VAX Hardware & BSD

[Mike.Santangelo at uc780.umd.edu]

> From: Bill Ganoe <bill at tucson.sie.arizona.edu>
> Subject: VAX hardware
> Keywords: VAX, hardware, 4.xBSD
> Date: 18 Aug 90 18:16:56 GMT
> To:       unix-wizards at sem.brl.mil
>      
>      
> 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 at tucson.sie.arizona.edu
> disclaimers has too many|  Systems & Industrial Engr. Dept, Univ. of Arizona
> lawyers." -- Eric Pepke |  Tucson, AZ 85721; USA
> 

Bill,
  Hopefully this will help.  ALL 8000 series VAX except the 86XX use
DEC's "BI" bus extensively.  This was the follow-on to the old SBI bus
used in the original VAX 11/780 & 11/785.  The VAX 8600 was the FIRST
VAX 8000 series system and it did not use the new BI bus technology,
re-using the SBI bus instead as the main processor<>memory interconnect.
  The VAX 8600 (and 8650, a faster processor version of the same) are
also known as "the last of the UNIBUS based systems" as the only DEC
supported disk drives for these systems are mainly UNIBUS based from
the DW interface.  The RM05 is supported as a MASSBUS disk, but not
as a boot device.  The 8600/8650 come with a disk interface called
the "RB86" which appears to sit on the SBI but in reality is an
integrated UNIBUS DW interface with a enough slots to hold a UDA50A
MSCP/SDI UNIBUS disk controller I beleive.
  Porting BSD to the 8600 and 8650 was probably quite simple as to
BSD they just look like faster SBI based VAXen (the 11/780, etc.).
  Support for the 11/750 (CMI based with UNIBUS) and 11/730 (proprietary
based and UNIBUS) was also I think not difficult as they look alot
like the 11/780 in many ways to the OS.
  The BI bus is a different story!

  Here's some performance info for you (all figures are in VUPs, or
VAX 11/780 units of processing power, e.g. VAX 11/780 = 1.0 VUP):

  VAX 11/730: 0.3
  VAX 11/750: 0.6
  VAX 11/785: (roughly) 2.0
  VAX 8600  : 4.2
  VAX 8650  : 6.0

  You could always run ULTRIX from DEC, very much BSD with support
for the other 8000 series systems.  The 8500/8530/8700 share a nice
cabinet the size of a refrigerator and deliver some good bang for
the buck.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Michael F. Santangelo                 + Inet: mike at uc780.umd.edu
VMS / UNIX Systems                    +       mike at socrates.umd.edu
Academic Computing UMUC               + Bnet: MIKE at UC780
(The University of Maryland,          +       MIKE at UMUC (not visited often)
 University College)                  +<Insert clever net-phrase here>