[Simh] VAX 8200

[Gary Lee Phillips]

Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:

>That's earlier than is possible... the model was introduced in Jan,
>1986.  Don't know date of first ship.

Well I did say "around 1985 or so." After 30+ years, I'd say that was a
pretty close guess.

The tape drive was not TK50. It was standard reel to reel media, horizontal
like an studio audio tape deck, with a cover that had to be lifted in order
to use it. The disk drive was housed in the same cabinet in a drawer below
the tape unit. The tape drive was "finicky" and seemed to work only with
tapes ordered through DEC. The standard tapes our much larger IBM shop used
never read back correctly when written on it.

I was not party to the administrative decision to purchase the VAX, but it
was related to some joint ventures that required a kind of real time
connectivity that IBM equipment could not provide. I enjoyed the
opportunity of learning and working with the hardware and providing system
support but wasn't involved in the application end much. After a couple of
years, the project was terminated without any end result, and I moved to
other employment just before that happened but kept the VMS bug in my blood.

--Gary
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