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WTB: DSSI disks

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shadoooo

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Nov 19, 2009, 1:42:44 PM11/19/09
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Hello.
I have a VAX 400-100A without DSSI disk, so I'm searching some to put
it in...
Anybody has some to sell at reasonable price in EU? As size I would
consider something around 1GB.
Please contact me here: shadoooo(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com
Thanks in advance
Andrea

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply

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Nov 19, 2009, 1:48:20 PM11/19/09
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In article
<cd35e7ae-9ec3-48aa...@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
shadoooo <shad...@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello.
> I have a VAX 400-100A without DSSI disk, so I'm searching some to put
> it in...
> Anybody has some to sell at reasonable price in EU? As size I would
> consider something around 1GB.

What were the largest DSSI disks ever produced?

John Wallace

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Nov 19, 2009, 3:40:08 PM11/19/09
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On Nov 19, 6:48 pm, hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
undress to reply) wrote:
> In article
> <cd35e7ae-9ec3-48aa-a019-f617f1f0f...@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,

>
> shadoooo <shado...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Hello.
> > I have a VAX 400-100A without DSSI disk, so I'm searching some to put
> > it in...
> > Anybody has some to sell at reasonable price in EU? As size I would
> > consider something around 1GB.
>
> What were the largest DSSI disks ever produced?

Is there a prize?

Iirc the largest was the RF74 at 3.6GB.

RF71s are 400MB, ebay.co.uk has 2 for sale, "buy it now" for £22 each,
in Derby, England (sixty miles from here), from a seller who says they
will ship to Europe. Same seller also has RF72s (1GB) at £45 and an
RF73 (2GB) at £108. No RF74s on their list though.

Some care or improvisation may be needed wrt the specific mounting kit
for the specific system.

Other suppliers may well be available, I just happened to be on eBay
UK looking for a spare/replacement DSL modem/router that has proper
line monitoring capabilities (the "ADSL line MIB").

JF Mezei

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Nov 19, 2009, 4:07:52 PM11/19/09
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shadoooo wrote:
> Hello.
> I have a VAX 400-100A without DSSI disk, so I'm searching some to put
> it in...

I am in Canada, I have 4 DSSI drives all packed up and ready to go as I
suspect they will remain unclaimed by the person who had indicated
interest in them. But at 17.9kg, it would cost about USD$135 to ship to
europe by ship. ($275 by air).

> Anybody has some to sell at reasonable price in EU? As size I would
> consider something around 1GB.

RF72 are 1gb
RF73 are 2gb

RF36 is 1.5 gigs and is of a later generation and you can fit 2 in a
DSSI drive bay.

NEMONIX Engineering did produce DSSI drives with more recent and higher
capacity HDAs, but I believe that Digital stopped at 2 gigs.

Howard S Shubs

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Nov 20, 2009, 2:41:51 AM11/20/09
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In article <00818887$0$23819$c3e...@news.astraweb.com>,
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> NEMONIX Engineering did produce DSSI drives with more recent and higher
> capacity HDAs, but I believe that Digital stopped at 2 gigs.

And when were the very last ones made? By anyone?

--
Don't bother with piddly crap like "gun control".
Life is 100% fatal. Ban it.

Jur van der Burg

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Nov 20, 2009, 4:33:53 AM11/20/09
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The 4000-100A has scsi too, that may be way simpler and less expensive.

Jur.

starchild

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Nov 20, 2009, 4:42:23 AM11/20/09
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On Nov 20, 12:41 am, Howard S Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> In article <00818887$0$23819$c3e8...@news.astraweb.com>,

>  JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
> > NEMONIX Engineering did produce DSSI drives with more recent and higher
> > capacity HDAs, but I believe that Digital stopped at 2 gigs.
>
> And when were the very last ones made?  By anyone?
>
> --
> Don't bother with piddly crap like "gun control".
> Life is 100% fatal.  Ban it.

Hello
His/her 4000-100A will not take the big 5.25 inch drives. The
4000-100a supported 3 dssi drives on the top and
2 50 pin scsi on the bottom. They need something like the RF35 (825)/
RF31(150) or the RF36(1.6). I maybe wrong
but the RF36 was the biggest dssi drive in the 3.5 factor. If they're
using a external dssi cab (R215) then those drives
would come in handy.

John Wallace

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Nov 20, 2009, 5:23:36 AM11/20/09
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OK, if SCSI isn't what's wanted and external DSSI isn't what's wanted
then as you say it's RF3x series DSSI. The same place on ebay.co.uk
that has the RF7x drives also has some RF35 (852MB) drives, £91 each.
RF31s are only 380MB which is a bit small relative to the original
request.

Mike Rechtman

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Nov 20, 2009, 5:22:31 AM11/20/09
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IIRC there is/was a small storage box that took SCSI disks and connected to DSSI
(BA10 or some such?) I know I've seen them in action.

--
Mike R.
Home: http://alpha.mike-r.com/
QOTD: http://alpha.mike-r.com/php/qotd.php
No Micro$oft products were used in the URLs above, or in preparing this message.
Recommended reading: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#before

JF Mezei

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Nov 20, 2009, 7:15:13 AM11/20/09
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starchild wrote:

> but the RF36 was the biggest dssi drive in the 3.5 factor.


But I am still using the one RF36 I still have. Would this one have a
resale value ?

> Disk $7$DIA1: (DISK71), device type RF36, is online, mounted, file-oriented
> device, shareable, served to cluster via MSCP Server, error logging is
> enabled.
>
> Error count 0 Operations completed 44006
> Owner process "" Owner UIC [SYSTEM]
> Owner process ID 00000000 Dev Prot S:RWPL,O:RWPL,G:R,W
> Reference count 281 Default buffer size 512
> Total blocks 3125408 Sectors per track 75
> Total cylinders 2605 Tracks per cylinder 16
> Host name "DISK71" Host type, avail RF36, yes

Richard B. Gilbert

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Nov 20, 2009, 8:30:11 AM11/20/09
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Just about anything can be sold to someone for some price. You can even
sell shit if you put it in 50 pound bags and call it manure!

Is it worth the effort? That's another question entirely and only you
can answer it.

Bob Koehler

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Nov 20, 2009, 8:37:59 AM11/20/09
to
In article <00818887$0$23819$c3e...@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
>
> NEMONIX Engineering did produce DSSI drives with more recent and higher
> capacity HDAs, but I believe that Digital stopped at 2 gigs.

DEC joined the handwriting on the wall and offered a DSSI to
SCSI converter, which looked like a single node on the DSSI bus.

We picked up a few of these for our VAX 4000 (DSSI and Qbus) many
years ago after DEC stopped offering DSSI disks. The SCSI bus works
fine for all out needs.

We didn't want a third party solution on the Qbus because we had
multiple realtime devices on that bus.

Bob Koehler

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Nov 20, 2009, 8:45:37 AM11/20/09
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In article <787it6-...@Ubuntu.mike-r.com>, Mike Rechtman <mi...@rechtman.com> writes:
>>
> IIRC there is/was a small storage box that took SCSI disks and connected to DSSI
> (BA10 or some such?) I know I've seen them in action.

DEC's HSD05 was one such beast. Very small beast, physically. 8-)

R.A.Omond

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Nov 20, 2009, 9:55:56 AM11/20/09
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Try to avoid the HSD05 if you possibly can. Its throughput was, ahem,
miserable. I have a couple of HSD05's somewhere in my museum.

The HSD10 and later HSD30 were huge improvements. You can fit these
in a BA350 / BAS356 / BA353 (Pizza box).

I'm currently on-site at one customer where I've seen such HSD adaptors
thrown out in the dumpster recently :-(

Paul Sture

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Nov 20, 2009, 10:46:22 AM11/20/09
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In article <38SAi1...@eisner.encompasserve.org>,
koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote:

I'm pretty sure that there was a third party DSSI to SCSI converter
offering as well (Emulex?).

--
Paul Sture

Paul Sture

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Nov 20, 2009, 10:59:39 AM11/20/09
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In article <E$jJgI2...@eisner.encompasserve.org>,
koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote:

Ah yes. There was a small wrinkle with the HSD05 in that the same disks
which could be attached direct to a SCSI controller would end up with a
slightly different MAXBLOCK size (something silly like 4 blocks
difference), which in those days meant we couldn't shadow across the two
interfaces. The HSD05 would also format a "new" disk when you connected
it, so you couldn't simply plonk a data disk in there for data transfer
purposes (we were looking at disaster recovery solutions at the time).

--
Paul Sture

Bob Koehler

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Nov 20, 2009, 12:49:45 PM11/20/09
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In article <4b06adfd$0$279$1472...@news.sunsite.dk>, "R.A.Omond" <Roy....@BlueBubble.UK.Com> writes:
>
> The HSD10 and later HSD30 were huge improvements. You can fit these
> in a BA350 / BAS356 / BA353 (Pizza box).

Yeah, i think we actually use HSD10, same size as a storage device.
But I don't see those machines very often, so I'm not sure.

Bob Koehler

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Nov 20, 2009, 12:50:50 PM11/20/09
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In article <paul.nospam-CA5A...@pbook.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul....@sture.ch> writes:
>
> I'm pretty sure that there was a third party DSSI to SCSI converter
> offering as well (Emulex?).

I think there were a couple of third party converters before DEC
shipped any.

shadoooo

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Nov 22, 2009, 11:18:11 AM11/22/09
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I'm searching just for 3"5 disks, because I would put that inside my
4000.
Of course a shipment outside the EU would be too expensive, and I
would have to pay also extra taxes...
If somebody has a deal to offer...
Thanks
Andrea
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