whm@arizona.edu (Bill Mitchell) (07/09/87)
We've got an 8600 maintained by DEC that we run 4.3BSD UNIX on. The system
has a UDA50+RA60 (removable pack) on it; DEC required that we purchase this
so that they could boot VMS on it if need be. We're about to buy some new
disk hardware and we came up with a scheme that could save us about $15k if
we could take the UDA+RA60 off the 8600 and put it on another machine, but
our local DEC office says that they are not permitted to maintain the 8600
unless they can bring up VMS on it and without the UDA+RA, they can't do that.
So, I'm looking for exceptions, i.e., DEC-maintained 8600s or 8650s on which
VMS can't be booted. If have one or a pointer to same, please drop me a line
or give me a call.
Bill Mitchell
whm@arizona.edu
{allegra,ihnp4,noao}!arizona!whm
602-621-6613
p.s.
An obvious out is to get non-DEC maintenance for the 8600, but for reasons
not worth explaining, that won't be a possibility for us until next year.avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) (07/11/87)
In article <1805@megaron.arizona.edu> whm@arizona.edu (Bill Mitchell) writes: >We've got an 8600 maintained by DEC that we run 4.3BSD UNIX on. The system >has a UDA50+RA60 (removable pack) on it; DEC required that we purchase this >so that they could boot VMS on it if need be. > ... are not permitted to maintain the 8600 >unless they can bring up VMS on it... Hmmm. Strange. You *could* run Ultrix. Field Service only needs to be able to boot the Diagnostics and you can do that from VMS or Ultrix. But it seems to me some, if not all of them are bootable off of tape or even the boot media (rl02 pack). Escalate! Fred (you didn't hear this from me :-)) Avolio
aad+@andrew.cmu.edu (Anthony A. Datri) (07/13/87)
I remember that people in this sort of situation would put an rk07 on their 780's so DEC had something to boot diagnostics from. Is there a chance that DEC has diagnostics bigger than the 10 meg of the rl02?
kellym@tekgen.TEK.COM (Kelly Mc Connell) (07/15/87)
In article <1805@megaron.arizona.edu> whm@arizona.edu (Bill Mitchell) writes: >We've got an 8600 maintained by DEC that we run 4.3BSD UNIX on. The system >has a UDA50+RA60 (removable pack) on it; DEC required that we purchase this >so that they could boot VMS on it if need be. We're about to buy some new >disk hardware and we came up with a scheme that could save us about $15k if >we could take the UDA+RA60 off the 8600 and put it on another machine, but >our local DEC office says that they are not permitted to maintain the 8600 >unless they can bring up VMS on it and without the UDA+RA, they can't do that. > How about just buying an additional UDA-50 for the second machine (about 5K list) and connecting port B of the RA60 to that UDA. My group does the hardware support for TEK's Vaxen and we also require a removable disk for the same reason, but we have some sites that share one RA60 between as many as four Vaxen (We move the SDI cable to whichever system needs the RA60 during maintenance). This has worked out very well and everyone happy. Kelly
todd@uhccux.UUCP (The Perplexed Wiz) (07/16/87)
In article <1364@decuac.DEC.COM> avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) writes: >In article <1805@megaron.arizona.edu> whm@arizona.edu (Bill Mitchell) writes: >>We've got an 8600 maintained by DEC that we run 4.3BSD UNIX on. The system >>has a UDA50+RA60 (removable pack) on it; DEC required that we purchase this >>so that they could boot VMS on it if need be. >Hmmm. Strange. You *could* run Ultrix. Field Service only needs to >be able to boot the Diagnostics and you can do that from VMS or >Ultrix. But it seems to me some, if not all of them are bootable off >of tape or even the boot media (rl02 pack). Just to confirm what Fred Avolio wrote. I ran a VAX 8650 running Ultrix 1.2 on it for a while and the DEC field engineers simply swapped the RL02 pack whenever they needed to run diagnostics. No muss, no fuss. Seemed to work pretty well... ...todd -- Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Center for Teaching Excellence UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!todd ARPA: uhccux!todd@nosc.MIL INTERNET: todd@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU