System/38 question

[Mike Ross]

Hope someone can help... I've been offered a System/38 which consists of the
following:

- S/38 CPU
- Printer
- 3370 disk drives
- 3430 tape drive
- A Mystery Box

The mystery box is what I'm asking about here. It appears to be a System/38
frame, but with no diskette drive, keyboard or screen, and is 90% empty - just a
couple of small backplanes and a power supply.

It's evidently some kind of expansion cabinet, any idea what for? Controller for
one of the above?

Thanks

Mike
--
http://www.corestore.org
'As I walk along these shores
I am the history within'

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

Mike Ross <mi...@corestore.org> wrote:

>Hope someone can help... I've been offered a System/38 which consists of the
>following:
>
>- S/38 CPU

Did that come with the internal 64 Mb DASD?

>- Printer
>- 3370 disk drives
>- 3430 tape drive
>- A Mystery Box
>
>The mystery box is what I'm asking about here. It appears to be a System/38
>frame, but with no diskette drive, keyboard or screen, and is 90% empty - just a
>couple of small backplanes and a power supply.

How large is it? Same size as the S/38?

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/

[Roger Vicker]

On 5/22/2009 12:39 PM, Mike Ross arranged the binary bits such that:

The S/38 had at least one "64 Picalo" in the back of the main cabinet
under the built in monitor. It was the "load source" drive. The mystery
box sounds like the expansion cabinet that could be bolted onto the left
side of the system. It could hold 4 more "64 Picalo" drives but because
they were only 64 MB drives mostly it was used just for additional
communications devices. The third and (I think) fourth Twinax controllers.

The S/38 I started out with grew to 1-64 Picalo, 3 Twinax controllers,
4-3370 drives, 2-9332 disk drives in a rack, 4-3430 tape drives, a third
part "auto loader" tape drive, and 2 communications lines (BiSync and SDLC).

Roger Vicker, CCP

--
*** Vicker Programming and Service *** Have bits will byte ***
www.vicker.com ***
Repartee is the art of saying what you think--and getting out of range
before it is understood.

[Mike Ross]

On Fri, 22 May 2009 20:19:47 GMT, "Tony Toews [MVP]" <tto...@telusplanet.net>
wrote:

>Mike Ross <mi...@corestore.org> wrote:
>
>>Hope someone can help... I've been offered a System/38 which consists of the
>>following:
>>
>>- S/38 CPU
>
>Did that come with the internal 64 Mb DASD?

Yes, it appear to have a single internal DASD. Plus the 3370s of course.

>>- Printer
>>- 3370 disk drives
>>- 3430 tape drive
>>- A Mystery Box
>>
>>The mystery box is what I'm asking about here. It appears to be a System/38
>>frame, but with no diskette drive, keyboard or screen, and is 90% empty - just a
>>couple of small backplanes and a power supply.
>
>How large is it? Same size as the S/38?

Yep, frame looks identical to a S/38 (but with a flat top) - but the internal
arrangements are totally different, and it's almost empty.

[Mike Ross]

I'll bet you it's something like that. There are certainly no disks in the
expansion chassis, just a couple of small backplanes where the power supply
would be on an S/38.

I'm about to post a video which I think the group will find interesting :-)