HP/DEC/Compaq

It looks like a nifty little box. Seems very compact, very utilitarian, and seemed like it would be reasonably inexpensive.

Until I saw this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Compaq-XP100 ... 2c6310d53c



How common are these and what could I expect to pay for one?

This is a complete ripoff, I paid $150 for my DS10@466Mhz with 1GB ram, cdrom and 2 drives. It's not a bad box per say; it's not *great* but for $150, it's worth it. I'm not sure which video card it has, I think Elsa3D something.

The last few posts (above this one) show me that I've likely been wasting my time on this thread...

Exactly, the low end of DEC's lineup is the point I'm making. I used a computer lab of VS2000's running ULTRIX and X10 for a class in 1988, so I'm not just looking at the performance from today's perspective, or in comparison to any 16-bit PCs.

I'm grouping these machines together because I believe they were each designed to be low-cost systems using DEC's then-current platforms. Do you not think this was the design brief for these models? Or, what makes you think that the Multia was not intended to be useful as a standalone machine? Certainly it was more useful on a network, but I think that's just as true for the other models.

If you just meant to point out that it was foolish to only officially offer WinNT on the Multia I certainly won't argue!

Never said they didn't add new legitimate features, just said that they didn't make gratuitous changes. If you fire up a WinNT4 or Win2k system there will be noticeable differences in how it is administered. Same with Macintosh and many other systems - but you can learn basic OVMS admin on an old version and most of it carries over because DEC/CPQ/HP didn't gratuitously change things.

Sounds like finances are probably an issue for the OP, which is the case for a number of people, and unfortunately Alphas hold their value more than many other computers. Perhaps he should look at SIMH or another emulator - while you don't get the feel of the hardware you can run OVMS fairly easily and get a feel for it.

As far as HP-UX equipment goes there isn't much that's small, except for really old stuff that runs 10.20 or earlier. HP-UX is a pretty straight SysV anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about it (unless there's a definite job attached).

I think that the multia was a great machine, yet, physically too fragile (unlike the sun LX/IPC/IPX, notably). It was very versatile (scsi, ide, floppy, network, pci slot, and a great video card); and so quiet! I owned 2 by 1996. Unfortunately, they're not so modular, and when they break, they break; and there's not much to do about it.

Amazingly, another system I really liked was the DS10L (and NOT the clunky desktop DS10), it was a great server, I'd gladly trade a few DS10 for a DS10L. Running Digital Unix or OpenVMS in 1U of rackspace was neat, and those boxes are pretty snappy and well designed. I wish they had made a DS15L.

I also wish it would be possible to run OpenVMS on Altix 350, that would be... interesting; unfortunately, too much SGI magic in there that would prevent it to work.

I wish that OVMS ran on a DS20L, though that would probably boost prices on that one substantially. 1U duallie.

Why won't it...? I have a DS20E, and from memory... I sort of ran OVMS on it until it started asking for licenses and stuff and then don't get me started on the mess with the hobbyist program


R.

Why, do you love loud, high-pitched, noise? (Produced by the typical 1U.)

DS20 L , which is the 1U (as SAQ also mentioned) as can be seen below:

It differs somewhat from the DS20 E , as can be seen below:

Also, what's wrong with the Hobbyist Program? I get my PAKs within 24 hours typically, even during weekends. (Especially since it was in-sourced by HP.)

I second that, I joined DECUSERV and immediately applied for hobbyist IA64 and Alpha licenses and had an email within an hour. Asked for download kits at 11PM Friday and had the instructional email and links by 7AM Saturday. Very speedy!

This is really cool, I have to admit.
HP/Dec/Compaq didn't have to do that, or even renew this program after so many years, but I'm glad they did.

Back when the hobbyist program was being run by volunteers it could sometimes take a day for the Encompass data to propagate, and a couple of weeks for the disks to be sent out. All things considered that really wasn't too bad, but now it's even faster.

How much is the subscrition these days?

$0

The VAXstation 4000/VLC is a lovely small box but as mentioned is a bit underpowered. It does make a really fantastic x-terminal however, and in my case I have it setup to run as a diskless remote satellite in a VMS cluster, so it is very quiet too (although the small 2" fans are a little higher pitched than standard PC cooling fans). You can plug in an LK201 or LK401 and not suffer from keyboard mapping issues. I think it would be a little limiting as a standalone system, the maximum memory is 24MB and you would almost certainly need an external SCSI CDROM drive for it to be of any use.





Another nice system is the AlphaServer 300 series, seen pictured below. The processor is a 266 Mhz EV5, with 256 MB of RAM. Fairly compact desktop enclosure - initially I thought this system would be a bit cheap and cheerful, but when it arrived I was surprised to find that it still shows a good deal of DEC's legendary design and quality.









Finally, below, is an image with Multias on the left, VAXstation 4000/VLCs in the middle and a VAX 2000 on the right.

I had an issue with the Hobbyist program being run by beyond amateurs in Australia, they were complete clowns losing any applications to the program and the like and then there was problems with my using different email addresses for different things from DECUS things a decade or two back, and finally I told them to stick it after the way I was treated. When back to running Tru64... nowadays I am far too busy to even do Haiku or IRIX stuff..

R.

is this cheating?

http://www.designspark.com/content/rasp ... ax-cluster

Cheating? I'm not sure about that. But, if you don't mind to emulate and want to run V7.3 at most (which has been pointed out various times already, in this thread alone) ― whilst also lacking a graphics head and not being able to take advantage of very nice VMS features such as shared storage ― then it might be a solution... I guess.

Graphics heads are pretty pointless on VMS. There's not much graphical out there (though the Hobbyist PAKs do include DECwrite), and it's pretty much simple stuff that can go over the network no problem.

That hasn't stopped me from putting graphics heads on many of my machines, but I don't sweat it if I have a DEC box that I don't have a graphics card, keyboard or mouse for.

Instead of doing the Rasberry approach you can just have several instances of simh running on a virtual network. Same effect, probably cheaper.

If I had enough money and I was looking for potential commercial applications I'd go I64. The manager/admin's interface with OpenVMS is very similar for any modernish variant, but the hardware is different and, as Winnili points out, there are some neat tweaks on the newer systems.

If you do run an older version, especially on a VAX, make sure you get TCPWare or MultiNet. The UCX on the hobbyist distro is (or was - has HP updated it?) very old and buggy, as well as taking a huge chunk of computing resources. I ran the one that came with Hobbyist V2 on a 4000/200 for a brief period, and the machine became essentially useless when the network was in use because of the system load.