DCOTTLER%rca.com@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (Dan Cottler) (08/04/86)
>Does anybody know if/when DEC is coming out with a RA81 or equivalent >option to be used by uVAXII in a BA123? Rumors and facts welcome. The reason the KDA50 is not offered in the BA123 box is because the bulkheads won't mount and still keep the box FCC certified. Also, the KDA50 is a power pig. Typically, by the time you get options stuffed into a BA123, you will run out of power. I felt it was unreasonable to pay the xtra $10,000 for the H cabinet, so... I threatened to buy a 3rd party controller and disk subsystem for my MicroVAX systems. The DEC salesman seeing $60,000 worth of disk leaving his booking sheets "caused" an allowance to appear and provided me a quote for a BA123 system with a KDA50. The FCC certification is not a concern for our application... The KDA50 is still not a very desirable controller. And, lets face it, the RA81's are about as reliable as, well, never mind. The other MicroVAX systems I've ordered have U.S. Design VIP disk subsystems. They use MAXTOR 5 1/4" winchesters in a BA23 box with a 512KB cache. They are a LOT faster than RA disks... Dan Cottler, <dcottler@rca.com> RCA Advanced Technology Labs