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VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon

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Neil Rieck

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Feb 3, 2023, 8:48:07 AM2/3/23
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Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage. I guess Chuck Lorre and staff didn't know this was a mini (or perhaps they did but just liked the sound of Sheldon say "I need a mainframe")

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net
http://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 3, 2023, 9:03:38 AM2/3/23
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On 2/3/2023 8:48 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a
> spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon
> Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in
> was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage. I guess Chuck
> Lorre and staff didn't know this was a mini (or perhaps they did but
> just liked the sound of Sheldon say "I need a mainframe")

Ah memories.

End of 80's I worked on a 6000-420. We could have 110 interactive
users on that system.

Arne


Roy Omond

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Feb 3, 2023, 11:24:21 AM2/3/23
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Memories indeed. The 6000-4n0 was the lower-end system to support
vector processors (the other one was, of course, the VAX 9000).

Managed both of these in the early 1990s in Heidelberg at the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

P.s. I have no idea who "Sheldon Cooper" is.

David Jones

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Feb 3, 2023, 12:05:05 PM2/3/23
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On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 11:24:21 AM UTC-5, Roy Omond wrote:
> P.s. I have no idea who "Sheldon Cooper" is.

Kip Thorn claims he hired him.

Neil Rieck

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Feb 3, 2023, 3:22:51 PM2/3/23
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On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 11:24:21 AM UTC-5, Roy Omond wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cooper

VAX-6000 was the Chevy of minicomputers in the 1990s.

IIRC, Vector processing was only available if you purchased the optional vector processing board (I saw one once at DEC in Bedford Mass.)
https://manx-docs.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/vax/60vaapg1.pdf

Neil

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 3, 2023, 3:30:23 PM2/3/23
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Yes - it was HW addon.

I don't think it sold that well. Those RISC thingies was
starting to pop up everywhere.

But the 6000 series sold pretty well and I think a lot of them
kept running well up in the 00's. They were pretty
good systems - especially the 400 and later.

Unlike the 9000's which is think mostly had a short
career in the data center.

Arne



abrsvc

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Feb 3, 2023, 3:48:00 PM2/3/23
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I know of 2 VAX6200 clusters still running today. These are expected to be running for another 2 years before getting replaced with a PLC based system.
Dan

gah4

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Feb 3, 2023, 10:30:08 PM2/3/23
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On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 5:48:07 AM UTC-8, Neil Rieck wrote:
> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage.

I don't think a 370/168 fit in many dorm rooms.

I do remember stories from around 2000 of running big Sun systems, or other
big floor standing processors, in dorm rooms. It seems that heaters are not allowed
in dorms, but inefficient computer are. They kept the room warm!

Anyway, I like "Young Sheldon" much more than Big Bang. For actual nerds,
many of the Big Bang jokes aren't quite as funny. (Not that I watch it all that
often, though.)

But okay, Sheldon was supposed to be in high school in the late 1980's, and college
in the early 1990s. By the 1990's, VAX 11/780 and 11/750 were still around, but
also the early floor standing MicroVAX, and desktop MicroVAX. The 11/730 is
probably dorm sized, with one disk drive. Though little SCSI drives were around
by then, and would be nice for a VAX.

David Wade

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Feb 4, 2023, 6:01:34 AM2/4/23
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On 04/02/2023 03:30, gah4 wrote:
> On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 5:48:07 AM UTC-8, Neil Rieck wrote:
>> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage.
>
> I don't think a 370/168 fit in many dorm rooms.


No but someone in New Zealand rented an office and kept a 360/30 in it...

http://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360/

https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/historydisplays/FourthFloor/MainFrameComputers/System360Model30.php

>
> I do remember stories from around 2000 of running big Sun systems, or other
> big floor standing processors, in dorm rooms. It seems that heaters are not allowed
> in dorms, but inefficient computer are. They kept the room warm!
>
> Anyway, I like "Young Sheldon" much more than Big Bang. For actual nerds,
> many of the Big Bang jokes aren't quite as funny. (Not that I watch it all that
> often, though.)
>
> But okay, Sheldon was supposed to be in high school in the late 1980's, and college
> in the early 1990s. By the 1990's, VAX 11/780 and 11/750 were still around, but
> also the early floor standing MicroVAX, and desktop MicroVAX. The 11/730 is
> probably dorm sized, with one disk drive. Though little SCSI drives were around
> by then, and would be nice for a VAX.

Dave

Single Stage to Orbit

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Feb 4, 2023, 6:02:15 AM2/4/23
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On Fri, 2023-02-03 at 19:30 -0800, gah4 wrote:
> But okay, Sheldon was supposed to be in high school in the late
> 1980's, and college in the early 1990s.   By the 1990's, VAX 11/780
> and 11/750 were still around, but also the early floor standing
> MicroVAX, and desktop MicroVAX.  The 11/730 is probably dorm sized,
> with one disk drive.  Though little SCSI drives were around by then,
> and would be nice for a VAX.

I think the noise would be a masssive sleep-killer for most people. Not
a big problem for people like me who are deaf :-D
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 4, 2023, 4:56:02 PM2/4/23
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gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 5:48:07 AM UTC-8, Neil Rieck wrote:
>> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a spinoff =
>of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon Cooper take del=
>ivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in was a VAX-6000-420 wi=
>th three racks of disk storage.=20
>
>I don't think a 370/168 fit in many dorm rooms.

I had an 11/34 in a dorm room and the RA kept insisting it was a refrigerator
and you weren't allowed to have two refrigerators in one room. I claimed it
was a heating appliance.

>I do remember stories from around 2000 of running big Sun systems, or other
>big floor standing processors, in dorm rooms. It seems that heaters are no=
>t allowed
>in dorms, but inefficient computer are. They kept the room warm!

I think {well-connected-site}!inhp4!akgua!gatech!notavax was one of those,
in a dorm room.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

bill

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Feb 4, 2023, 6:19:49 PM2/4/23
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On 2/4/2023 4:55 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>> On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 5:48:07 AM UTC-8, Neil Rieck wrote:
>>> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a spinoff =
>> of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon Cooper take del=
>> ivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in was a VAX-6000-420 wi=
>> th three racks of disk storage.=20
>>
>> I don't think a 370/168 fit in many dorm rooms.
>
> I had an 11/34 in a dorm room and the RA kept insisting it was a refrigerator
> and you weren't allowed to have two refrigerators in one room. I claimed it
> was a heating appliance.
>

Why didn't you just tell him it was a computer. I seriously
doubt the school had any rules prohibiting computers in dorm
rooms.

bill


Scott Dorsey

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Feb 4, 2023, 8:23:46 PM2/4/23
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A computer? In a dorm room? Nobody would ever believe that.

Slo

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Feb 5, 2023, 11:05:17 AM2/5/23
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John Updike's "Roger's version" (1986). I have these passages highlighted
in my copy, I used to be so impressed:

“‘I’d be happy to tutor him, if we can find a time. My hours are kind of
funny, with the time-sharing and all. For my graphics I have to split a
VAX 8600 with a girl doing pattern recognitions.”

The sixth floor holds the guts of the place — the massed ranks of
CPUs — VAX 785s, Symbolics 3600 LISP machines, and the Cube’s own design,
the MU—churning and crunching

Like Dale with his animation graphics, Amy needs to use the Venus, the
VAX 8600, which costs four hundred thousand dollars; to have undivided
access to the machine, he and she must schedule away from each other.

The phantom configuration’s anatomy, fitted into the ambiguous three
dimensions of the tortured, abstract pattern, appears complete to Dale;
he believes that, with higher resolving power than the VAX 8600 can summon,
knuckles and even fingernails and cuticles would emerge, just as the
tendrilous graphics of a Mandelbrot set can be infinitely enhanced.

Greedily, impatiently, his fingertips ask the VAX 8600 to repeat
its gigantic loop once more.

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 5, 2023, 11:36:14 AM2/5/23
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Where I was at the time the 8600 was replace by / upgraded to a 8650.

It was very fast compared to everything else around. But it was not
without complications. The RA81 disks went bad all the time (the
RA82 disks was better). Once they replaced a board in the system
and it became unstable - they replaced another board and it was
still unstable - replaced a third board still unstable - put
back all the old boards and it worked again.

Arne


Alan Frisbie

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Feb 5, 2023, 12:43:14 PM2/5/23
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On 2/4/23 1:55 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> I had an 11/34 in a dorm room and the RA kept insisting it was a refrigerator
> and you weren't allowed to have two refrigerators in one room. I claimed it
> was a heating appliance.
In 1966 at Cal-Poly Pomona, one of the guys in my dorm had
a Teletype ASR-19 that he used with his ham radio.

Alan Frisbie

bill

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Feb 5, 2023, 6:05:13 PM2/5/23
to
In 1966 I would have expected more flack over ham radio in the
dorm than a computer.

bill


gah4

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Feb 6, 2023, 5:41:02 AM2/6/23
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On Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 3:01:34 AM UTC-8, David Wade wrote:

(snip, I wrote)
> > I don't think a 370/168 fit in many dorm rooms.

> No but someone in New Zealand rented an office and kept a 360/30 in it...
>
> http://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360/
>
> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/historydisplays/FourthFloor/MainFrameComputers/System360Model30.php

The 360/20 was specifically designed to run in ordinary offices.
The core memory has temperature compensation.

The 360/30 is a little bigger, and might not have that.

Some will question exactly how big one has to be to be a real mainframe.

And VAX were some that had that asked of them. Even in the beginning.


Neil Rieck

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Feb 6, 2023, 8:04:47 AM2/6/23
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VAX-6000 was the first time I encountered SMP (symmetric multi processing) on VAX. We were running a 6430 which meant 3 CPUs

Before that I worked for a year on a pair of VAX-8550 configured as a VAXcluster

Our VAX-6430 system felt faster than the pair of clustered VAX-8550

Back in the day, DEC published VUP (Vax Units of Performance) for each new product line compared to VAX-11/780 which had a value of "1"

I recall seeing VUPs numbers for the 8000 series but does anyone have VUP numbers for the 6000 family?

p.s. you are correct about RISC. At this time we were seeing Sun servers everywhere.

Simon Clubley

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Feb 6, 2023, 8:17:50 AM2/6/23
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You get used to some noises and it depends on how annoying the noise is.

At a former employer many years ago, I took another employee into the
computing area to help with something or other and they wanted to know
what the loud noise was as we walked down the corridor towards my office.

I had to think for a few seconds before I realised they were talking
about the air conditioning unit. I then realised air conditioning units
had simply become background noise for me and others and they didn't
intrude on my ability to think or concentrate in any way. :-)

It did make me think for a while afterwards about the things we humans
can adapt to without even realising it...

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

Simon Clubley

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Feb 6, 2023, 8:24:33 AM2/6/23
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On 2023-02-05, Arne Vajhøj <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>
> Where I was at the time the 8600 was replace by / upgraded to a 8650.
>
> It was very fast compared to everything else around. But it was not
> without complications. The RA81 disks went bad all the time (the
> RA82 disks was better). Once they replaced a board in the system
> and it became unstable - they replaced another board and it was
> still unstable - replaced a third board still unstable - put
> back all the old boards and it worked again.
>

https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/field+circus

Simon Clubley

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Feb 6, 2023, 8:27:47 AM2/6/23
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On 2023-02-06, gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> The 360/20 was specifically designed to run in ordinary offices.
> The core memory has temperature compensation.
>
> The 360/30 is a little bigger, and might not have that.
>
> Some will question exactly how big one has to be to be a real mainframe.
>

I wonder how much space an IBM z15 system takes up ?

From the outside, they look quite compact...

Single Stage to Orbit

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Feb 6, 2023, 10:02:17 AM2/6/23
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On Mon, 2023-02-06 at 13:17 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote:
> It did make me think for a while afterwards about the things we
> humans can adapt to without even realising it...

Farmyard smells. You do get used to it after a while. Occasionally the
smell of cow shit will roll through the town I live in on rare
occasions!

Coming out of the pub the other week I smelt this. "Smell the bullshit
in the air" as I walked out, didn't notice the women walking around the
corner until I saw them laughing.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

kemain...@gmail.com

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Feb 6, 2023, 11:25:06 AM2/6/23
to comp.os.vms to email gateway

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax...@rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Simon Clubley
> via Info-vax
> Sent: February 6, 2023 9:28 AM
> To: info...@rbnsn.com
> Cc: Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon
>
> On 2023-02-06, gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> >
> > The 360/20 was specifically designed to run in ordinary offices.
> > The core memory has temperature compensation.
> >
> > The 360/30 is a little bigger, and might not have that.
> >
> > Some will question exactly how big one has to be to be a real mainframe.
> >
>
> I wonder how much space an IBM z15 system takes up ?
>
> From the outside, they look quite compact...
>
> Simon.
>

>From Mr. Google - see below. (z15 is pretty impressive and the z16 is now
the current shipping mainframe. Google IBM z16 and read specs - very
impressive.)

<IBM z15 is designed as an extendable system using 19" packaging. The system
is 40u in height with a 38u height reduction. It runs at 5.2GHz processor
frequency, offers 8TB memory per CPC drawer for up to 40TB per machine, 85
partitions, and up to 190 cores to configure (versus 170 on z14).Nov 15,
2022>

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com





--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software.
www.avg.com

Volker Halle

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Feb 6, 2023, 12:05:09 PM2/6/23
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Neil Rieck schrieb am Montag, 6. Februar 2023 um 14:04:47 UTC+1:

> I recall seeing VUPs numbers for the 8000 series but does anyone have VUP numbers for the 6000 family?

Neil,

here are VUPS numbers for all sorts of VAX systems:

http://www.vaxmacro.de/vvcc.html

Volker.

Tony Priborsky

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Feb 6, 2023, 5:54:41 PM2/6/23
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I worked at DEC from 1976-1995 and worked closely with the VAX hardware and software groups. I was in the storage organization but did a brief detour to a group that was working on a Security Kernel for the VAX8000 family. The storage racks they wheeled into the dorm looked like the RA series but possibly were RL02 or RK07. They weren't on the screen long enough to tell. The CPU cabinet was definitely a VAX6000 but the submodel wasn't detailed enough to tell. The problem with all of this is that EVERY ONE OF THOSE RACKS ran from 220V power, including the CPU. So when Sheldon plugged it into the 110 wall outlet that wasn't real...

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 6, 2023, 7:52:51 PM2/6/23
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On 2/6/2023 8:04 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> VAX-6000 was the first time I encountered SMP (symmetric multi
> processing) on VAX. We were running a 6430 which meant 3 CPUs
>
> Before that I worked for a year on a pair of VAX-8550 configured as a
> VAXcluster
>
> Our VAX-6430 system felt faster than the pair of clustered VAX-8550

Based on VUPS ratings then I would expect:
- multi job throughput to be the same
- single job execution slower
- interactive responsiveness better

Arne


Neil Rieck

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Feb 7, 2023, 9:49:32 AM2/7/23
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On Monday, February 6, 2023 at 5:54:41 PM UTC-5, Tony Priborsky wrote:
> I worked at DEC from 1976-1995 and worked closely with the VAX hardware and software groups. I was in the storage organization but did a brief detour to a group that was working on a Security Kernel for the VAX8000 family. The storage racks they wheeled into the dorm looked like the RA series but possibly were RL02 or RK07. They weren't on the screen long enough to tell. The CPU cabinet was definitely a VAX6000 but the submodel wasn't detailed enough to tell. The problem with all of this is that EVERY ONE OF THOSE RACKS ran from 220V power, including the CPU. So when Sheldon plugged it into the 110 wall outlet that wasn't real...

I was going to same the same thing. Our VAX-6000 required a 3-phase power source (measuring between any phase and neutral was 120v but measuring between any of the phases was 208v). It has been a long while since I looked at the schematic but "I think" the 3-phase power supply could be reconfigured to use single-phase 240v.

All that changed with Alpha where I never saw a power supply requirement requiring more than 120v (at least in North America)

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
https://neilrieck.net

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 7, 2023, 10:04:22 AM2/7/23
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Uh? The 64x0 single CPU VUPS rating is 7.0, while the 8550 is rated at
6.0 VUPS, so I would expect the 6430 to be faster for individual jobs,
as well as *way* better at handling load, since you actually have three
CPUs compared to just one on the 8550. Clustering two 8550 would not get
close to a 3 cpu 64x0.

Johnny

Neil Rieck

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Feb 7, 2023, 10:04:57 AM2/7/23
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Thanks for this. So it appears that our VAX-6000 was more powerful (VUP-wise) than VAX-8550.

On a related note, I was isolated from a most monetary charges up until 1995. At that time I became aware of the total all-in costs of building a VAXcluster (each processor required an VMS license but the whole thing also required a Cluster license which, IIRC, was double the cost of a VMS licence).

Compare this to a standalone VAX-6000 where you only needed to buy one VMS license. We bought an additional CPU from a third-party source but needed to buy an SMP license from DEC to enable it. IIRC, it cost only $100.

Now I know that I'm comparing apples to oranges here but maybe our VAXclusters were overkill. It would be a different story for applications where cluster nodes were in different buildings (and/or cities)

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
https://neilrieck.net

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 7, 2023, 10:08:40 AM2/7/23
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Meh. I had a PDP-8 in my student room while at University. Usually on
24/7. The noise eventually just becomes a non-issue.

At the University itself, I usually hang around in the computer room
with two DEC-2060, two VAX-8650 and two PDP-11/70. Although the computer
room were in fact divided into two separate rooms with a door between
them. But that was a fair amount of noise. And then the cooling system
on top of that.

Johnny

Dennis Boone

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Feb 7, 2023, 11:14:25 AM2/7/23
to
> I was going to same the same thing. Our VAX-6000 required a 3-phase
> power source (measuring between any phase and neutral was 120v but
> measuring between any of the phases was 208v). It has been a long while
> since I looked at the schematic but "I think" the 3-phase power supply
> could be reconfigured to use single-phase 240v.

US centric:

An awful lot of minicomputer things, including a /780, have three phase
inputs, but those just go to an in-cabinet PDU, and all of the actual
internal power supply units are 120V devices on one of the phases. The
system design tries to balance the internal load across the phases.
It's simple enough to run this sort of system from 120V power, though of
course you need a LOT of it.

I've an S/390 Multiprise system that claims to want _two_ three phase
inputs, but it's just terrifically redundant, and it will run just fine
on a single 208 (hot-hot-neutral-ground) circuit. Complains loudly, but
runs.

De

Single Stage to Orbit

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Feb 7, 2023, 12:06:09 PM2/7/23
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On Tue, 2023-02-07 at 16:08 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > I think the noise would be a masssive sleep-killer for most people.
> > Not a big problem for people like me who are deaf :-D
>
> Meh. I had a PDP-8 in my student room while at University. Usually on
> 24/7. The noise eventually just becomes a non-issue.

Human nature, isn't it, get used to any situation.

> At the University itself, I usually hang around in the computer room
> with two DEC-2060, two VAX-8650 and two PDP-11/70. Although the
> computer room were in fact divided into two separate rooms with a
> door between them. But that was a fair amount of noise. And then the
> cooling system on top of that.

We never had direct access to the machines. Instead we could only
access them on our VT220 terminals wired up to terminal multiplexers
across the various campuses scattered all over Portsmouth (in UK). It
happens this is also the main Naval base for the Royal Navy too.

Reminds me of the night I broke down right by the Navy base and got two
men with machine guns in my face :-D. Remember, back in these days they
were right to be concerned with threats from the Irish provos.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Andy Burns

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Feb 7, 2023, 1:47:59 PM2/7/23
to
Simon Clubley wrote:

> gah4 wrote:
>
>> Some will question exactly how big one has to be to be a real mainframe.
>
> I wonder how much space an IBM z15 system takes up ?

From 1 to 4 racks, plus whatever for storage ...

<https://developer.ibm.com/blogs/systems-inside-the-new-ibm-z15/>

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 7, 2023, 4:17:34 PM2/7/23
to
Ooops.

You are correct.

I looked at the 63x0 instead of the 64x0 number.

The 6430 is faster in every way than 2 x 8550.

Mea culpa.

Arne


Dave Froble

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Feb 7, 2023, 5:22:45 PM2/7/23
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Reasonable.

I recall that the 8500s, 8600s, and such were still multiple board CPUs. Then
came the C-VAX and N-VAX micro-processors. The micro-processors were much
better, faster, and the later N-VAX CPUs were rather good, for a VAX.

My memory (yeah, right) is that the N-VAX was a RISC processor that emulated the
VAX instruction set. Or something like that.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: da...@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 7, 2023, 5:35:42 PM2/7/23
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gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>The 360/30 is a little bigger, and might not have that.
>
>Some will question exactly how big one has to be to be a real mainframe.
>
>And VAX were some that had that asked of them. Even in the beginning.

Being a mainframe is less about size than about I/O throughput. The vax
was no mainframe. The DECSYSTEM-20 was a mainframe. DEC's customers knew
the difference even if DEC's marketing people had no clue.

kemain...@gmail.com

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Feb 7, 2023, 5:45:06 PM2/7/23
to comp.os.vms to email gateway
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax...@rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Dave Froble
> via Info-vax
> Sent: February 7, 2023 6:23 PM
> To: info...@rbnsn.com
> Cc: Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon
>
From: Digital Computing Timeline: Select VAX timeline
<http://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/digital/timeline/32-bit.htm>

November 1991:
The NVAX chip, DIGITAL's fourth VAX microprocessor, is implemented in 0.75-micrometer CMOS technology and ships in the VAX 6600.

bill

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Feb 7, 2023, 6:25:43 PM2/7/23
to
On 2/7/2023 5:35 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>> The 360/30 is a little bigger, and might not have that.
>>
>> Some will question exactly how big one has to be to be a real mainframe.
>>
>> And VAX were some that had that asked of them. Even in the beginning.
>
> Being a mainframe is less about size than about I/O throughput. The vax
> was no mainframe. The DECSYSTEM-20 was a mainframe. DEC's customers knew
> the difference even if DEC's marketing people had no clue.

Did anyone other than the DECSYSTEM-20 users think it was or call it a
mainframe?

bill

Henry Crun

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Feb 7, 2023, 6:54:48 PM2/7/23
to
On 08/02/2023 0:35, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>> The 360/30 is a little bigger, and might not have that.
>>
>> Some will question exactly how big one has to be to be a real mainframe.
>>
>> And VAX were some that had that asked of them. Even in the beginning.
>
> Being a mainframe is less about size than about I/O throughput. The vax
> was no mainframe. The DECSYSTEM-20 was a mainframe. DEC's customers knew
> the difference even if DEC's marketing people had no clue.
> --scott
>

I seem to remember some definitions thus:

Microcomputer: At the day's end, you switch it off and go home

Minicomputer: Send a message to all users "System going down in...", and run a shutdown routine

Mainframe: Wadda ya mean, switch it off??

--
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#befor

Simon Clubley

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Feb 8, 2023, 8:14:35 AM2/8/23
to
On 2023-02-07, Single Stage to Orbit <alex....@munted.eu> wrote:
>
> Reminds me of the night I broke down right by the Navy base and got two
> men with machine guns in my face :-D. Remember, back in these days they
> were right to be concerned with threats from the Irish provos.

:-)

There's a walking route that goes within 1-2km of RAF Fylingdales.

The warning signs that were there (about you being under surveillance, etc)
the last time I did that route were rather interesting to read. :-)

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 8, 2023, 12:42:57 PM2/8/23
to
On 2023-02-07 18:02, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Tue, 2023-02-07 at 16:08 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> I think the noise would be a masssive sleep-killer for most people.
>>> Not a big problem for people like me who are deaf :-D
>>
>> Meh. I had a PDP-8 in my student room while at University. Usually on
>> 24/7. The noise eventually just becomes a non-issue.
>
> Human nature, isn't it, get used to any situation.

Indeed.

>> At the University itself, I usually hang around in the computer room
>> with two DEC-2060, two VAX-8650 and two PDP-11/70. Although the
>> computer room were in fact divided into two separate rooms with a
>> door between them. But that was a fair amount of noise. And then the
>> cooling system on top of that.
>
> We never had direct access to the machines. Instead we could only
> access them on our VT220 terminals wired up to terminal multiplexers
> across the various campuses scattered all over Portsmouth (in UK). It
> happens this is also the main Naval base for the Royal Navy too.

Well, I ceased to be a "normal" student pretty quickly, and for most
everyone else it was also the case that they only sat in front of a
terminal, in a terminal room, and nowhere near the actual hardware.

The fans on the -8650 are the most fun/noisy/windy things I've
experienced. The -2060 is larger, but less windy.

The PDP-11/70 is comparatively speaking almost silent. :-D

> Reminds me of the night I broke down right by the Navy base and got two
> men with machine guns in my face :-D. Remember, back in these days they
> were right to be concerned with threats from the Irish provos.

:-D
It was never that crazy in Sweden. Although, there was this one
VAX-11/782 that sat in a container for quite a while, with dubious
papers, and an intended destination somewhere in Russia. Never got there
in the end, but that was a funny one...

Johnny

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 8, 2023, 12:45:47 PM2/8/23
to
It was sortof/generally accepted as a mainframe, but it wasn't anywhere
near what IBM was peddling. But it's also hard to compare, as IBM was
still very much batch back then, while the -20 was this wonderful,
interactive system.

However, much got lost when ethernet arrived, and the front end PDP-11
basically became idle/unused except for booting and monitoring the -10.


But if we talk I/O, the VAX 9000 is actually quite a beast.

Johnny

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 8, 2023, 2:19:33 PM2/8/23
to
IBM guys would not have. My boss would have said that if it can't back up
the DASDs with the CPU halted than it wasn't a real mainframe. But guys
doing commercial database stuff would have. And guys doing scientific
computing would have denegrated it as "another damn mainframe, just an
I/O machine."

Rich Alderson

unread,
Feb 8, 2023, 3:58:39 PM2/8/23
to
I can answer this one.

I'm best known in c.o.v. as the annoying PDP-10 guy who points out that
wonderful things in VMS were often done first in TOPS-20 (or occasionally
Tops-10), but my experience with mainframes goes back a lot farther than that.

"My" first computer was an IBM 1401, a 12K character behemoth with dual 1311
disk drives (400K total, IIRC). I learned FORTRAN IV on that machine, and used
a friend's programmed learning textbooks to teach myself PL/1 and COBOL (used
his account to do homework on a 360/40 running DOS/360).

My girlfriend bought me Germain's book on System/360 programming for graduation
(high school), and I taught myself 360 assembler from that. I got a job working
for the CAI Lab at UTexas on those credentials as a freshman, where I was
exposed to the IBM 1800 as well as a 360/50. After a break, I went back to
college at Ohio State, where I first did some CAI lab work, then got hired as a
student/faculty help desk person for the College of Administrative Science,
where I did a lot of PL/I programming and wrote a COBOL intro course for the
CAI folks.

In grad school, I wrote a 360 assembler version of the Life game, without
access to a computer for two years until I transferred from Yale to UChicago.
I worked the help desk for the Comp Center at UofC, then as a half time
programmer, mostly on the 370/168 => Amdahl 470 but some exposure to the DEC-20.

After finishing classes on my doctorate, I went to work full time as a
programmer/analyst (PL/I and COBOL) for a couple of years, and did database
work on the -20 towards the end of that. I then transferred to the systems
staff, and did systems programming on the 470, the DEC-20, and a 4341 we used
to get off SV and onto MVS while the 3031 was installed.; I wrote a PL/I
program which read SVS JCL and converted ACF2 to RACF for MVS.

So I think my mainframe credentials are solid.

The PDP-10, whether running Tops-10 or TOPS-20, is a mainframe computer.

--
Rich Alderson ne...@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

Bob Eager

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Feb 8, 2023, 4:27:34 PM2/8/23
to
On Wed, 08 Feb 2023 19:19:30 +0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> IBM guys would not have. My boss would have said that if it can't back
> up the DASDs with the CPU halted than it wasn't a real mainframe.

I know it was probably later on, but couldn't you do that with MSCP disks?

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 8, 2023, 6:42:24 PM2/8/23
to
I don't know. I have never seen anyone use more than a tiny fraction of
what MSCP is capable of, so I would not be surprised if it had I/O channel
type features like that.

Robert A. Brooks

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Feb 8, 2023, 7:19:00 PM2/8/23
to
On 2/8/2023 6:42 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>> On Wed, 08 Feb 2023 19:19:30 +0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>
>>> IBM guys would not have. My boss would have said that if it can't back
>>> up the DASDs with the CPU halted than it wasn't a real mainframe.
>>
>> I know it was probably later on, but couldn't you do that with MSCP disks?
>
> I don't know. I have never seen anyone use more than a tiny fraction of
> what MSCP is capable of, so I would not be surprised if it had I/O channel
> type features like that.

Perhaps storange and tape drives connected to the same Hierarchical Storage Controller (HSC50/70/etc), but
not drives connected to a host bus adapter (UDA50, KDM70, etc...).

--
-- Rob

Single Stage to Orbit

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Feb 9, 2023, 7:02:16 AM2/9/23
to
On Wed, 2023-02-08 at 13:14 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote:
> > men with machine guns in my face :-D. Remember, back in these days
> > they
> > were right to be concerned with threats from the Irish provos.
>
> :-)
>
> There's a walking route that goes within 1-2km of RAF Fylingdales.
>
> The warning signs that were there (about you being under
> surveillance, etc) the last time I did that route were rather
> interesting to read. :-)

Scary signs are there for a reason :-D
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Single Stage to Orbit

unread,
Feb 9, 2023, 7:02:16 AM2/9/23
to
On Wed, 2023-02-08 at 18:42 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
> Well, I ceased to be a "normal" student pretty quickly, and for most
> everyone else it was also the case that they only sat in front of a
> terminal, in a terminal room, and nowhere near the actual hardware.
>
> The fans on the -8650 are the most fun/noisy/windy things I've
> experienced. The -2060 is larger, but less windy.
>
> The PDP-11/70 is comparatively speaking almost silent. :-D
>

HP servers are /awful/. Sounds like a jet taking off on bootup.

> > Reminds me of the night I broke down right by the Navy base and got
> > two
> > men with machine guns in my face :-D. Remember, back in these days
> > they
> > were right to be concerned with threats from the Irish provos.
>
> :-D
> It was never that crazy in Sweden. Although, there was this one
> VAX-11/782 that sat in a container for quite a while, with dubious
> papers, and an intended destination somewhere in Russia. Never got
> there in the end, but that was a funny one...

Yes, didn't the Russians make DEC machine clones? Right down to the
message left on the etched masking on the one of the MicroVAx chips n
Russian "When you care enough to copy the very best".
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

kemain...@gmail.com

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Feb 9, 2023, 12:55:06 PM2/9/23
to comp.os.vms to email gateway

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax...@rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Single Stage to
> Orbit via Info-vax
> Sent: February 9, 2023 7:37 AM
> To: info...@rbnsn.com
> Cc: Single Stage to Orbit <alex....@munted.eu>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon
>
Yeah .. that 11/782 "farm machinery" shipment that was planned for shipment
to Russia almost cost DEC corporate to lose its WW export license from the
US Government.

After that incident, every DEC employee WW had to take a short course on
import/export compliance and being aware of various scenario watch-outs.

bill

unread,
Feb 9, 2023, 2:01:08 PM2/9/23
to
The biggest violators were Indian companies who happily bought DEC
gear (and other prohibited items) did internal corporate transfer
from an American branch to an Indian branch and then sold it to the
USSR. One of them used to brag about it on the original USENET. I
understand they continue to violate the sanctions against Russia
today. And yet, we still call them allies. What is the old
saying? "With friends like that who needs enemies."

bill


Robert A. Brooks

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Feb 9, 2023, 3:35:20 PM2/9/23
to
On 2/9/2023 6:36 AM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:

> Yes, didn't the Russians make DEC machine clones? Right down to the
> message left on the etched masking on the one of the MicroVAx chips n
> Russian "When you care enough to copy the very best".

I think you have that backward.

It was DEC that etched something along the lines of "When you care enough to steal the very best"
on the CVAX cpu in Cyrillic

http://simh.trailing-edge.com/semi/cvax.html (under the personal narrative section near the bottom).

--
-- Rob

Single Stage to Orbit

unread,
Feb 10, 2023, 2:02:16 PM2/10/23
to
On Thu, 2023-02-09 at 14:01 -0500, bill wrote:
> > Yeah .. that 11/782 "farm machinery" shipment that was planned for
> > shipment to Russia almost cost DEC corporate to lose its WW export
> > license from the US Government.
> >
> > After that incident, every DEC employee WW had to take a short
> > course on import/export compliance and being aware of various
> > scenario watch-outs.
>
> The biggest violators were Indian companies who happily bought DEC
> gear (and other prohibited items) did internal corporate transfer
> from an American branch to an Indian branch and then sold it to the
> USSR.  One of them used to brag about it on the original USENET. I
> understand they continue to violate the sanctions against Russia
> today.  And yet, we still call them allies.  What is the old
> saying? "With friends like that who needs enemies."

They're still quite happily buying cheap fuel from the be-damned
Russians.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Single Stage to Orbit

unread,
Feb 10, 2023, 2:02:16 PM2/10/23
to
On Thu, 2023-02-09 at 13:49 -0400, kemain...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Yes, didn't the Russians make DEC machine clones? Right down to the
> > message left on the etched masking on the one of the MicroVAx chips
> > n
> > Russian "When you care enough to copy the very best".
>
> Yeah .. that 11/782 "farm machinery" shipment that was planned for
> shipment to Russia almost cost DEC corporate to lose its WW export
> license from the US Government.
>
> After that incident, every DEC employee WW had to take a short course
> on import/export compliance and being aware of various scenario
> watch-outs.

I think they would put you in the dock if you tried doing that
nowadays.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Single Stage to Orbit

unread,
Feb 10, 2023, 2:02:17 PM2/10/23
to
On Thu, 2023-02-09 at 15:35 -0500, Robert A. Brooks wrote:
> > Yes, didn't the Russians make DEC machine clones? Right down to the
> > message left on the etched masking on the one of the MicroVAx chips
> > n Russian "When you care enough to copy the very best".
>
> I think you have that backward.
>
> It was DEC that etched something along the lines of "When you care
> enough to steal the very best" on the CVAX cpu in Cyrillic

I did mean to say that and got it wrong. Shame on me.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Dave Froble

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Feb 10, 2023, 6:09:41 PM2/10/23
to
What? For teaching employees to follow the law? I sure hope not.

Clark G

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Feb 11, 2023, 1:42:36 AM2/11/23
to
Arne Vajhøj <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote in
news:trjqsr$1io8j$1...@dont-email.me:

> On 2/3/2023 3:22 PM, Neil Rieck wrote:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cooper
>>
>> VAX-6000 was the Chevy of minicomputers in the 1990s.
>>
>> IIRC, Vector processing was only available if you purchased the
>> optional vector processing board (I saw one once at DEC in Bedford
>> Mass.)
>> https://manx-docs.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/vax/60vaapg1.pdf
>
> Yes - it was HW addon.
>
> I don't think it sold that well. Those RISC thingies was
> starting to pop up everywhere.
>
> But the 6000 series sold pretty well and I think a lot of them
> kept running well up in the 00's. They were pretty
> good systems - especially the 400 and later.
>
> Unlike the 9000's which is think mostly had a short
> career in the data center.
>
> Arne

A friend of mine ran a geo-physical data processing company in Calgary. I
visited his office around 1990 and they had the VAX 11/780 they had
started with still running and they had started with some vector
processing hardware attached to the 780. By then they were using high
powered workstations for the number crunching and the 780 was just used
for reading the raw data from the 9 track tapes the customers sent them.

--
Clark G
* take away the em's to reply

Tony Priborsky

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Feb 11, 2023, 11:08:17 AM2/11/23
to
Yes, the HSC50 had a direct disk-to-tape backup utility that didn't require the CPU. Consistency was your problem so it was mostly used off line. The system operated a TU78 tape drive at absolute max speed. Forward write speed was almost rewind speed. You could always tell when it was running by the sound of the vacuum columns.

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 11, 2023, 11:14:16 AM2/11/23
to
Did it generate a backup in VMS Backup format or did
it just dump physical disk blocks to tape blocks?

Arne

Tony Priborsky

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Feb 11, 2023, 11:18:06 AM2/11/23
to
I'm pretty sure it didn't write a native VMS backup saveset - remember the CPU on the HSC was a PDP-11. Logically the backup was the equivalent of VMS "BACKUP/PHYSICAL". I seem to recall that at some point the VMS backup could restore (read) a HSC backup.

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 11, 2023, 11:26:48 AM2/11/23
to
On 2/11/2023 11:18 AM, Tony Priborsky wrote:
> On Saturday, February 11, 2023 at 8:14:16 AM UTC-8, Arne Vajhøj
> wrote:
>> On 2/11/2023 11:08 AM, Tony Priborsky wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, February 8, 2023 at 1:27:34 PM UTC-8, Bob Eager
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 08 Feb 2023 19:19:30 +0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> IBM guys would not have. My boss would have said that if it
>>>>> can't back up the DASDs with the CPU halted than it wasn't a
>>>>> real mainframe.
>>>> I know it was probably later on, but couldn't you do that with
>>>> MSCP disks?
>>>
>>> Yes, the HSC50 had a direct disk-to-tape backup utility that
>>> didn't require the CPU. Consistency was your problem so it was
>>> mostly used off line. The system operated a TU78 tape drive at
>>> absolute max speed. Forward write speed was almost rewind speed.
>>> You could always tell when it was running by the sound of the
>>> vacuum columns.
>> Did it generate a backup in VMS Backup format or did it just dump
>> physical disk blocks to tape blocks?
>
> I'm pretty sure it didn't write a native VMS backup saveset -
> remember the CPU on the HSC was a PDP-11. Logically the backup was
> the equivalent of VMS "BACKUP/PHYSICAL". I seem to recall that at
> some point the VMS backup could restore (read) a HSC backup.

So no CRC and no redundancy groups?

Arne


kemain...@gmail.com

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Feb 11, 2023, 12:20:06 PM2/11/23
to comp.os.vms to email gateway

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax...@rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Dave Froble
> via Info-vax
> Sent: February 10, 2023 7:10 PM
> To: info...@rbnsn.com
> Cc: Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon
>
> On 2/10/2023 1:24 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> > On Thu, 2023-02-09 at 13:49 -0400, kemain...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> Yes, didn't the Russians make DEC machine clones? Right down to the
> >>> message left on the etched masking on the one of the MicroVAx chips
> >>> n Russian "When you care enough to copy the very best".
> >>
> >> Yeah .. that 11/782 "farm machinery" shipment that was planned for
> >> shipment to Russia almost cost DEC corporate to lose its WW export
> >> license from the US Government.
> >>
> >> After that incident, every DEC employee WW had to take a short course
> >> on import/export compliance and being aware of various scenario
> >> watch-outs.
> >
> > I think they would put you in the dock if you tried doing that
> > nowadays.
> >
>
> What? For teaching employees to follow the law? I sure hope not.
>

If the end test was taken before taking the import/export course, I am
pretty sure most people would fail.

Different use case scenarios dealing with legal vs. illegal shipping,
receiving and red flag scenarios and who to inform etc.

Now, as I recall, if you did not pass, you simply re-took the test again
until you passed.

John Dallman

unread,
Feb 11, 2023, 12:42:10 PM2/11/23
to
In article <3f553252f29d5d1f020ce4e...@munted.eu>,
You mean "if you tried planning a shipment of computers as farm
machinery," I presume?

Training courses about export compliance are absolutely routine in large
companies nowadays.

John

Tony Priborsky

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Feb 11, 2023, 12:58:09 PM2/11/23
to
On Saturday, February 11, 2023 at 8:26:48 AM UTC-8, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> So no CRC and no redundancy groups?
>
> Arne

No.

Tony Priborsky

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Feb 11, 2023, 1:01:27 PM2/11/23
to
Error correction: The tape drive on the HSC controller was the TA78. The TU78 was the MassBus version.

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 11, 2023, 7:02:28 PM2/11/23
to
Depends on how you mean that. Tapes have CRC on the data unless I
remember wrong. Just like disks have. But no redundancy or ECC, so if
media got corrupted, you loose.

But HSCs are pretty nice. Been a while since I used one.

Johnny

Rich Alderson

unread,
Feb 11, 2023, 7:14:34 PM2/11/23
to
Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:

> On 2023-02-11 17:26, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > On 2/11/2023 11:18 AM, Tony Priborsky wrote:
> >> I'm pretty sure it didn't write a native VMS backup saveset -
> >> remember the CPU on the HSC was a PDP-11.   Logically the backup was
> >> the equivalent of VMS "BACKUP/PHYSICAL".  I seem to recall that at
> >> some point the VMS backup could restore (read) a HSC backup.
> >
> > So no CRC and no redundancy groups?
>
> Depends on how you mean that. Tapes have CRC on the data unless I
> remember wrong. Just like disks have. But no redundancy or ECC, so if
> media got corrupted, you loose.

Hmm. In 50+ years of data processing/IT/systems work, I've never heard of
tapes having (nonprogrammatic) CRC, that is, anything generated by the
hardware/firmware rather than the backup program.

> But HSCs are pretty nice. Been a while since I used one.
>
> Johnny

Arne Vajhøj

unread,
Feb 11, 2023, 7:28:11 PM2/11/23
to
On 2/11/2023 7:02 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2023-02-11 17:26, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 2/11/2023 11:18 AM, Tony Priborsky wrote:
>>> I'm pretty sure it didn't write a native VMS backup saveset -
>>> remember the CPU on the HSC was a PDP-11.   Logically the backup was
>>> the equivalent of VMS "BACKUP/PHYSICAL".  I seem to recall that at
>>> some point the VMS backup could restore (read) a HSC backup.
>>
>> So no CRC and no redundancy groups?
>
> Depends on how you mean that. Tapes have CRC on the data unless I
> remember wrong. Just like disks have.

As I remember 9 track tapes then it was pure data blocks
and tape marks - no CRC.

If mounted as labeled tape then some blocks were
considered VOL and HDR blocks, but that was an OS
feature not a drive feature.

Arne

Dennis Boone

unread,
Feb 12, 2023, 12:11:58 AM2/12/23
to
> Hmm. In 50+ years of data processing/IT/systems work, I've never heard of
> tapes having (nonprogrammatic) CRC, that is, anything generated by the
> hardware/firmware rather than the backup program.

Seven track tape had both frame and longitudinal parity.

Nine track had both parities, plus a crc character. Data, three
frame times empty, crc frame, three frame times empty, lrc, irg.

See e.g. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/kennedy/9100/Kennedy_Model_9100_192-9100-003_75ips_Operation_and_Maintenance.pdf

De

David Jones

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Feb 12, 2023, 1:23:10 AM2/12/23
to
On Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 12:11:58 AM UTC-5, Dennis Boone wrote:
> Nine track had both parities, plus a crc character. Data, three
> frame times empty, crc frame, three frame times empty, lrc, irg.
>
> See e.g. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/kennedy/9100/Kennedy_Model_9100_192-9100-003_75ips_Operation_and_Maintenance.pdf
>
> De

The appendix describes lrc and crc for NRZ1 format (and crc only for 800 CPI) but says explicitly that PE format has neither.

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 12, 2023, 11:05:15 AM2/12/23
to
Clark G <clarkm....@ieeemmm.org> wrote:
>A friend of mine ran a geo-physical data processing company in Calgary. I
>visited his office around 1990 and they had the VAX 11/780 they had
>started with still running and they had started with some vector
>processing hardware attached to the 780. By then they were using high
>powered workstations for the number crunching and the 780 was just used
>for reading the raw data from the 9 track tapes the customers sent them.

The difference in floating point performance between a straight 11/780 and
a Sparcstation I was absolutely staggering. I couldn't believe how much
faster the Sparc was, and it cost less to buy than the Vax cost to maintain
for three months.

But it's true that you could hang a vector machine like the Floating Point
Systems array processors on the side of the vax and it made things much less
painful (if your code could be adapted for it).

Arne Vajhøj

unread,
Feb 12, 2023, 2:32:16 PM2/12/23
to
A quick glance indicate that this stuff is below "byte level" and down
at "electric level".

Arne


Steven Schweda

unread,
Feb 12, 2023, 3:14:13 PM2/12/23
to
> The difference in floating point performance between a straight 11/780
> and a Sparcstation I was absolutely staggering. [...]

Well, duh. "absolutely staggering" is how I might describe the _age_
of a VAX-11/780 when the SPARCstation 1 was released (1989). A decade
later, the SPARCstation 1 might have been less impressive, too. (As I
recall, it was.)

Single Stage to Orbit

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Feb 12, 2023, 6:02:16 PM2/12/23
to
I once had a SunBlade 2500 with dual 1.2GHz processors. The newer
x86_64 machines were a lot more efficient.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Dave Froble

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Feb 12, 2023, 6:09:09 PM2/12/23
to
Perhaps cost is an issue? The cost of a VAX 11/780 back then, even after 11
years, might still be on one's mind, and the reason it still might be in use.

But yeah, HW has been on a roll for a long time now, and still is doing so.

Arne Vajhøj

unread,
Feb 12, 2023, 6:44:45 PM2/12/23
to
On 2/12/2023 6:08 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 2/12/2023 3:14 PM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>>> The difference in floating point performance between a straight 11/780
>>> and a Sparcstation I was absolutely staggering. [...]
>>
>>    Well, duh.  "absolutely staggering" is how I might describe the _age_
>> of a VAX-11/780 when the SPARCstation 1 was released (1989).  A decade
>> later, the SPARCstation 1 might have been less impressive, too.  (As I
>> recall, it was.)
>
> Perhaps cost is an issue?  The cost of a VAX 11/780 back then, even
> after 11 years, might still be on one's mind, and the reason it still
> might be in use.

I think you are on to something.

What did a SPARCstation 1 cost in 1989?

What did a VAX 780 (let us say maxed out with memory)
cost in 1979?

The cost of the VAX 780 may have give expectations of the
system running for 10-20 years and not the 5 years
that has become custom for the "cheap" stuff.

Arne


Johnny Billquist

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Feb 12, 2023, 6:52:31 PM2/12/23
to
On 2023-02-12 01:28, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/11/2023 7:02 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2023-02-11 17:26, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 2/11/2023 11:18 AM, Tony Priborsky wrote:
>>>> I'm pretty sure it didn't write a native VMS backup saveset -
>>>> remember the CPU on the HSC was a PDP-11.   Logically the backup was
>>>> the equivalent of VMS "BACKUP/PHYSICAL".  I seem to recall that at
>>>> some point the VMS backup could restore (read) a HSC backup.
>>>
>>> So no CRC and no redundancy groups?
>>
>> Depends on how you mean that. Tapes have CRC on the data unless I
>> remember wrong. Just like disks have.
>
> As I remember 9 track tapes then it was pure data blocks
> and tape marks - no CRC.

On a software level, you don't see this anymore than you see all the
extra cruft on a disk.

> If mounted as labeled tape then some blocks were
> considered VOL and HDR blocks, but that was an OS
> feature not a drive feature.

Correct. From a hardware point of view, those are just blocks just like
anything else. No difference at all.

However, the tape have blocks. You have the tape marks, blocking and
other stuff going on, to try to ensure your data is safe and don't get
corrupted. It's all down in the hardware, but that don't mean it work
any worse/different.

Johnny

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 12, 2023, 6:55:26 PM2/12/23
to
Technically the 700 systems were obsolete when the
8000 systems came out mid 80's (and the 8000 systems
were obsolete when the 6000 systems came out late 80's
and early 90's and so on).

But perception and expectation for business life time
is different from technical obsolence.

Arne


Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 12, 2023, 7:07:38 PM2/12/23
to
I guess I am too far distanced from the hardware.

To me a tapes content is what DUMP will show. I have
never wondered much about how blocks and bytes was
actually stored.

Links have already been posted to NRZI, PE, GCR etc. and
I can see that there are more differences than just 800, 1600
and 6250 BPI.

Arne

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 12, 2023, 7:14:07 PM2/12/23
to
=?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?= <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>
>What did a SPARCstation 1 cost in 1989?

Less than a uVax 3200.
And the SLC was even cheaper.

Dave Froble

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Feb 12, 2023, 9:44:24 PM2/12/23
to
On 2/12/2023 6:44 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/12/2023 6:08 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 2/12/2023 3:14 PM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>>>> The difference in floating point performance between a straight 11/780
>>>> and a Sparcstation I was absolutely staggering. [...]
>>>
>>> Well, duh. "absolutely staggering" is how I might describe the _age_
>>> of a VAX-11/780 when the SPARCstation 1 was released (1989). A decade
>>> later, the SPARCstation 1 might have been less impressive, too. (As I
>>> recall, it was.)
>>
>> Perhaps cost is an issue? The cost of a VAX 11/780 back then, even after 11
>> years, might still be on one's mind, and the reason it still might be in use.
>
> I think you are on to something.
>
> What did a SPARCstation 1 cost in 1989?
>
> What did a VAX 780 (let us say maxed out with memory)
> cost in 1979?

Most likely in the neighborhood of half a million ...

Some of that will be the disk drives, which were over 20K, each ..

> The cost of the VAX 780 may have give expectations of the
> system running for 10-20 years and not the 5 years
> that has become custom for the "cheap" stuff.
>
> Arne
>
>


LakeGator

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Feb 13, 2023, 1:03:06 PM2/13/23
to
On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 8:48:07 AM UTC-5, Neil Rieck wrote:
> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage. I guess Chuck Lorre and staff didn't know this was a mini (or perhaps they did but just liked the sound of Sheldon say "I need a mainframe")
>
> Neil Rieck
> Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
> http://neilrieck.net
> http://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
The one minute scene is at or near https://youtu.be/GhNh6GgNpVo

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 13, 2023, 5:09:26 PM2/13/23
to
Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>On 2/12/2023 6:44 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 2/12/2023 6:08 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>> On 2/12/2023 3:14 PM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>>>>> The difference in floating point performance between a straight 11/780
>>>>> and a Sparcstation I was absolutely staggering. [...]
>>>>
>>>> Well, duh. "absolutely staggering" is how I might describe the _age_
>>>> of a VAX-11/780 when the SPARCstation 1 was released (1989). A decade
>>>> later, the SPARCstation 1 might have been less impressive, too. (As I
>>>> recall, it was.)
>>>
>>> Perhaps cost is an issue? The cost of a VAX 11/780 back then, even after 11
>>> years, might still be on one's mind, and the reason it still might be in use.
>>
>> I think you are on to something.
>>
>> What did a SPARCstation 1 cost in 1989?
>>
>> What did a VAX 780 (let us say maxed out with memory)
>> cost in 1979?
>
>Most likely in the neighborhood of half a million ...
>
>Some of that will be the disk drives, which were over 20K, each ..

... and if you were smart you got a service contract on them... which was
expensive but paid for itself very quickly in RA81 heads...

gah4

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Feb 13, 2023, 9:25:08 PM2/13/23
to
On Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 3:52:31 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:

(snip)

> Correct. From a hardware point of view, those are just blocks just like
> anything else. No difference at all.

> However, the tape have blocks. You have the tape marks, blocking and
> other stuff going on, to try to ensure your data is safe and don't get
> corrupted. It's all down in the hardware, but that don't mean it work
> any worse/different.

I haven't thought about this for years. I believe there is either parity
or CRC at the end of a block, in addition to the parity bit for each character.
I suspect that lower density have parity and higher (and later) have CRC.

Neil Rieck

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Feb 14, 2023, 7:45:27 AM2/14/23
to
Thanks for the video clip

Definitively different racks of storage. At least two of the racks contain RA80 series drives:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/brochures/DEC-RA-FamilyOfWinchesterDiskDrives.pdf

Not sure about the other racks (could be RM series drives like RM03)

The monitor looks like a VT420 and is sitting on an Orange manual so VMS-4

According to this article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS ) VAX-6000 was released with VMS-5 so Chuck Lorre's people messed up

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net/

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 14, 2023, 4:11:36 PM2/14/23
to
On 2023-02-14 13:45, Neil Rieck wrote:
> On Monday, February 13, 2023 at 1:03:06 PM UTC-5, LakeGator wrote:
>> On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 8:48:07 AM UTC-5, Neil Rieck wrote:
>>> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage. I guess Chuck Lorre and staff didn't know this was a mini (or perhaps they did but just liked the sound of Sheldon say "I need a mainframe")
>>>
>>> Neil Rieck
>>> Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
>>> http://neilrieck.net
>>> http://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
>> The one minute scene is at or near https://youtu.be/GhNh6GgNpVo
>
> Thanks for the video clip
>
> Definitively different racks of storage. At least two of the racks contain RA80 series drives:
> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/brochures/DEC-RA-FamilyOfWinchesterDiskDrives.pdf

Lots of weird stuff. However, as far as I can tell (see):

Right most rack contains four RA60.
I *think* the next rack (second from right) are four RA8x drives.
Third from right rack contains 8 RA9x drives.

Then you have the VAX 6000-420 (if I read the nameplate right).

Rack on the left looks like it might have an RA60 on top and an RA8x below.

> Not sure about the other racks (could be RM series drives like RM03)

No. Definitely no RM drives in there, or anything beyond RA.

> The monitor looks like a VT420 and is sitting on an Orange manual so VMS-4

Yeah. Definitely VT420.

> According to this article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS ) VAX-6000 was released with VMS-5 so Chuck Lorre's people messed up

Well, the weird lightning on the VAX when power goes on is rather fake
as well, and people seem to have been creative putting on coloring on
various buttons on the RA drives as well. All looking rather odd.

Johnny

bill

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Feb 14, 2023, 6:36:43 PM2/14/23
to
I have never watched the show (an never will) or the original but I
have to ask.
How does an underage nerd going to college afford something like that?
How did he get a dorm room by himself? Where is he going that the dorm
rooms are that big? And the list goes on and on and on.
But then, that's probably why I don't watch any of this crap on TV.

bill


Johnny Billquist

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Feb 14, 2023, 6:49:21 PM2/14/23
to
I haven't watched it either. Just looked at that one minute clip on Youtube.

Obviously this is just a silly TV show, so the questions aren't really
meaningful anyway, since it's all weird fiction.

JOhnny

Scott Dorsey

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Feb 14, 2023, 7:37:56 PM2/14/23
to
bill <bill.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I have never watched the show (an never will) or the original but I
>have to ask.
>How does an underage nerd going to college afford something like that?
>How did he get a dorm room by himself? Where is he going that the dorm
>rooms are that big? And the list goes on and on and on.
>But then, that's probably why I don't watch any of this crap on TV.

The same way everyone gets rich enough to afford something like that:
by selling fraudulent stocks in internet startups.

Dave Froble

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Feb 14, 2023, 10:43:53 PM2/14/23
to
I didn't watch the show when it was on TV. A few years ago I started, boredom I
guess, watching some youtube pieces. I have to admit, some of the scenes were
hilarious. I still don't have a TV, and would not watch the crap that is normal
on TV, but, I have to say, some of "The Big Bang Theory" really had some funny
scenes.

cao...@pitbulluk.org

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Feb 15, 2023, 6:27:32 AM2/15/23
to
The cabinet to the right of the VAX looks like an SA650 - from what I remember, a whole ~9Gb of storage.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158707658212504&set=p.10158707658212504&type=3

Hunter Goatley

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Feb 15, 2023, 11:20:19 AM2/15/23
to
On 2/14/2023 3:11 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
> Well, the weird lightning on the VAX when power goes on is rather fake
> as well, and people seem to have been creative putting on coloring on
> various buttons on the RA drives as well. All looking rather odd.
> Of course. Everyone knows that computers can't really be working
unless there are lots of multi-colored lights blinking off and on! 8-)

--
Hunter
------
Hunter Goatley, Process Software, http://www.process.com/
goath...@goatley.com http://hunter.goatley.com/

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 15, 2023, 2:35:22 PM2/15/23
to
On 2023-02-15 12:27, cao...@pitbulluk.org wrote:
> The cabinet to the right of the VAX looks like an SA650 - from what I remember, a whole ~9Gb of storage.
> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158707658212504&set=p.10158707658212504&type=3

Might be a SA600 or SA650. Impossible to tell from this side. The
difference is in the cabling. But I would guess on a SA600 since that
was the initial one. When the RA7x drives came, you had a frame where
you could mount four in the same space as one RA9x. But you need four
times more cabling, and that was what the SA650 added compared to the SA600.

Johnny

Johnny Billquist

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Feb 15, 2023, 2:38:24 PM2/15/23
to
On 2023-02-15 17:20, Hunter Goatley wrote:
> On 2/14/2023 3:11 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> >
> > Well, the weird lightning on the VAX when power goes on is rather fake
> > as well, and people seem to have been creative putting on coloring on
> > various buttons on the RA drives as well. All looking rather odd.
> Of course. Everyone knows that computers can't really be working
> unless there are lots of multi-colored lights blinking off and on! 8-)

:-P

Yeah, I suspect that's partially it. I was sortof wondering if they did
some of that "upgrade" for the TV show, or if the actual owner himself
(herself?) actually did that because it looked "cooler".
Anyway, the way the whole thing just went on and immediately lighted up
makes me think that it was just front panels and lamps, and no real
hardware involved in that whole scene. Otherwise most people should
remember the delay between power on and ready lights actually coming on.

Johnny

gah4

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Feb 16, 2023, 2:43:06 PM2/16/23
to
On Saturday, February 11, 2023 at 10:23:10 PM UTC-8, David Jones wrote:

(snip)
> The appendix describes lrc and crc for NRZ1 format (and crc only for 800 CPI) but says explicitly that PE format has neither.

OK, but NRZI needs it a lot more!

NRZI depends on their being at least one flux transition ('1' bit) in each character.
(Oops for whoever decided to use even parity on 7 track tapes.)
All tracks clock together. A tiny head azimuth error, and it fails.

PE clocks each track separately. No problems with head azimuth.
Another way to look at it, is that PE puts a parity bit on each bit.

I thought that GCR uses CRC, but haven't actually thought it for 40 years.

gah4

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Feb 16, 2023, 2:52:48 PM2/16/23
to
On Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 3:52:31 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:

(snip)

> Correct. From a hardware point of view, those are just blocks just like
> anything else. No difference at all.

> However, the tape have blocks. You have the tape marks, blocking and
> other stuff going on, to try to ensure your data is safe and don't get
> corrupted. It's all down in the hardware, but that don't mean it work
> any worse/different.

The first thing OS/360 and successors do when a tape is mounted,
is read the label (,SL), or verify that there isn't one (,NL).
Systems I knew would let you read, but not write, with (,BLP).
(That is, bypass label processing.)

The drives will read until they find either data or a tape mark, or the
tape goes off the reel. (The foil EOT markers are only used on writing.)

No comment on how I know that.

Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 16, 2023, 8:59:57 PM2/16/23
to
On 2/16/2023 2:52 PM, gah4 wrote:
> The first thing OS/360 and successors do when a tape is mounted,
> is read the label (,SL), or verify that there isn't one (,NL).
> Systems I knew would let you read, but not write, with (,BLP).
> (That is, bypass label processing.)

MOUNT /OVER=ID on VMS bypasses everything.

> The drives will read until they find either data or a tape mark, or the
> tape goes off the reel. (The foil EOT markers are only used on writing.)
>
> No comment on how I know that.

I remember SYS$QIOW with IO$_READLBLK. Do one
after logical end of tape and it was a runaway tape
having to wait until tape ran out.

Arne


gah4

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Feb 16, 2023, 9:47:25 PM2/16/23
to
On Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 5:59:57 PM UTC-8, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/16/2023 2:52 PM, gah4 wrote:
> > The first thing OS/360 and successors do when a tape is mounted,
> > is read the label (,SL), or verify that there isn't one (,NL).
> > Systems I knew would let you read, but not write, with (,BLP).
> > (That is, bypass label processing.)

> MOUNT /OVER=ID on VMS bypasses everything.
> > The drives will read until they find either data or a tape mark, or the
> > tape goes off the reel. (The foil EOT markers are only used on writing.)

The idea of labels, is that it protects against the operator mounting
the wrong tape. If you say (,NL) then it verifies that there isn't a label.

I used to know a program that would tell you, at a low level, what
was on a tape. I believe it would even read past the double tape mark
that is supposed to end the tape. And for that, you mount (,BLP)
but also have to have the write ring out. The OS verifies that.

Among others, it tells you the data set names on the label,
so you can read them if you forget them.

There might be systems that allow (,BLP) for writing, but not
the ones I used.

Do VMS operators ever mount the wrong tape?




Arne Vajhøj

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Feb 16, 2023, 9:55:12 PM2/16/23
to
On 2/16/2023 9:47 PM, gah4 wrote:
> On Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 5:59:57 PM UTC-8, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 2/16/2023 2:52 PM, gah4 wrote:
>>> The first thing OS/360 and successors do when a tape is mounted,
>>> is read the label (,SL), or verify that there isn't one (,NL).
>>> Systems I knew would let you read, but not write, with (,BLP).
>>> (That is, bypass label processing.)
>
>> MOUNT /OVER=ID on VMS bypasses everything.
>
> The idea of labels, is that it protects against the operator mounting
> the wrong tape. If you say (,NL) then it verifies that there isn't a label.
>
> I used to know a program that would tell you, at a low level, what
> was on a tape. I believe it would even read past the double tape mark
> that is supposed to end the tape. And for that, you mount (,BLP)
> but also have to have the write ring out. The OS verifies that.
>
> Among others, it tells you the data set names on the label,
> so you can read them if you forget them.
>
> There might be systems that allow (,BLP) for writing, but not
> the ones I used.
>
> Do VMS operators ever mount the wrong tape?

Sure.

And without /OVER=ID they will get an error.

With /OVER=ID then ...

Arne


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