woolstar@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (John D Woolverton) (11/11/89)
Having received a free offer for this week's west
coast Dexpo, I wandered down to Anaheim Thursday
to check out the conference and look for a few things
to add onto my Dec Station 3100.
The main thing I wanted was memory. Everyone admits
that the DecStation is underloaded at 8MB, and just
4 more is an improvement, but the $1,500 prices (4MB)
have kept me from buying so far. I was also looking
for other hardware goodies to add on (drives and stuff).
What I was not looking for was VMS stuff or software
so my observations are negligent there.
Also a bit of stupidity on my part started the day off
on the wrong foot. Our group mistakenly went to the
Anaheim convention center where we were informed that
we were in the wrong place. DECUS was at the convention
center, and DEXPO was at the Disneyland hotel. (OOPS)
Memory:
The war has started, and there are several large companies
entering the battle finally. Some list prices were are
low as $1,200 while others had show specials in the same
price range. Everyone was willing to deal, and some were
giving very good prices for Educational/Government institutions.
Most of the companies had displays with Dec Station 2MB DIMMS
(dual inline memory modules), but no one was giving
away samples :-( / :-).
At the very end of the day in the last tent, as we were
wrapping up (getting tired), I walked past a small booth,
very sparsely set up, and enquired about DecStation memory.
I was quoted [very unenthusiastically] $850/4MB. He zipped
my card, but it didn't sink in till after we walked out.
If this is for real, then WOW. If I get any more information,
I'll pass it on. Either he was crazy, or all these other
companies are sitting on a healthy profit, and are about to
get the carpet pulled out from under them.
Memory companies talked to (except for one :-)
DATARAM CORPORATION
West coast contact: Paul Jablon
505 N. Tustin Av.
Santa Ana, CA 92705
(213) 822-8202
STANDARD MEMORIES
9 Whatney
Irvine, CA 92718
(714) 583-7500
SEE FIRST TECHNOLOGY INC
DEXPO Rep: Jim Martin
4655 Old Ironsides Drive
Santa Clara, CA 95054
(408) 748-7717
Today I decided to go with Dataram for an addition 8MB
for my Dec Station. Reasons were that they matched other
LOW bids, and have a lifetime guarantee/immediate replacement.
(The price was not as low as $850, but closer to it than $1,200.)
Cables:
There were three cable companies displaying the odd connectors
that you run into when working on a Dec Station. I was specifically
looking for cables to extend the console keyboard and mouse so that
I can mount my machine in a rack, away from my desk. I will be
looking into that in the coming weeks, and anyone who is interested
can drop me an email, and I'll fill you in on the results.
I'm also looking to get custom keys to re-arrange my "VT200 like"
keyboard on the Dec Station. Specifically, swap CRTL/LOCK, move
the left shift over the ><, remove the \| and replace it with a
L shaped return key (or widen the return and put the \| over it).
Hard Drives:
I was looking for large cheap Winchesters and my friend was
looking at MagOptical. For winchesters, it looks like IMPRIMIS
is a front runner which its Wren VII (1.2GB) drive. That had
the Wren family of drives on display with clear covers over the
heads and were alternating cross disk seeks, with full disk reads.
Quite impressive. Most local contacts have been giving me quotes
for the Wren VII in the $4,500 to $6,000 price range. I wish I
could find the source of the other poster who mentioned a $2,000
price offer he had.
There wasn't the abundance of SCSI hard drive offerings that
I had hoped for. There was a lot more for the regular DEC systems:
PDP, Vax 750/780, 6000, 8000, Micro Vax, etc. Hopefully I'll
find a bigger SCSI selection at Comdex.
ReWriteable optical disks are starting to prosper in non-NeXT,
configurations thou they are still for the most part: small,
slow, and awkward. The 5.25 disks seemed to be generally supporting
~640 MB double sided. The awkwardness is that each cartridge is
~320 MB per side, and you can only use one side at a time. You have
to flip it over to use the other side. (Haven't done that since the
days of bootleg notching SSSD floppys :-)
Also 4mm dat has made an appearance, and is providing quite a
storage capacity for what looks to be a very cheap medium. Company
spec sheets are listing 700MB to 1.1GB for a cartridge, and some
systems are configured with multiple cartridge carrousels. This is going
to eat away at the 8mm tape market, as 8mm tapes are only supporting
twice the capacity but may become more than twice as expensive.
Personal Awards:
* Best giveaway: A soda fountain at one VMS software support company.
We weren't interested in the product, just needed a coke.
* Best candy: lifesavers (from a disaster recovery company)
* Best button: Standard Memories official "MY FEET HURT" button.
(I had one saleslady offer me $5 for it :-)
Miscellaneous:
The expo was set up fairly well. Registration went smoothly,
(it being the last day of the show), although they had run out
of the regular badges and we were given "white" generic badges.
(Maybe these will be good at Comdex :-) Sales people weren't too
pushy and there was a high quantity of technically knowledgeable
people, as well as people with authority to make deals/decisions.
If Comdex next week has half the number of knowledgeable/
authoritative company representatives, it will be worth the trip
to Las Vegas.
John d Woolverton, Engineer
woolstar@csvax.caltech.edu
*** Big disclaimer here ***
These are just my uneducated observations and guesses here.
I only represent myself.Zaft@cup.portal.com (Gordon Christopher Zaft) (11/14/89)
I went to DEXPO, also. I was reasonably impressed at the wares for sale
(I was looking mostly for MicroVAX hardware and VMS software) although
I was disappointed that I only saw one company selling UPSs. Considering
the price and the freebies available (I came away with a T-shirt, a
coffee mug, a couple o' hats, and{ scads of buttons), it was worth the
time away from work (*grin*). We did get a lot of useful information.
zaft@cup.portal.com