[Info-vax] Alpha CPU revision & serial number, blank?

Johnny Billquist bqt at softjar.se
Thu Dec 22 06:44:33 EST 2011


On 2011-12-21 18:15, Paul Sture wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:02:32 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:
>
>> In article<4ef11a62$0$6943$e4fe514c at news2.news.xs4all.nl>, MG
>> <marcogbNO at SPAMxs4all.nl>  writes:
>>>
>>> My guess is that the revision and serial number information was mostly
>>> added there to identify IA-64 (and possibly later Alpha) processors?
>>
>>     The serial number of a VAX 11/780 was readable from the system ID
>>     register.  I haven't seen such since VAX-11, but I'd not be surprized
>>     if it was there on an 8000 series VAX with an SBI.
>
> Didn't all 750s have the same ID?

I don't think so. But it was probably not hard to change. It was 
probably some wirewrap, jumpers or switches somewhere.
Part of the SID was fixed (the high byte), but the rest was 
implementation defined.

Checking a little, it seems as if the SID of the VAX-11/750 actually 
holds hardware and ucode revision numbers. So I'd say that there wasn't 
properly a serial number, but it also wasn't necessarily the same for 
all machines.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol



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