[Simh] Re: Welcome to the "Simh" mailing list aka stories about VAXes

[A.Bucher at alcatel.de]

Amazing story of your adventures with the 750 machines! I don't
understand how you could afford the electricity, but maybe you had a
sweeter deal than I ever have had.

I love stories like that. Have fun with simh!

/andreas

--
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
-----

Hi !

first of all, I have to state that I fully agree with your statements in
the signature about top-posting.
but since I have to work with Lotus Notes here, I a) have to apoligize for
my lousy quoting of the original text,
and b) spend some effort not to top-post (because this is alway suggested
by this "fine" mail program). argh !


okay, back to the story:
All of you ever hat to deal with a real RA8x style disk (14" disk in a 19"
rackmount box) know the size and the weight of one single unit (3 units
were packed together in a small cabinet) - about 70kg. Therefore, on rack
is 3x70 + 40kg for the box=250kg. You really should care about floor load !

Small summary in between: 750CPU: 120kg, RA box: 250kg, TE16: 250kg (vacuum
is heavy, didn't you know?), Unibus Expansion: 100kg, CI Cabinet: 120kg,
RM80: 100kg, cable/media/etc.: 100kg. totals up to 1040kg, more than 1 ton
!
(sorry for the metric figures, but I live in europe :-)
I just wanted to tell this to the people firing up their VAX (with simh) on
a PDA or something without ever having seen the real thing :-)

So, how do you handle this if you have to move the equipment ? Of course,
remove the RAs from the cabinet. Nice Idea, but can you lift 70kg alone
right away ?

Therefore, since I had no forklift available at that time <g>, I figured
out (docu ? haha !) how to remove the HDA (Hard disk assembly, the sealed
platters and heads) from the box. This splits the weight in about 30+40kg,
which I could handle alone. At that time, I would have been able to replace
any RA HDA with closed eyes ... because I had to do it frequently.

Another story about heavy hardware: I once went to a Data Center to beg for
a few 9-track magtapes for my VAX at home (DC was IBM, but I hoped my VAX
wouldn't notice :-), and the guy at the desk said: "no problem, we just
scrapped some, how much do you want ?". "Well, about 30-40 ?", I replied,
not knowing if I would get a second chance to get tapes (remember, one tape
was 40MB at 1600BPI, or 150MB at 6250. Therefore, I calculated about 10
tapes to backup each RA81 using the TE16).
I started getting worried about what I said a few minutes later, when 2
people came out the door pushing two carts with stacks of tapes on them ...
the guy at the desk was heavily grinning and said: "you may use the carts
to get the tapes out - hope you brought a strong car!"

About electricity: Of course I couldn't afford it ! I calculated at that
time that from the yearly power consumption cost of a VAX, you could buy a
completely new computer system to replace it. What I mean is, that a
company could buy the next generation computer only from the savings of
electricity !
Back to my VAX: The estimated power consumption was 8-10 KW (!). But since
I switched on only the minimum, I could cut it down to 3-4KW, and I never
had it running for more than a few hours per week. Therefore, it was
affordable.

Besides, I was thinking about where I could get a 11/780 ...

regards,
Andreas

PS: I hope to have put some smiles on your face, though the stories are
true, anyway.