bill@tucson.sie.arizona.edu (Bill Ganoe) (08/19/90)
A few weeks ago a 4.3BSD-Reno announcement was posted to the net. It included a list of hardware supported in the 4.3BSD-Reno distrubution and, probably, 4.4BSD. The VAX list included 730, 750, 78x, 82x0, and 86x0. We have got to upgrade from our 750, but we are seriously constrained by physical space (floor space and access to that floor space) and A/C capacity. The VAXes we are looking at, e.g. 8550, aren't explicitly included in the above list. My question is, for the purposes of installing 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD (Reno isn't really appropriate for the user community here), how different are the various VAXes in the 8xxx series? I have a solid general hardware background, but I am still working on an intimate knowledge of the VAX family. -- "Any society that needs | William H. Ganoe bill@tucson.sie.arizona.edu disclaimers has too many| Systems & Industrial Engr. Dept, Univ. of Arizona lawyers." -- Eric Pepke | Tucson, AZ 85721; USA
chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) (08/20/90)
In article <91@tucson.sie.arizona.edu> bill@tucson.sie.arizona.edu (Bill Ganoe) writes: >The [4.3BSD-Reno supported] VAX list included 730, 750, 78x, 82x0, and 86x0. >We have got to upgrade from our 750 ... [but] the VAXes we [can use], e.g. >8550, aren't explicitly included in the above list. > >My question is, for the purposes of installing 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD >(Reno isn't really appropriate for the user community here), how >different are the various VAXes in the 8xxx series? The 8200, 8250, 8300, and 8350 are identical except that the -50 versions have faster CPUs (~1.5 VUPS rather than ~1.0 VUPS) and the 83-0 versions have two CPUs. My code will discover the second CPU and promptly ignore it. Of course, the 8[23][05]0 series is unsupported. (In fact, all the machines quoted above are unsupported). I forget what the difference is for the 8500 series, but I remember that it is real and would require some changes to the autoconfiguration code, at least. The 8700 and 8800 have a different main bus (the MI bus) and would require still more changes. The major problem here is that they have BI adapters (DB88s) that provide more than one BI bus; making 4.3-Reno run on two BIs could be done with the same trick used on the 86x0, but at this point things are getting very messy. The 6000 series uses yet a different main bus (the XMI) and the CPU looks like a Microvax-3. Your best bet, if you have to get a VAX, is to get a 3200 or 3600 or whatever-it-is-numbered-these-days with a Q-bus and a Q-to-Uni-bus box if you need to support old Unibus peripherals. Anyway, this is the only VAX hardware on which 4.3-Reno runs that is also still supported by DEC. If you can dump the VAX, HP9000/300 workstations give much better price/performance. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@cs.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris (New campus phone system, active sometime soon: +1 301 405 2750)