SUBSCRIBEI’ve wanted a VAX-11 system for a while, and now I have one! I bought this VAX-11/730 system from a seller in Wisconsin on eBay. It includes 4M RAM, an R80 fixed hard drive, and RL02 10M removable pack platter hard drive, and a TU80 tape drive. The CPU cabinet also includes a couple of TU58 DECtape II drive; one on the front panel, and the other on the right side of the CPU cabinet, accessible when it’s slid out of the rack.
It traveled by truck freight, of course. I picked it up from a local freight terminal today, then loaded the beast up into my house with help from my dad. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I manage to boot it up. I’m interested in running 4.3BSD UNIX on it, as well as VMS 3.x or 4.x. It’s going to need a 30A circuit or two.
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- On the Trailer
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- Lifting Heavy Stuff with the Bobcat
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- Tape Drive Cabinet
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- CPU and Drive Cabinet
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- CPU and Drive Cabinet on my Porch
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- In the Computer Room!
Mark,
I enjoyed looking at the jpg’s of your system. Makes me recall my day’s in the mid seventies. I was a field service tech with IBM. I have not heard the term tape drives sense the early 1980’s. The last one I worked on was attaché to an AS/400. I don’t recall the model number. It was not our box anyway. Siemens made it but IBM had there logo on it. The younger generation will never know what real data processing was.
Thanks for the memories!
Rock / N1UDI
I’m glad that you liked the pictures! I’m excited to be able to keep this old machine alive for a while longer.
This must be a later model 730. The one I worked on I seem to remember had the same size cabinet as both of our 11/750s. They were rather huge. Then again, age and Chardonnay could be effecting the memory.