspect an earlier version would run better...
Click to expand...

Last VMS for VAX was 7.3 no matter what the VAX. Have to go Alpha or Itanium for 8+
 
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