Re: [TUHS] Old mainframe I/O speed (was: core)

[Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org>]

Paul Winalski:

  That was the VAXstation-11/RC.

===

Yep, that's the name.

My first batch of discarded MicroVAX IIs were the original
backbone routers for a large university campus, installed
ca. 1990.  That backbone ran over serial-line connections,
at 56Kbps, which was quite impressive for the day given the
physical distances involved.

Either they had a bunch of Qbus backplanes lying around, or
someone computed that the cost of an 11/RC plus a backplane
was appreciably less than a system with an unobstructed
backplane.  In any case, they swapped most of the backplanes
themselves.  The one I got that still had the glue in was an
anomaly; maybe it was a spare chassis.

The MicroVAX routers ran Ultrix, and some of them had uptimes
of five years when they were finally shut down to be discarded.
All the hardware I rescued tested out fine, and some of it is
still running happily in my basement.  I've had a few disk
failures over the years, and I think lost one power supply
back around Y2K and maybe had a DZV11 fail, but that's it.
We don't make hardware like that any more.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON